On July 1-3, I attended a meeting on Wasan Island (Muskoka Lake, ON) hosted by the Breuninger Foundation, Musagetes, and the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation (see graphic recording posted on July 9th). As a follow to this meeting, a paper was written on the contribution of art and culture to urban resilience and livability: The Art of Resilience, The Resilience of Art.

Click here to read the paper.

If you want to learn more about this initiative, please feel free to join the Cities for People network online: http://cocreating.citiesforpeople.ca

Executive summary:

We live at a time when humanity, and urban dwellers especially, are being called upon to forestall and recover from disruptions to built, social, and natural systems. The capacity of people and communities to creatively adapt, face stresses cooperatively, to formulate just and effective responses, and, as needed, to moderate and/or reshape behaviour in order to maintain an effective social order, is more commonly referred to as resilience. The premise of this paper is that in addition to the necessary work of fortifying physical infrastructure and upgrading emergency response procedures, planners, policy makers, social innovators, and investors seeking to adapt our environmental, social, and economic systems must include culture as an essential fourth dimension of resilience and livability. This paper refers to “culture” both in the universal sense, which derives from the aggregated patterns of daily life, commerce, and governance, and to “arts-based culture” where artists, architects, and designers shape public perception and experience. The point is that these two are intertwined, and that to an extent perhaps not fully appreciated or applied, the latter influences the former. This paper is addressed to people both inside and around the arts and cultural sector, and describes in broad terms the contribution of art and culture to urban resilience and livability. It introduces several principles by which this work might be guided and strengthened, and outlines areas where culture’s relationship to resilience creates openings for art and artists to enhance community vibrancy and civic engagement, while sparking the imagination and pursuit of desirable options to the status quo. It concludes with a call to build a global culture of resilience.