Date : Sep 26, 2025

Time : 12:00 - 14:00 PM

Roundtable Statement
This roundtable aims to explore the role of cultural institutions not only as generators of research but also as incubators capable of welcoming and mediating it. Their potential lies in the ability to connect different disciplinary fields and concerns, reducing the distances between otherwise isolated sectors.

One of the fundamental levers of this potential lies in the very nature of the research that institutions can activate: research oriented by an agenda rather than bound to a rigid method, and for this reason intrinsically heterogeneous, flexible, and interdisciplinary. Starting from these considerations, the roundtable intends to reflect on possible sustainable models of cultural institutions, imagining them as spaces of critical thinking and experimentation, whose research can capture the interest of different stakeholders: territories, communities, businesses, universities, and beyond.

Is it possible to imagine such a future for cultural institutions? If so, how can both their economic and ecological feasibility be guaranteed? Under what conditions can they become both an agora for conceiving new ideas and effective disseminators of them? And, last but not least: what can ensure that cultural institutions remain relevant in the face of climate catastrophe?

Main questions for discussion

1. What sustainable models of cultural institutions can we imagine—spaces of critical thinking and experimentation whose research is able to engage different stakeholders such as territories, communities, businesses, and universities?
2. How can research-driven cultural institutions remain economically and ecologically sustainable?
3. What strategies can ensure that cultural institutions stay relevant and resilient in the face of the climate crisis?

Date : Sep 26, 2025

Time : 14:45 - 16:45 PM

Abstract
The territory is a social artifact constructed through the relationships between land and the community that inhabits it. Contemporary challenges compel us to reflect on key territorial practices that can serve as guiding principles for change and for building new forms of collaboration, fostering social, environmental, economic, and cultural sustainability. In this context, culture can be regarded as the fourth dimension of sustainability, essential for the development of a collective consciousness capable of forging networks of solidaristic, responsible, multidisciplinary, and innovative relationships. These networks, as interpreters of the values and heritage of territories, have the potential to (re)generate ecosystemic communities that lead to new imaginaries and forms of culture.

Art, in all its expressions and as an integral part of culture, can serve as an extraordinary instrument for reflection and the implementation of critical thinking, thereby promoting change. Through its creative and design processes, art can strengthen social cohesion and activate new sustainable communities by building resilient relationships with the territories they inhabit.

Building on this perspective, the working group aims to explore the development of sustainable collaborative systems involving institutions, businesses, public entities, communities, researchers, artists, and professionals, with culture serving as the guiding thread. An interdisciplinary reflection is proposed to examine how to construct networks capable of fostering innovation, questioning organizational, governance, and co-design models, while also identifying the role of cultural institutions and their sustainability within these processes.

Main questions for discussion

1. What role do cultural institutions play in enabling territorial collaborations that foster sustainable social, environmental, economic, and cultural development?
2. What are the principal barriers currently hindering the formation, development, and functioning of collaborative communities?
3. What are the advantages of a local approach stimulated by a global vision for building culturally rooted projects in territorial contexts?

Date : Sep 26, 2025

Time : 17:00- 19:00 PM

Abstract
When we ask about the role of education in the sustainability of cultural institutions, we are asking several questions at once, each implying a different vision of what education is and what it is for. While many learning institutions provide sustainability training and certification, this roundtable is dedicated to research, arts, and cultural institutions that cultivate—explicitly or implicitly—an ecological conscience, a critical outlook, and a creativity that sustains “a relationship with a network of life.”

This discussion is set to look in two directions: how to sustain the institution and ensure its future? And how can the institution, as a social agent, teach and promote values, visions, and designs for sustainability itself? How is institutional reproducibility different from institutional sustainability? Do measures for sustainable development risk creating new dependencies that leave the institution vulnerable? Finally, we must also ask: sustainability of what, for whom, and why? What artistic interventions, spatial designs, and forms of fundamental research can foster resilience and open new futures for humanity?

Main questions for discussion

1. When we think about formal educational institutions such as universities, what changes are needed to prepare for today’s challenges, and in what ways should they evolve?
2. Museums and universities have historically enjoyed a seemingly unshakable public trust—part of a political ecology we may have taken for granted. How do we respond to the new atmosphere of lies, “post-truths,” and fake news, and its threat to trust and to truth itself? Does it affect how you communicate, who supports you, and with whom you collaborate?
3. We entered the technological revolution—the internet’s promise of inclusion, equal access, and social media as a tool for connection and solidarity—with wide eyes. Yet modernity and its Enlightenment ideals—Progress, Equality, Democracy, Individualism—have failed us, leaving the planet itself endangered. How can culture, design, and research intervene to create alternative futures?

Date : Sep 27, 2025

Time : 9:45 - 11:45 AM

Abstract
The roundtable will examine how cultural institutions can act as key drivers of the transition towards sustainable models, moving beyond linear practices to embrace circular approaches. The discussion will highlight innovative strategies that combine sustainability, inclusion, and regeneration, connecting knowledge, communities, and networks from a systemic perspective. The debate will adopt a multidisciplinary approach and will also reflect on how to measure these dynamics and on the role of international policies.

Main questions for discussion

1. What does circularity mean for cultural organizations today?
2. What are the main challenges cultural institutions face in this process?
3. What role do ecosystems play, and why are they important for cultural sustainability?

Date : Sep 27, 2025

Time : 15:00 - 17:00 PM

Abstract
Cultural institutions are often caught in a paradox: expected to generate social value while depending on fragile, short-term economic resources. Rethinking their sustainability requires moving beyond linear funding models toward regenerative and symbiotic economies that benefit not only the institutions themselves but also workers, communities, and the environment. Ethical fundraising, mutualism, cooperative practices, and impact-driven investment all point toward new frameworks where cultural production and sustainability are inseparable.

This roundtable will explore how institutions can act as laboratories for alternative economies—spaces where redistribution, circular value chains, and long-term stewardship replace extractive logics. By reimagining resources not as finite assets but as flows that can be shared, regenerated, and multiplied, cultural institutions can become active players in shaping a fairer and more resilient future. The challenge is not just financial viability, but aligning economic practices with ecological and social responsibility, ensuring culture remains a catalyst for systemic change.

At stake is the very capacity of cultural institutions to embody the values they promote: inclusion, equity, and sustainability. Can they create new forms of solidarity economies that balance global pressures with local needs? Can they cultivate systems of accountability that value care, transparency, and reciprocity as much as growth? By drawing on diverse practices—from community-supported models to sustainability reporting—this conversation seeks to imagine economies not as constraints but as opportunities to build stronger ties between culture, society, and the planet.

Main questions for discussion

• How can cultural institutions build sustainable funding models that don't compromise their independence? What does sustainability mean in the context of the economy?
• What are some imaginary and existing economic models that cultural institutions are practicing now or working towards that reimagine current economic models? How can institutions contribute to collective, symbiotic economies that balance sustainability with fairness for workers and communities?
• Given the resources of most cultural institutions, how can they integrate practices—such as regenerative finance, or cooperative structures—that translate values into durable economic practices?

Date : Sep 27, 2025

Time : 12:00 - 14:00 PM

Abstract
Digital technology has become an integral component of cultural ecosystems—serving not only as a medium for dissemination and creation but also as infrastructure that reshapes cultural production, management, and experience. This roundtable, themed “Digital Technologies: Tools, Languages, and Infrastructure for Cultural Sustainability,” brings together international curators, artists, researchers, and technology experts to explore how digital technologies empower sustainable operations in cultural institutions while critically examining their environmental and social costs.

The discussion will unfold across multiple dimensions: how digital tools enhance accessibility, efficiency (e.g., data-driven curation), and transparency (e.g., blockchain for art provenance); how immersive technologies and “dematerialized” practices reduce the ecological footprint of cultural production; and how infrastructures like open-source platforms and low-carbon computing balance innovation with responsibility.

Amid accelerating technological advancements, this forum asks: Can we cultivate an inclusive and regenerative digital cultural ecosystem? How might interdisciplinary collaboration embed environmental justice and social equity into the foundational logic of technological design? These conversations aim to provide critical guidance for the future of cultural institutions.

Main questions for discussion

1. How can digital technologies help tackle the paradox of cultural sustainability? For example, through tools like blockchain for art provenance, data-driven curation, or low-carbon computing. What real changes have you seen in practice, and what challenges still remain?
2. Immersive and digital practices may reduce physical waste, but they also create hidden costs—such as server energy use or rapid hardware turnover. In your work, how can we balance the push for innovative digital projects with the need for real environmental responsibility?
3. What kinds of collaborations are most effective to ensure that new technologies embed values like social equity and environmental justice? What are strong examples of cooperation between art institutions, technology teams, researchers, or even end users?

Date : Sep 26, 2025

Time : 19:15 - 21:15 PM

Abstract
Cultural heritage is often imagined as something fixed: artifacts behind glass, recipes preserved unchanged, stories repeated word for word. Yet around the world, memory is alive—adapted, reinterpreted, and reborn every day through craft, food, performance, and storytelling. In a time of ecological crisis and social change, this living heritage is not just about preservation; it is a resource for resilience, creativity, and sustainable futures.

Join MOFAD during Climate Week for a multidisciplinary panel that explores what it means to treat heritage as a catalyst rather than a relic. How can culinary traditions, textiles, music, architecture, and oral histories be reimagined to strengthen local economies, address climate challenges, and spark civic engagement? How can museums and cultural institutions move beyond collecting static objects to supporting dynamic, community-led practices? And how can memory itself evolve from an archive of the past into a tool for imagining the future?

Bringing together artists, architects, chefs, scholars, and cultural organizers, the conversation will highlight concrete examples—from reviving indigenous foodways and regenerative craft practices to creating digital storytelling platforms and participatory exhibitions. Together, we will ask: What is the potential of tangible and intangible heritage to inspire new meanings and more sustainable ways of living? And how can institutions help steward—not fossilize—these evolving traditions?

Join us on Governor’s Island during Climate Week for a conversation that celebrates memory not as something we inherit unchanged, but as something we shape, share, and transform.

Main questions for discussion

1. Storytelling, memory, and sustainability
   How can museums, cultural institutions, and artistic practices use storytelling to transform memory into a living resource that supports sustainability, community resilience, and the revitalization of traditional knowledge (crafts, foodways, agricultural practices)—while adapting them to contemporary challenges without losing their essence?
2. Museums as dynamic and participatory spaces
   How can museums move from being static collectors of objects to becoming incubators of living and sustainable practices (e.g., test kitchens, seed libraries, maker spaces), sharing authority with communities and integrating marginalized or diasporic stories into the cultural narrative?
3. Art, architecture, and new forms of heritage
   How can artists and architects, through their projects and collaborations with museums or communities, reinterpret cultural traditions and identities in contemporary ways—creating participatory experiences that weave together memory, innovation, and environmental awareness?

Date : Sep 28, 2025

Time : 12:00 - 14:00 PM

Abstract
Where do we draw the boundaries of the human? And those of the individual? Of the collective? How do we construct the “we” to which we feel we belong: who is allowed to enter, and who decides who is excluded?

In these choices lies the possibility of a sustainable future: in deciding who can be protected and who is deemed expendable, and in imagining what forms—human and non-human—the future may take. Through dialogue among artists and researchers, curators, activists, designers, anthropologists, and agronomists, this roundtable seeks to explore how non-human perspectives can be heard, co-designed, and included within an intrinsically sustainable “we.” What alliances can be built among people, places, environments, and other living entities? What role can art and culture play in shaping the evolutionary symbiosis between institutions and multispecies communities?

The selected participants bring together a wide range of geographies, practices, and forms of knowledge—from theoretical research to applied design, from territorial activation to artistic experimentation—with a shared focus on the communal and relational dimensions of human and more-than-human sustainability. Their trajectories compose a plural landscape where engaging with the territory becomes a form of artistic and poetic imagination, while artistic, curatorial, or research practices become practical tools for building pathways in the world.

Starting from the emergency condition we live in—where long-term strategies no longer seem viable—could the development of more-than-human tactics and alliances guide us toward a habitable world? By crossing the realms of the living without hierarchies, this roundtable seeks to consider margins and residues, vulnerabilities and co-existences, as generative places for new forms of care, alliance, and transformation.

Main questions for discussion

1. We live in an emergency on many fronts, with the climate crisis confronting us most directly with questions of sustainability and our relationship to the non-human, often leading to a sense of paralysis. If long-term strategies are no longer available, what tactics or alliances can we imagine and adopt, as individuals and as institutions?
2. As cultural workers, however much our practices may gesture toward a political horizon, our first level of impact lies in the realm of imagination, narrative, and culture. To what extent does this work shape our relationship with the non-human and that of the audiences we engage with? How does it help redefine the boundary of who—and what—we consider expendable?
3. Do the practices we develop—whether artistic, curatorial, or research-based—have the power to transform the spaces in which they are situated, at either the institutional or individual level? In what ways do they generate concrete forms of multispecies relation and care?