Surprising, Caring, Imagining

Surprising, Caring, Imagining:
How creative practices stimulate eco-social change

How creative practices can stimulate action towards socially and ecologically sustainable futures? In this presentation prof. Mattelmäki will set the stage by shortly introducing her own pathway with creative practices, share some basics of a EU-fundied project called CreaTures (CreaTures – Creative Practices For Transformational Futures (creatures-eu.org), and then focus on the project’s main findings and results. Artists and designers, creative practitioners, address sustainability questions in multiple ways. In this context transformative potential requires creative understanding that goes beyond rational thinking, including and involving emotional and personal components in the transformative work. This in its turn supports creative thinking, imagination, brings hope and inspires stories that stimulate action.

Tuuli Mattelmäki is Associate Professor in Design at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland, and acts as the Head of Department of Design. She is expert in service design and co-design with a special interest in experimenting with and implementing creative design approaches for supporting change. Tuuli has published articles on empathic design and design’s role and impact in public sector. Her recent work focuses on transformative creative practices that are engaged with positive eco-social change in EU funded project CreaTures (creatures-eu.org).