Alter-Places

Alter-Places is a cooperative project investigating how sustainable approaches adopted by ACPs contribute to building green, equitable, and diverse urban ecosystems through collaborative efforts.

Context

Over the last few decades, ecological awareness has emerged globally, reinforced by the COVID-19 crisis. However, these global issues also call for action by those involved at the ultra-local level. Even if political actors and associations are already taking action locally, it is essential to remember the importance of artists in bringing new imaginations to bear.

In this social, environmental, and political context, it is also urgent to develop a more sustainable model of society that implicates cultural actors, especially on a local scale. Therefore, it is crucial to highlight alternative culture and art’s unique role in advancing sustainability goals — particularly through the freedom enabled by creative processes and experimentation, the exploration of margins and boundaries, and the transformative power of expression.

At the crossroads of artistic creation and social and/or environmental commitments, alternative cultural places act as unique laboratories of sustainable practices in our local ecosystems. Through the experimental aspect of their organisation and programming, these places offer “alternatives” to dominant paradigms and emphasise ecological resilience, social justice, inclusiveness, and vibrant modes of life.

Alternative cultural places also experience difficulty being durable (physical and architectural constraints, a lack of material resources, space, skills, institutional and political constraints, political support and policies, etc.). It is necessary to determine the unique value of informal and tacit knowledge in terms of the sustainability of these places, which remains unclear, poorly documented, or shared.

We expect to demonstrate why it is vital to help maintain these places.

Keywords

Sustainability

Sustainability should be approached holistically, addressing not only environmental concerns but also supporting sound local economic development, encouraging social interaction and mobility, and recognising culture as a vital fourth pillar (UCLG 2018).

In this context, sustainable practices refer to the actions and solutions developed by ACP initiatives in response to local challenges. These practices break away from dominant paradigms, emphasising ecological resilience, social justice, inclusivity, and vibrant ways of living.

Ecology

We understand ecology through an integrated perspective encompassing environmental, social, and mental dimensions — aligned with an ethical-political viewpoint. This approach embraces diversity by exploring innovative ways to recompose individual and collective subjectivities within evolving techno-scientific and geopolitical contexts.

Alternative Cultural Places (ACPs)

ACPs are defined as interstitial places in the creative city, characterised by a “do it yourself” approach, possessing a collective orientation, motivated by creative works and a common ethos and a desire to remain autonomous, engaging in different practices of artistic production; adopting a “use value” approach to space; favouring a “gift” economy of solidarity and sharing; and expressing some form of urban dissent, either alone or in concert with other cultural or urban social movements.

The European Creative Programme of the European Union supported the project.

Alter-Places

Alter-Places

Context

Keywords

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