• art-systems •

Generative Partners brings a systems approach to innovative arts programming that addresses the needs of green builders, businesses and nonprofits. We see art as a tool that can support collaboration, efficient resource flow and ecological thinking throughout a building or region. We believe art and the creative process can engage people and help address old problems in new and innovative ways.

Artists have been exploring ecological and environmental issues in their work since the 1960's. In recent years, the field of eco-art has grown dramatically into a global cultural movement that engages communities and invites collaboration with scientists, engineers and policy planners. Artworks that monitor and highlight municipal energy use, control erosion and clean up toxic mine drainage are transforming the role of art and artists in society.

How can art contribute to sustainability? Any pre-industrial culture that has lived in the same place for over a thousand years has what we think of as art, deeply integrated into everything from economics, public policy, water management, agriculture to the built environment. Beauty, metaphor and systems thinking, the sense that we are all interconnected with the Earth and its many and diverse inhabitants, are an integral part of everyday life.

Sustainable practices are perpetuated because they are beautiful and have meaning, not simply because they make sense on paper or fix a problem in a purely physical context. Quite simply: sustainable human systems need art in order to work.

• our process •

Generative Partners offers a Five Phase consulting process to help bring art-systems into place for truly sustainable solutions. Please contact us for a complementary presentation and an opportunity to explore how this approach can support your work and projects.

phase I: people and places
Meet with client to determine scale and scope of interest and identify potential project locations.

phase II: site visit/research
Generative Partners will visit potential project locations for evaluation and site research.

phase III: review of possibilities
Meeting with key stakeholders, determination of initial scope, deliverables and project timelines.

phase IV: project proposal
Presentation of art-systems proposals and objectives, selection of artist-led initiatives.

phase V: implementation
Supporting client implementation of art-systems plan, coalition building and organizational strengthening.