REGIONAL

PROPOSAL

MINISTERIAL REGIONAL COMMUNITY FORUM

GREATER BRISBANE REGION
THE RIDGE HOTEL, ACACIA RIDGE – 3 DECEMBER 2007

CREATIVITY AND SCIENCE PARTNERSHIPS

Summary and Key Requests

The purpose of this report is to identify opportunities for creativity and science partnerships.
It particularly seeks to consider the potential benefits of art-science or art-industry
collaboration through the state government’s Climate Change agenda, specifically through
the Climate Change Centre of Excellence. There is further potential for extended
collaborations with ‘creatives’ in research, innovation and industry.

Background
The Greater Brisbane Ministerial Regional Community Forum presented a report
addressing the government’s strategy to address climate change in Forum 29. The
Greater Brisbane Forum was responding to the state government’s earlier presentations
about climate change. This Report seeks to extend the Forum’s commentary by
presenting opportunities for and potential benefits of creativity and science partnerships
through the climate change agenda. There are several examples of successful creativity
and science partnerships operating globally. Some provide opportunities for artists to draw
on research environments to produce artworks that illuminate or frame specific problems
and ideas, while others actively involve artists in their research programs as part of a
collaborative interdisciplinary team. In Australia, the Australia Council’s Synapse program,
administered by the Australian Network for Art and Technology, organises residencies for
artists in research environments nationally and internationally. For the first time in 2007, a
Synapse residency was awarded to a Queensland artist working in a Queensland based
research institute. Another example is the Spanish organisation, Disonancias
(dissonances) that facilitates joint research projects between artists and Research and
Development units either in laboratories or private companies.

The state government’s science engagement strategies and research and development
priorities, as noted by the Department of Tourism, Regional Development and Industry, do
not include recognition of art-science or engagement of creatives in research, innovation
and industry development. As the government’s commitment to the arts is whole-of-
government and regarded as integral to Smart State Strategy, the arts sector identifies that
there is a need to ensure those climate change initiatives, particularly in terms of research
and cultural change, are supported by an integrated approach involving creativity and
creatives. The Smart State Strategy emphasises a knowledge economy, sustainable
development and innovation. While gaining credibility and importance in research,
innovation and industry globally, art-science as a potential interdisciplinary and post-
academic approach to innovative problem-solving and new knowledge creation, remains
marginalised in Australia, particularly in Queensland.

In 2006 to 2007, Arts Queensland developed and delivered its Arts Industry Sector
Development Plan 2007 to 2009. This Plan includes provision for one art-science/art-

GREATER BRISBANE REGIONAL PROPOSAL

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industry residency for all of Queensland. This residency has yet to be formalised and
announced. Individual artists exploring art-science or seeking creative opportunities in
research, including lab-based collaboration, can and do apply for Arts Queenslands funds
under the new media arts project funding stream as individuals. More extensive art-science
programs are offered nationally and in other states and funding in Queensland is currently
not at the same level. This presents a gap for capturing art-science innovative research.
Through an initiative of the Victorian government, for example, an artist is working with
NanoVic (Nanotechnology Victoria) to design wearable objects with therapeutic
applications.

Other initiatives from the state government include a Design Centre, which will develop a
focus on environmental sustainability and environmental design.

For several years, the Australia Council has supported the Synapse program, which has
resulted in a diverse range of projects across robotics, nanotechnology, environment,
botany, computing, bio-technology, defence and other fields. Host organisations have
included CSIRO, university research centres, collaborative research centres and defence
science and technology organisations. These programs have included artists and creatives
from a range of disciplines – visual art, craft, media art, sound art and performing arts. The
Australia Council also offers a specified interdisciplinary program through its Inter-Arts
program, enabling artists to collaborate with scientists over several years.

These residencies and collaborations share the goal of opening dialogue between creatives
and scientists and encouraging the generation of unexpected outcomes and new modes of
investigation. The results have also seen results that have had a positive impact on public
programs and citizen science development. In terms of climate change, as was recently
stated in the prestigious art-science journal, Leonardo,

Weather and climate are multidimensional phenomena that include the combined
contributions of nature, culture, history and geography, but also the imaginary and the
symbolic. Art could help us to question our perceptions and relationships to weather,
climate and their changes.

Terry Cutler, formerly Chair of the New Media Arts Board and currently Chair of the
Australian Centre for Interaction Design (CRC) and member of the Board of the CSIRO,
says:

This exploration of new frontiers is an important undertaking when one lives in a global
knowledge economy. This is a political economy in which intellectual capital and human
skills are the natural resources for wealth creation and our quality of life. Art and science
collaborations enlarge and extend the value of our investment in research and
development which builds the national stock of intellectual capital.

Internationally, there are several important programs, such as Disonancias, that enable
creatives and scientists to collaborate. Art and creativity is about more than creating works
that reflect our reality, bring us joy or ease our pain, they are about processes that change
the way we think, the way we are and the way we sense – ultimately the way we live. It is
about creating and visioning new scripts and stories for our present and future. Science
cannot do this on its own and science alone cannot preside over the production of new
knowledge, wisdom or innovation. Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth deploys a
mode of creative storytelling that is engaging and compelling and that has shifted
complacency about climate change.

Given the whole-of-government approach to culture, it is worthwhile for the state

government, through its science and research organisations, to be investing in and
pioneering new forms of creative expression and thinking. The Queensland Climate Change
Centre of Excellence is ideally placed to strategically benefit from creativity and science
partnerships.

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Opportunities the forum is interested in examining: The Greater Brisbane Region
forum is interested in undertaking further investigation and consultation across all of the
following opportunities for creativity and science partnerships and collaboration.

New solutions: Climate Smart 2050 includes provision for a Climate Change Centre of
Excellence as well as emphasises research into urban form and design. These initiatives
are ideally placed to link with Queensland’s proposed centre of design as well as provide
opportunities for artists and other creatives to collaborate. The Digital Content Industry
Action Agenda (DCITA) states that digital content – visualisation, storytelling and creativity –
has an economic multiplier effect across all industries including mining. There is clearly an
economic argument for embedding artists and creatives in industry so as to realise some of
those potential economic outcomes.

Further, as CSIRO scientists Brian Walker and David Salt argue in their book, Resilience
Thinking, “increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems,
and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The
response from most quarters has been for ‘more of the same’ that created the situation in
the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency.” Walker and Salt
argue that many current environmental initiatives are focused on efficiency or optimisation
rather than a more balanced or resilient approach. There are limited specialist education
opportunities for interdisciplinary creative collaboration. For example, attention of clean coal
is an efficiency or optimisation approach, not a resilience approach. As a comparatively
small field amenable to industry and scientific innovation, art-science and media arts
practitioners have had some success in participating in cross-sector collaboration and
exploring new platforms.

New visions and approaches: The work undertaken in art-science collaboration stretches
'beyond' the content focus and creative business development priority of creative industries
(Tourism, Regional Development & Industry portfolio) and the fine arts and community arts
focus of traditional arts funding and policy bodies (Arts Queensland). It involves an
integrative approach to collaboration across diverse disciplines that is designed to enhance
industry and innovation outcomes as well as can involve communities through ‘citizen
science’ projects and programs.

As a state that is interested in the potential for knowledge rich approaches to research and
innovation, Queensland should use all its intellectual and creative capital to avert the
environmental crisis we are now facing and develop resilience approaches.

New knowledge: Collaboration between the arts and sciences can and does create new
knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach
creativity, exploration and discovery in different ways and from different perspectives; when
working together they merge complex ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the
world around us. For example the ‘cradle to cradle’ protocol was developed through a
collaboration between an architect and a chemist. Cradle to Cradle, developed by American
architect William McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart, argues for the
transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design.
New understanding of new materials and creativity: Artists work in ways that explore and
develop the use and application of emerging technologies and new materials. Approaches
such as ‘superuse’ are emerging. While the environmental impacts of some of these
materials, such as nanotechnology, remain unknown, once understood, artists and
designers have a role to play understanding the use and application of these technologies
and materials, particularly in the built environment. Peak oil is only one aspect of resource
depletion – other scientists are observing a peak minerals phenomenon. Artists are well
rehearsed in ideas and practices associated with ‘material thinking’.

Issues

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The following issues are:

• a current lack of opportunities for artists to participate in interdisciplinary research in

techno-scientific fields.

• a need to develop a state wide strategy for creatives-in-industry projects.

Community Interest and Consultation

Greater Brisbane Region forum members are interested in pursuing the allocation of
resources through the Climate Change Centre of Excellence to the inclusion of
appropriately resourced cultural collaboration and programming including an artist-in-
residence or creative-in-residence program through which artists and creatives can
participate in interdisciplinary research.

Outcomes Sought
1. The proposal emerging from this report is that the Queensland government allocate
resources through the Climate Change Centre of Excellence to the inclusion of
appropriately resourced cultural programming including an artist-in-residence
program through which artists can participate in interdisciplinary research.
2. There are many state government funded research centres throughout Queensland,
presenting scope to develop a statewide strategy for creatives-in-industry or
creatives-in-research projects and programs and to pursue this with the Departments
of Climate Change and Innovation and Tourism, Regional Development and Industry
3. The following networks and organisations will be consulted to further work up this
proposal;
 Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence
 Australian Network for Art and Technology
 Australian Centre for Interaction Design
 Art-science practitioners
 Environmental organisations

References

Documents
Arts Queensland Arts Industry Sector Development Plan, Arts Queensland, Queensland Government
Brian Walker & David Salt, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World, CSIRO Publications
Creativity is Big Business, Tourism, Regional Development & Industry,
http://www.sd.qld.gov.au/dsdweb/v3/guis/templates/content/gui_cue_cntnhtml.cfm?id=34220
Digital Content Industry Action Agenda, Department of Communication, Information Technology and Arts, Federal Government
‘Going Where No Man Has Gone’, The Australian, 7 September 2007,
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22374648-16947,00.html
Leonardo Journal, http://www.leonardo.info
William McDonough & Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things. Northpoint Press. 2002

Organisations
The Australia Council, http://www.anat.org.au
The Australian Network for Art and Technology, http://www.anat.org.au

This document has been endorsed by Cathy Taylor, Regional Executive Director, Greater Brisbane Region, Department of
Communities on 12/11/07.