EMPACT Project: Landmark Workshop “Empathy for Nature and Non-human Beings” - Limassol, 27-29 January 2023

EMPACT Project: Landmark Workshop “Empathy for Nature and Non-human Beings”

Limassol, 27-29 January 2023

The Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Fine Arts, announces the next edition of the Workshop/Seminar Series “The Art of Thinking Like a Mountain”: Empathy for nature and non-human beings.

This landmark seminar aims to help artists and art and culture professionals to become empathetic and resilient beings and to assist in the incorporation of the idea of sustainability in their works. The key objectives are:

• To demonstrate how empathy as an abstract concept can be applied in the arts so that people are motivated to care for non-humans and for the environment.
• To discuss the role of empathy in the development of a sustainable lifestyle.
• Furthermore, artists specialized in matters of sustainability, philosophers and social scientists will engage in a dialogue, in order to explore the role of empathy in the development of a sustainable lifestyle.

“The Art of Thinking Like a Mountain” seminar will carry out a holistic, well-designed series of activities, which will provide the artists and cultural organizations with the knowledge, skills and tools to face the complicated scientific and social conflicts caused by climate change.

NATFA, as a partner in the EMPACT consortium, plans to organise a three-day workshop in Bulgaria in April 2023 on the same theme as the seminar in Limassol, following up on an agreed methodology and content curricula under the requirements of EMPACT project.

EMPACT project (2022-2024) adopts an innovative approach by addressing the role of empathy in advocating for the climate crisis at the speed needed through artistic cooperation and the creation of novel art projects, and suggests that exploring the empathy-sustainability relationship through the arts can bring significant advances to the promotion of sustainability actions and pro-environmental behaviours.

The project is co-financed by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union under the Grant Agreement No: 101055903 – EMPACT – CREA-CULT-2021-COOP-2