BRUSSELS – 25th and 26th JANUARY 2010
This pan European event is a collaboration between TippingPoint, the British Council, the European Commission, the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Kaaitheatre Theater in Brussels. A major European gathering of individuals from across the cultural sector, including artists from all art forms, together with a broad range of scientists involved in the world of climate science will take place, symbolically, at the heart of the European institutions, in the building of the EESC in the centre of Brussels. A number of key climate change policy makers will also take part.

TippingPoint aims to ‘harness the power of the imagination to help stabilise the climate’. We offer a range of activities centred on exposing creative artists to the enormous challenges of climate change; at the heart of this lies a series of meetings involving very high quality, intense dialogue between artists, scientists and others close to the heart of the issue. These encounters provide a chance to explore the broader cultural challenges precipitated by climate change.

Tipping Point or how to change the mentality of the world population? : conference report by Eva Peeters on the BAM-website ‘Kunst en Ecologie’

Appreciation of the cultural implications, and exploration of the role that artists can play in understanding, interpreting, communicating and investigating the subject is critical to our thinking. TippingPoint’s role is to be a catalyst in facilitating this debate, and to find new ways of increasing the level of engagement of artists in this complex issue. In addition TippingPoint can make a significant contribution to how artists can be a critical player in the societal shifts in thinking and behaviour that are essential to combating the effects, current and future, of climate change. The arts have consistently played a role in society in helping thinking shift from reflection to action.

TippingPoint is network-based organisation aiming to be a year round ‘connector’ of the arts and climate science worlds whilst offering critical and strategic points of engagement through one off events, conferences and public debates. In addition TippingPoint is poised to harness the responsibility and will of the wider cultural sector to explore and make informed commitments to mitigate ongoing carbon emission and adapt to the current effects of climate change.