The Art of Resilience,

The Resilience of Art

A paper on the
contribution of art
and culture to urban
resilience and livability
 The Art of Resilience, The Resilience of Art

Note to the Reader

This paper is the product of conversations that took place during two linked meetings held between
June 27 and July 3, 2013, on Wasan Island on Lake Rosseau in the Muskoka region north of
Toronto, Canada, hosted by the Breuninger Foundation, Musagetes, and the J. W. McConnell Family
Foundation. Most of the 36 discussants came from Canada, with others from the United States,
Europe, and South America. They included artists and cultural workers; representatives of private
and community foundations, as well as public arts funders; architects; environmentalists; publishers;
impact investors; and academics working on sustainable business, community sustainability, and arts
and social change. The list of participants is included at Appendix A. There are many examples of
the impacts described in this paper. Rather than choosing just a few, we have created a website to
solicit and share examples and invite you to visit the site to learn more at
cocreating.citiesforpeople.ca.

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 The Art of Resilience, The Resilience of Art

Executive Summary

We live at a time when humanity, and urban dwellers especially, are being called upon to forestall and
recover from disruptions to built, social, and natural systems. The capacity of people and communi-
ties to creatively adapt, face stresses cooperatively, to formulate just and effective responses, and, as
needed, to moderate and/or reshape behaviour in order to maintain an effective social order, is more
commonly referred to as resilience. The premise of this paper is that in addition to the necessary
work of fortifying physical infrastructure and upgrading emergency response procedures, planners,
policy makers, social innovators, and investors seeking to adapt our environmental, social, and eco-
nomic systems must include culture as an essential fourth dimension of resilience and livability. This
paper refers to “culture” both in the universal sense, which derives from the aggregated patterns of
daily life, commerce, and governance, and to “arts-based culture” where artists, architects, and de-
signers shape public perception and experience. The point is that these two are intertwined, and that
to an extent perhaps not fully appreciated or applied, the latter influences the former. This paper is
addressed to people both inside and around the arts and cultural sector, and describes in broad
terms the contribution of art and culture to urban resilience and livability. It introduces several prin-
ciples by which this work might be guided and strengthened, and outlines areas where culture’s rela-
tionship to resilience creates openings for art and artists to enhance community vibrancy and civic
engagement, while sparking the imagination and pursuit of desirable options to the status quo. It
concludes with a call to build a global culture of resilience.

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 The Art of Resilience, The Resilience of Art

The Art of Resilience, The Resilience of Art

Ideas about identity and social space are grounded in the possibilities of imagination, in streams of
fantasy that rise up to either order or disrupt our comprehension of the world. 1

— Helene Shulman and Mary Watkins

Art, resilience, and culture

Resilience, like art, permeates and shapes our cultures and constitutes a responsive and generative
field that enlivens individuals, neighbourhoods, communities, institutions, and societies. Resilient cit-
ies adapt rapidly and creatively to constantly changing conditions. By moving beyond mechanistic
approaches that focus on linear models of cause-and-effect to consider culture, complexity, and pos-
sibility, we see an opportunity to demonstrate locally and globally that achieving resiliency is an art as
well as a science.

Strengthening urban resilience is not an option: It is an imperative. In order to produce the envi-
ronmental, economic, social, and cultural conditions under which societies can thrive within plane-
tary limits, the world’s most dynamic cities must become more resilient and livable. Diminishing
natural capital from resource consumption; growing disparities between the rich and the poor; the
immediate and impending impacts of climate change; global migration and population change; sec-
tarian conflict; and economic upheaval all pose ongoing and potential shocks to cities. At the same
time, cities and the regions that support them are the critical source and location for the adaptations
upon which humanity’s present and future depend.
 
The movement towards greater urban resilience has begun, and it involves multisectoral efforts to
manage complex challenges. It is co-creative. Tech entrepreneurs, street vendors, public health prac-
titioners, artists, and farmers depend on each other to be innovators. Innovation and actions taken
together to augment individuals’ and communities’ capacity to adapt repeatedly to changing circum-
stances are the warp and weft of resilience.

A resilient culture is one where everyone contributes. Culture is the backbone of every society; it is
our first education—the crux of our socialization—and it is every generation’s right and responsibil-
ity to enjoy it while providing for civilization’s long-term survival. Throughout history societies

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whose cultures were too rigid to adapt to new circumstances have been erased by the gradual or
sudden loss of physical, social, or economic capital. Resilient societies, on the other hand, are able to
shift focus, provide for the vulnerable, and—taking the long view—reorder priorities and generate
adaptive arrangements that address known and unanticipated change.
As agents of cultural shift, art and artists raise the alarm; they raise consciousness, and they raise
spirits. They bring us to our senses, helping us to feel, think, and see differently. They are portrayers
of the possible, provoking and informing the imagination of states beyond present conditions, and
conveying the promise and potential of transformation. As Don McKay writes, “the poetic frame
permits the possible to be experienced as a power rather than a deficiency; it permits the imagination
entry, finding wider resonances, leading us to contemplate further implications for ourselves.”2

Art can be disruptive. In this sense, artists are the outsiders: the powerful strangers who pose dis-
comfiting questions to the self-satisfied, who speak truth to power. Resilience requires that we pay
attention to what lies within and beyond the city gates of comfort and complacency. Artists are the
ones who scan those horizons, who act as scouts and heralds of what is hidden and what is to come.

Purposeful and democratic work on resilience makes societal vulnerabilities more visible, and rallies
the creative capacity of all sectors to generate and test adaptive solutions. Vulnerable individuals and
communities themselves are essential players in any process of adaptation and renewal that leads to
greater urban resilience. Amidst struggle and despair, art inspires and gives hope. Artists around the
world have used the power of their art to, in the words of William Cleveland, “make us understand,
resolve conflict, heal unspeakable trauma, give voice to the forgotten and disappeared, and re-stitch
the cultural fabric of their communities.”3 Artists explore the fundamental question of how we are
social, how we coexist. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, French artist Ernest Pignon, Canadian artist Re-
becca Belmore, Turkish artist Kutluğ Ataman, and American artist Susan Crile, among others, are
contemporary artists who critique and expand human rights and social justice worldwide. Artists are
central protagonists in global movements for equality, an essential underpinning of community resil-
ience.

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Creative urgency and creative agency

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”4
— Samuel Beckett

Are we facing a precipice or approaching a threshold? History and science tell us that when new en-
ergy flows into decaying systems, their components reorganize to higher levels of order. Such as
when, during the Late Middle Ages, against a backdrop of plague, ignorance, and religious wars, a
new communications technology—movable type—emerged. The scientific method and other mani-
fold advances in science and the arts followed. Polyphonic music, Copernican theory, and the intro-
duction of perspective in painting presaged and accompanied these profound reorderings of the
human estate we now know as the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Today, we are witnessing and co-creating a shift in global civic culture of similar magnitude. Creative
engagement towards resilience builds upon and integrates work being done in social finance (micro-
finance, impact investing), social technology (the Internet, Wikipedia, smartphones, Facebook), and
the generational shift to a post-carbon economy. The art of resilience could be restated as the art of
learning to live together as though our future really mattered. Writers, musicians, filmmakers, archi-
tects, designers must engage us all, whether as audience, students, or collaborators, in co-creating a
new narrative, a new narrative for humanity.

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The Centripetal Force

“A human community, if it is to last long, must exert a sort of centripetal force, holding local soil
and local memory in place. Practically speaking, human society has no work more important than
this. Once we have acknowledged this principle, we can only be alarmed at the extent to which it has
been ignored.”5
— Wendell Berry

Here, then, are several sets of principles to be elaborated and espoused by those seeking a broad
advance towards urban resilience and livability:

● Start with hospitality, inclusivity, diversity, and generosity. These signal a desire not just to
responsively welcome and include those who share a commitment to a resilient culture, but
to proactively seek out people with other abilities, perspectives, experiences, and identities.
We put particular emphasis on inclusion of the vulnerable—as a moral obligation, and as a
necessary attribute of any diverse and resilient system.

● Second, embrace complexity. Be mindful of context, expect the unexpected, and be con-
scious that in complex systems, small changes can have effects across different nested scales.
Accept nature as context and teacher.

● Acknowledge and respect both our own and others’ vulnerability. Empathy is a fundamental
human capacity for shaping consciousness, for bridging cultural and political divides. Trust in
co-creation, in equality, and endeavour to replace dysfunctional power structures with rela-
tional and inclusive democratic frameworks.

● Recognize the importance of place and community. Be mindful of the local/global contin-
uum, and of the need to pursue equitable models of exchange and reciprocity with people
and places more vulnerable than ours.

● Encourage curiosity and flexibility and appreciate joy and delight. They are integral to the
great transition before us.

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● Finally, work with an appreciation for history, with gratitude and regret for the efforts and
mistakes that have enabled humanity to arrive at this moment, and with a sense of obligation
and humility as we make our own contribution to perpetuating the human endeavour.

Embracing these principles, act with hope and urgency to make our cities and societies more livable
and resilient.

Release the capacity of the people, focusing on the vulnerable

Resilient cities comprise a mix of large-scale systems that enable the city to function, and granular
innovations that underpin and influence those systems and ensure the city continues to adapt and
thrive. Resilience in these systems depends on the capacity of the people—who are the city—to de-
velop on-the-ground responses to make their lives safe, productive, and meaningful. Artists can sur-
face and sustain the capacity of people by working in creative collaboration with vulnerable and
marginalized communities, fomenting strategies of self-realization, adaptation, and emancipation
through context-based, participatory art. This art does not displace the vulnerable. It includes them,
inspires them, and makes room for them as co-creators.

Integrate work cross-sectorally and holistically

For local responses to pressing challenges to be developed and integrated, cross-sectoral engagement
is essential. Government and public institutions, local businesses, cultural organizations, academia,
and other civil society organizations all have a direct stake in supporting urban resiliency and livabil-
ity, and none can accomplish this alone. This is where art and artists engage us as whole beings, irre-
spective of affiliation or background. New social process tools such as social innovation labs, the U
Process, and other social structures for exploring possibility, use the tools of artistic inquiry, meta-
phor, and model building to co-create ideas. They enable us to work from the inside out and the
outside in, drawing upon wellsprings of imagination and creativity that lie within us all. 

Connect, connect, connect

Networks, institutions, designers, thought leaders, and the public play complementary roles in field-
building—an important dimension of innovation in resilient systems. The layering of intersections

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within and across fields allows for clustering and regrouping, uncoupling and recombining, and the
introduction of options that are the hallmarks of resilience. When we engage in deliberation and
design spanning diverse domains—such as health, justice, and urban planning—new approaches,
ideas, models, strategies, and solutions become visible and possible.

Reduce ecological footprints; increase civic footprints

Community studios and other shared spaces foster personal growth and social capital. Faculties of
fine art, architecture, and design that operate community access and outreach programs enlarge their
“civic footprint,” providing students with real-life issues to work on, and ensuring that a diversity of
people have access to tools and space for creative expression. Cultural mediation—a process of
building bridges between the cultural and social realms—points to further horizons of institutional
and community renewal. In cities worldwide, we see the outlines of new civic cultures, with concen-
trations of artists focused on creativity, personal growth, and community engagement instead of on
the pursuit of economic goals at any cost.

Tell the story, be transparent

Urban resilience grows when the successes and failures of experimentation are visible. When trans-
parency and storytelling are integrated into cultural and economic innovation, urban discourse
evolves towards an ethic of generosity, risk-taking, and learning. Stories of successes and failures
enable us to learn from the experience of policymakers and politicians, from philanthropists and
public funders, from artists, and other sectors. Honest and meaningful narratives enable greater resil-
ience. Embedding artists and storytellers in the midst of disparate initiatives and enterprises holds
potential for renewed civic discourse, accelerated dissemination of new ideas, and a cultural shift
away from blaming and mistrust to one of learning and openness.

Every voice counts: renewing the democratic process

In Occupy, Idle No More, Indignado, and other movements for political reform, we detect a pro-
found and largely unmet civic appetite for involvement in local and global governance. Artists bring
meaning, visualization, and imagination to such processes, and by doing so, elicit participation in
public discourse and place-making. Eventually culturally infused decision-making could contribute to

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what Elinor Ostrom—the first woman and non-economist to win the Nobel Prize in Econom-
ics—called “polycentric governance 6.” In short, governance designed to produce resilience through
the re-engagement of individuals, households and communities in the pursuit of the public good,
working at different levels of scale and taking into account our shared interest in preserving the
natural capital upon which life depends.

Move money to meaning

What does it mean to invest in resilience? We need increased capacity to fund small-scale initiatives
or prototypes that can be tested quickly, adjusted, and retested, along with a means of scaling up
those that produce greater resilience. And we need to adopt a seriously long view of infrastructure
investments, integrating advanced social and environmental values in a manner consistent with inter-
generational equity and informed by genuine intergenerational discourse—a creative/cultural project
that awaits development.

Resources beyond money

While money is important, many other resources are needed to increase urban resilience and livabil-
ity, including non-monetary exchange systems, tools, and approaches to better leverage existing re-
sources. Those with physical spaces can explore ways for those resources to become places for social
engagement, artistic practice, and learning. Public infrastructure designed for a different era—from
schools to post offices—can be creatively repurposed for the needs of today and tomorrow. Includ-
ing spaces for artistic and cultural production makes such spaces vibrant, welcoming, and generative
of economic and social possibility.

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Towards a regenerative culture: a resilient life in a resilient world

The global challenge calls for a response, for us to fully engage in the cultivation of a resilient life. It
calls on cities, communities, and individuals in the global south and global north, in the west and in
the east, and to those living in peace and those living in conflict.
 
Linear, narrow approaches have given us railroads, pipelines, and street grids, but we are now at the
point—economically, socially, environmentally, and culturally—where a sea change is required to
evolve from linearity to holistic integration. Resilience compels us to partner across disciplines and
silos, spans geographies and circumstance, class, race, and ability; it demands that we engage with
diversity—with the other—in mutual pursuit of a good life. It invites all to solve problems, address
challenges, and seize opportunities that benefit people living in cities and communities all around the
world, where signs of promise are evident. Urban dwellers are inventing new approaches to public
health, food security, resource management, neighbourhood revitalization, and job creation, harness-
ing the creative capital that is the life-blood of any city. This is where the new language, the emerg-
ing practice of resilience is apparent.

Let us search out those among us who can see, hear, represent, translate, contain, empower, resist,
mobilize, satirize, celebrate, provoke, and make clear the connections we lack, and then let us work
together to ensure we make sustainable, inclusive, wise, and just decisions, to build a resilient urban
future for all.
 
Begin. Now.

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Participants, Wasan Island Resiliency Dialogues

June 28—July 3, 2013

Linda Albright, Arts Network of Children and Youth

Janice Astbury, Cities for People
Matthew Blackett, Spacing Magazine
Simon Brault, O.C., O.Q., National Theatre School of Canada, Culture Montreal
Cameron Charlebois, Consultant in Urban Development & Chair, Blue Metropolis Foundation
Genevieve Cimon, Director of Music Education and Community Engagement,
National Arts Centre
David Codling, British Council
Seanna Connell, Project Director, ArtBridges/ToileDesArts
David Cossin, Artist
Professor Ann Dale, Chair, Sustainable Community Development, Royal Roads University
Talia Dorsey, The Commons Inc.
Anne Dunning, ARTS Action Research
Tim Draimin, Social Innovation Generation
Volker Hann, Director International Programs, Breuninger Foundation
Ruth Howard, Jumblies Theatre
Stephen Huddart, J. W. McConnell Family Foundation
Seana Irvine, Evergreen
Am Johal, SFU Woodward's Cultural Unit
John Knechtel, Alphabet City
Irena Kregar-Šegota, City of Rijeka (Croatia)
Todd Lester, World Policy Institute, Lanchonete.org & freeDimensional
Sara Lyons, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Community Foundations of Canada
Ken MacLeod, President/CEO, New Brunswick Youth Orchestra/Sistema NB
Alexandre Magnin, Associate, The Natural Step & Graphic Designer, amcreative.org
Judith Marcuse, International Centre of Arts for Social Change
David Moss, Culture Days
Anil Patel, TimeRaiser
Alessandra Pomarico, Loop House (Italy)
Mary Rowe, Municipal Art Society of New York
Claude Schryer, Canada Council for the Arts
Paul Shrivastava, Ph. D., Director, David O'Brien Center for Sustainable Enterprise, John Molson
School of Business, Concordia University
Louise Sicuro, C.M., CEO Culture Pour Tous
Althea Thauburger, Artist
Janis Timm-Bottos, La Ruche d'Art: The Canadian Art Hive Movement
Vanessa Timmer, Executive Director, One Earth
Shawn Van Sluys, Musagetes
Kelly Wilhelm, Canada Council for the Arts

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Endnotes

1Helene Shulman and Mary Watkins, “Toward Psychologies of Liberation” (Palgrave Macmillan,
September 2008), 151.
2 Don McKay, The Shell of the Tortoise (Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2011), 55.
3William Cleveland, Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontlines (Oakland, CA: New Village
Press, 2008).
4 Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983).
5Wendell Berry, The Work of Local Culture (An Essay).
http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/essay_work_of_local.html
6 Ostrom, Elinor. "Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Sys-
tems," (American Economic Review, 100(3), 2010), 641-72.