Symposium & Panel // IS BEAUTY ENOUGH? – Making Beauty in an Endangered World – Cockpit Arts X Central Saint Martins

Join us online on April 29 for the “Is Beauty Enough?” symposium organised by Central Saint Martin and Cockpit Arts. Our founder and director, Maurizio Montalti will contribute to the dialogue through a short presentation followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Kate Goldsworthy and Ali Rakib, lead and moderated by Carole Collet.

SESSION TITLE: Making Beauty in an Endangered World (April 29)
” Endangered species. Endangered crafts. Endangered ways of life. Is this the new normal? In a world where our natural resources are under pressure more than ever, with one million species at risk of extinction, how do we reconcile human making with the survival of non-human species? And how do we situate the meaning of beauty in this critical context?
Jared Diamond argues that we must learn from previous societal collapses to prevent the next one. Can we designers truly provoke new models for making? The panelists will discuss the notion of making beauty in the context of shifting economic models such as the circular economy, collaborating with living systems and adopting biofabrication principles. Furthermore, they will also provide an anthropological perspective on the value of craft knowledge in the context of a climate and biodiversity emergency, attempting to answering questions such as:
What does beauty mean in the context of a circular economy? How do we generate beauty when working with living systems? What can anthropology teach us about making beauty in an endangered world?

SYNOPSIS OVERALL SYMPOSIUM – Is Beauty Enough? (April 26-30)
We are living in times in which change is accelerating, uncertainty amplified. We see this in society, the economy, politics, the environment and individual lives. Everything is fluid. Environmental challenge, automatisation of jobs, social fragmentation and individual atomisation, mass international flows of people, crises in leadership, crises in identity. And more locally, an intensification of the marketisation of education, with particular challenges for art and design education. Change is nothing new. What is different is our developed consciousness of our own agency and our capability to influence and evolve the world. As designers, makers and creators, we have unprecedented resources, opportunity, time and knowledge to respond to these challenges with creativity and with moral imagination. We have awoken, and yet, it seems that the potential of design thinking is not yet being fully harnessed. In response to the uncertainties which unify our disciplines, from 26th – 30th April, Central Saint Martins and Cockpit Arts will bring together leading practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and educators for an inaugural series of lunchtime and after-work debates, panels and discussions which explore and challenge values in making and craft. We will ask how comfortably material practice and object-making sits within our need to radically shift economic, pedagogic and social structures. We will ask who is doing the making. And we will ask, is beauty enough?

The session is free, online and open for all to attend, so do not hesitate to register HERE.

When:
Thursday, April 29, 2021
5.30 PM BST // 6.30 PM CEST

Where:
Online live streaming (please register to receive the link)