LeCAKE: Common Art Knowledge Europe was a project supported by Erasmus+ that focused on the role of the cultural sector in the ecological transition. Running for two years, from October 2022 – October 2024, the project united seven cultural organisations and a think tank to build a common base of knowledge, skills and resources. The project had four phases, moving from knowledge-creation towards hands-on, practical models, methods and tools. Máté Tenke, former project manager and head of sustainability team at Pro Progressione share with us his experiences of the project:
“In the first phase, partners researched and developed training modules on “Ecological Reference Tools”, international benchmarks that are important to be familiar with when addressing sustainability challenges. These are the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the IPCC Reports. Although whether they are ambitious enough is debated by scholars and activists (see sources below[1]), these are the most influential international frameworks and publications that provide guidelines on how environmental issues should be addressed in the EU and globally.
The second phase was a training module on “Decarbonising Culture” delivered by The Shift Project, based on their famous 2021 report with the same title. The Shift Project is a think tank providing advice to the French government on environmental policy, their expertise spanning across all sectors of the economy, which brought a special added value in drawing synergies. The session on the carbon footprint of digital technologies stood out for me: It was striking how much emissions VR, streaming, cloud servers, or even instant messaging technologies can generate. Even individuals or organisations who pay great heed to eco-consciousness in other aspects of life, such as flying or meat consumption, might be unaware of the negative environmental impact of digitalisation. In fact, in a recent update to their sustainability plan, Creative Carbon Scotland recognised that digital technology is responsible for the vast majority of their carbon footprint. If even such a trailblazer on climate action has to rethink its strategy, many cultural organisations may face the same obstacles without realising it, since it is a relatively hard-to-measure carbon source due to the difficulty of acquiring reliable data from technology providers.
In the third phase, the project explored new models for the cultural sector, such as third places, fablabs and networks. What’s common among these three models is an element of community-building and lowering negative environmental impact by sharing resources and knowledge. If you’d like to find out what exactly each of these terms mean and how they might inspire the cultural sector with solutions to sustainability challenges, check out LeCAKE’s training modules on new models.
Finally, the last phase developed artistic skills for ecology, piloting new methods to address environmental issues and engage citizens in climate action through creativity. The artworks were showcased in the form of an innovative city tour during the final project event in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. A town historically dependent on coal mining, Gelsenkirchen faces many socio-economic challenges in its sustainability transition, however, residents responded to these conditions with many creative projects and culture-climate collaborations.
As I write this, the LeCAKE team is working on finalising project outputs and releasing concluding learnings and resources that can be widely used in the cultural sector. You will be able to access these shortly on the project’s website, however, what I would like to turn to now is the social, and network-building aspect of LeCAKE – exemplary of what a European cooperation project is for. Just as the EU was originally created to promote peace through stronger collaboration among members states, international cooperation projects are largely about building mutual understanding among citizens and organisations– besides the projects’ thematic focus.
LeCAKE had a real spill-over effect with many new projects springing up, which was to a large extent due to its in-depth engagement of young people. Under the title of “Young Ambassadors”, each partner involved youth from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds to represent their views of the ecological transition as a principle of intergenerational justice. Young people received real responsibility, the training modules are the result of their work to a significant extent, supported by partners. Young people did not only participate in local and online activities but also had the opportunity to attend project meetings in Italy, France, Greece and Germany, while the partnership also worked to create mini exchange programs inside LeCAKE. Building on other Erasmus programs such as the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs and the European Solidarity Corps, young people travelled to carry out collaborations abroad with local partners: Mar from Spain went to Italy, Marilou from France travelled to Portugal and Germany, Rosanna from Germany is now in residence in France, whereas Julie from France did an exchange in Greece.
As for me, I spent four wonderful months in Paris that served as the foundation of building one of the LeCAKE spin-offs. LeCAKE Fed, for Federation, will aim to bring together a more interdisciplinary cohort of partners, spanning from local authorities, educational institutions, NGOs, to cultural organisations. They will join forces to train citizens in international cooperation projects in an effort to democratize participation in climate action. Through participatory design, civilians will be empowered to harness the opportunities that the EU provides to implement their ideas for greening Europe. At the same time, building partnerships across different representatives of the public and third sectors will secure structural support, making sure that project outputs are embedded in key institutions that have a wide impact on society.
My work exchange in France also provided me with an opportunity to deepen my cooperation with the Paris team, including members of Le SAS, The Shift Project and Transplanisphere. In fact, another spin-off was a collaboration between Tim Schneider from Le SAS and Charles Ménard from The Shifters, titled Perturbatio. Perturbatio is a participatory digital artwork where kinetic cameras record the movements of individuals within a crowd. The movement is then translated into the disintegration of a digital image of nature. In simple terms, the more people move, the more the image disintegrates, drawing attention to the negative environmental impact of travel-related emissions.
Both in the form of meaningful personal connections and professional endeavours, the LeCAKE partnership and its young ambassadors keep benefitting from international cooperation, sowing the seeds of future projects. Be that a working group on systemic issues and degrowth, a performance based on walking trails in nature, or a workshop series on colonialism and climate change, LeCAKE carries on an on.
As a final remark, a special added value for me was my collaboration with my mentees from Romaversitas, an organisation supporting Roma youth in higher education. Quickly reversing the roles between mentor and mentee, I learnt so much from them about Roma culture and perspectives on climate justice and inclusion. As I write this, I am sitting on the train from Hungary to the Netherlands to attend an IETM conference, the world’s largest performing arts network. I will carry the learnings from my mentees and from LeCAKE with me as an advocate for a sustainable, just and socially inclusive society.”
[1] Criticism of the SDGs: Just a Fig Leaf? Interview of the Zeitgeister with Aram Ziai https://www.goethe.de/prj/zei/en/art/22548507.html
Decoupling Debunked: Evidence and Arguments against Green Growth as a Sole Strategy for Sustainability (European Environmental Bureau 2019)
https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
Greta Thundberg (ed): The Climate Book (2024)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/446610/the-climate-book-by-thunberg-greta/9780141999043
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge: Insights from Outside the Arts (IETM 2023 Report)
https://www.ietm.org/en/resources/reports/indigenous-ecological-knowledge-i-insights-from-outside-the-arts