Curating degrowth engagement through art-science-activism

This paper discusses the value of curated art-science-activism collaborations that explore local to global environmental limits from a social and behaviour change perspective.This socially engaged ethos uses art as verb as a practise to generate participatory and collaborative engagement in communities.It seeks to shift social norms by fostering conscious immersion and intimate connection to nature through participatory and collaborative processes delivered in partnership with creative, scientific and ecological organisations.The approach sets the tone for contemplating human impact and promoting desirable pro environmental behaviours through creative perspectives, curative actions, scientific information and decision-making strategies.This connects with the Degrowth agenda that seeks the development of alternative futures that provide for human and non-human wellbeing within planetary boundaries.Although art and creativity can generate empathetic personal connection, a shift in social norms arises from engaging citizens pragmatically through collective processes of deeper reflection and active engagement and a strategy for fundamental change that is multi-disciplinary and towards the collective good.Our economic system is incompatible with life on this planet.(Hickel, 2020) Abrupt environmental change (biodiversity loss, climate change, deforestation, ocean acidification) derives from an unjust economic system based on the premise of infinite growth using finite physical resources.These contemporary, catastrophic environmental changes are intimately linked to the huge environmental transformations created globally during modern colonialism , which established unequal power structures between humans that persist to this day (Moore, 2015).In Working for the few, OXFAM (2014) reported that the combined wealth of the world's richest 85 people was equivalent to that owned by 3.5 billion of the poorest people.Similarly, OXFAM's latest disparity report,