U Change

Sustainability Art Laboratory “SusArtLab@ATD”

The SDGs offer a comprehensive policy formulation for global and complex problems, but remain inaccessible to many. With our project we give space to the question: to what extent can Phyisical Theatre be used to thematise the SDGs and motivate people to take active action? With our “SusArtLab@ATD” we want to give students the opportunity to become creative mediators of sustainability and promoters of Education for Sustainable Development. In our workshop, small performances and seeds of student projects are created and consolidated with guidance. A network of various actors integrates the results of our creative experiments into a broader social context and offers professional perspectives.

From autumn 2022 to February 2023, SusArtLab@ATD enabled the development of six theatre performances. Here is a description of them.

SDG	Title Artist	Description
15	Back to the Roots \| Elio Staub	I sketched a workshop program for adolescents. The plan is to regularly work with students over a longer time period on the relationship to nature and forest. There will be a theatrical presentation on the material.
12	Vases for flowers \| Nikoline Ryde	Theatrical sketch with a research on material: A girl feels a bit alone in her room, she decides to buy a flower to fill the space, this leads to a long circle of consumption, but then she realises she doesn’t need stuff.
14	Oceanet \| Bruno Padilla	Dance and circus performance focused on the impact caused by submarine cables installed in the oceans.
14	Fishes deserve to fuck! \| Fanny Déglise e Mathi Le Coultre	Theatrical performance: During the campaign of a firm that sells tuna cans, some unexpected events put into light the hypocrisy of the brand. The business people are forced to see the reality they created for the fishes: a world where they can’t reproduce because they die first. But the humans get trapped in their own game.
14	Depth \| Rosalie Völlmin	A song about the underwater world. Guitar and vocals.
4	I bambini di oggi, I cittadini di domani \| Lena Defresne	Workshop format for children in the mode of a summer-camp: Che direzione sta prendendo l’istruzione oggi? Chi sta guidando questo cambiamento? Bambini, genitori, insegnanti, politici…
2	Overunder does \| Candice Bogousslavsky	Photo project, capturing images that are not obviously telling you what to think, but to guide the audience into a travel of thoughts. There is such an enormous unbalance in this situation of ours, in witch we are living in, an unbalance that inspires the artist. The black and white work is a king of work that is intemporel. “Overunder does” puts the benefit of the doubt about an under or an over dose (of food) in every picture.
5	Can we please talk about it? \| Amelie Ruegsegger	Theater workshop with highschool students: Theater has a great potential as we are confronted with our own sterotypes and notions. The aim of the workshop is not only to play together and have a good time but also to create a space where we can discuss about role models and gendered stereotypes, based on the experiences we have made in this workshop.