EU - Forest Encounters - Forest Encounters: Building New Narratives for our Greener Future

Forest is one of our key contemporary environments. Identifying the 1-Lack of collaboration among culture and natural sciences on the forest topic; 2-Lack of wider cultural (aesthetic, symbolic) meanings of the forest and sustainability compared to widespread economic ones; 3-Lack of interest in the forest among artists; 4-Need for a novel post-anthropocene ecological cultures, the project proposes to see the forest through artistic and discursive practices. The objectives are: 1-Establish transnational collaboration and mobility of artists and other professionals, who work on the topic of forest; 2-Promote artistic research for producing new meanings of forest as the key environment for the fight against climate change; 3-Foster cross-disciplinary exchange and knowledge production to increase artists’ interest in the forest topic; 4-Use the project artistic research findings for contributing to the post-anthropocene ecological culture. Main activities: artistic research, multidisciplinary transborder collaboration on event and publication production, art creation, know-how exchange. Their results include 3 artistic research projects, 1 final exhibition, 6 podcasts and 6 videos, 1 public panel, 1 web platformrepository, 1 large symposium, 4 workshops with art professionals and students, 3 fanzine publications, 1 glossary e-publication, and 1 book. Their impact is to form: 1-new imaginaries and narratives about the importance of forest, 2- new cross-disciplinary forest-focused network, 3- new model for precepting sustainability through artistic eye; 4-improved capacities of the culture sector for contributing to wider sustainability debates. Target groups benefiting from such impact are artists and art professionals, foresters, researchers of forest from different disciplines, grass-root initiatives and activists for climate and social justice; students and youth, art-interested audiences. Dissemination target groups include, also media & politicians.