about

In 2020, during the course of a few weeks, our world changed as we knew it. Suddenly, we were forced to make small and large-scale decisions that impacted our private and public lives. This global crisis is not only a health and economic crisis: it is a crisis of care. A crisis in how we allocate and take responsibility for others, for ourselves and for all living and non-living entities in the world. Driven by the uncertainties that this crisis brings, there is an urgent need for innovative approaches to care. Here, care is both a relational and a political endeavor. Relational, as it speaks to our most fundamental way of being in the world: we exist by our precarious being with others in social groups. We also exist because we are precarious beings itself: our bodies are vulnerable and frail. We exist in this togetherness because of this common vulnerability and precarity. Here, in this project, care is also political, as it addresses asymmetries in power and the often-unequal divisions of responsibility. Who should care for whom and how is laden with challenge and conflict: care shows that we need to negotiate these responsibilities in the context of our homes, as families, and in organizations, as well as in governmental realms.

To find new pathways, the project aims at collecting, sharing, and learning from interdisciplinary projects from two perspectives: creative research and care ethics. More specifically these will be discussed in terms of impact in society through social responsibility, creativity, and innovation coming from practices of care for the environment, society, heritage and art. The exchange in the network will aim at establishing a new post-disciplinary context for Care Ethics, Theory and Creative Research.