Arts and culture and creativity - both material and immaterial heritage, skills and competences - are resources that should be protected and promoted. They not only contribute to the realisation of the SDGs, but also make them possible to a special degree. Only culturally sensitive, creative, unconventional approaches to solutions ensure the success of measures to achieve the SDGS.
Why does art not appear explicitly in the SDGS? But purely as a cross-cutting issue?
Wholly agree with the sentiment of the question. But I think the concern should be much broader than the art cultural/heritage dimension. Artistic endeavour transcends any particular craft, and it is this respect the absence of any artistic approach to the realisation SDGs is missing, I believe, THE single most important lever for, as you say, making “them possible to a special degree”.
Dear Dr. Atkinson!
Thank you very much for your prompt reply. You speak from my soul. I formulated the question far too carefully. I am of course talking about "artistic education" which should cover and infuse all areas of life - in the sense of the promoter of "social sculpture" Joseph Beuys: ("Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler").
Rolf Laven, I’m not overly familiar with Beuys, but fully agree with you. starting this week I am running a new undergraduate module on business, creativity and opportunism for the workplace, designed around a theory of artistic work I developed in my PhD .
Rolf, I could not agree more. artistic thinking, not only as cultural heritage, should be part of our DNA when solving problems. not only in SDGs and climate change, but also intimes of war (see https://www.inplaceofwar.net/; https://theaterofwar.com/).
see also https://ageofartists.org/about-us/ and and older publication we did (see attached file).