From 28th to 30th August 2025, 134 participants from 25 countries gathered to discuss the theme of the 9th Colloquium on Artistic Research in the Performing Arts (CARPA9), Ecological Design and Performance Pedagogies – Sustainable Practices and Interdisciplinary Acts in a Climate Changed World. The urgency of the theme of this colloquium was reflected in the unprecedented number of intelligent, insightful, and caring proposals, to the extent that the conference committee could only accept about 50% of proposals due to practical constraints of time and space.
Arranged by the Performing Arts Research Centre, together with Master’s programmes in Scenography, Lighting Design, Sound Design, Theatre Pedagogy and Dance Pedagogy of the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy, and the Performance + Ecology Research Lab of the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI) of Griffith University, Australia, the conference committee brought together a broad range of expertise in the themes of the conference. Committee members were Professor in Scenography, Dr Liisa Ikonen; Professor of Lighting Design, Dr. Tomi Humalisto; Professor in Sound Design, Tuomas Fränti; Professor in Dance Pedagogy, Dr. Eeva Anttila; and co-directors of the Performance + Ecology Research Lab, Dr. Natalie Lazaroo, Dr. Linda Hassell, and Dr. Tanja Beer, with Dr Hanna Järvinen, Head of the Performing Arts Research Centre, chairing.
The conference received generous support from the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies as well as the Theatre Academy of UNIARTS Helsinki. Dr Otso Huopaniemi, the Dean of the Theatre Academy and co-chair of the CARPA8 conference opened the event, and many faculty and staff assisted in moderation, technical support, and practical organization of the three-day event. The conference practical manager, Dr Riitta Pasanen-Willberg, the technical manager Satu Kankkonen, and producer Aliisa Kattelus, together with their teams, were responsible for a smoothly running conference. The editors of our book of abstracts, Vera Boitcova and Susanna Laaksonen, continued as the editors of these Proceedings.
The final ceremony was opened by Satu Kankkonen’s fanfare, originally composed for the national awards gala of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the event also included an excerpt from their work Deep Time Trans, which referenced the futures of water on this planet of ours, as well as a closing soundscape composed by our AV master and doctoral researcher Jari Koho, Locations, in which collected and manipulated field recordings connected us listeners with the environment and sense of place.
The premise for CARPA9 was to explore pedagogical approaches to, in, and for performance making in a climate changed world. In writing our call, the conference committee envisioned discussions and interventions around questions about how to move towards more ecologically and socially sustainable performing arts practices in higher education and university pedagogy. As a platform, CARPA9 thus brought together different perspectives and concerns around understanding and enacting climate justice in performing arts training and research.
Thinking of sustainability in the broad sense of interconnected material and social phenomena, through which we all enact ecological storytelling in the cultural realm, enabled a twofold approach towards sustainability. On one hand, thinking of sustainability as a post-humanist approach in a world transformed by the global ecological crisis, and on the other as a pedagogical, socio-cultural and epistemological issue of human interaction, learning, teaching, knowledge formation and understanding. Sustainability in the performing arts and in performing arts pedagogy requires that we imagine and implement new kinds of cultures, new ways of thinking and acting for future generations.
The conference brought together acute concerns in performing arts practice and pedagogy in higher education. The call for presentations requested artist-scholars think of transforming the narratives around climate justice in performance design and performance making, including embracing First Nations solutions to environmental challenges and learning practices. The leading question for the call was how researchers, practitioners, educators and mentors foster ecological stewardship and facilitate co-action to be change-makers of the future.
The presentations addressed questions of ecological design practices, performance training and storytelling forms addressing environmental relations across different geographical locations and cultural mindsets. Together, the participants made visible artistic and pedagogical practices that have generated ecologically sensitive work environments for study, research, and art making all around the world. Practice-oriented workshops co-existed with academic presentation formats, the diverse modes for sharing research and practice created a colloquial atmosphere throughout the conference. Given the importance but also heaviness of the topic, participants were encouraged to also take time in the conference lounge, enjoying refreshments in a quiet, softly lit space.
To bring together all of the themes of this gathering, we invited two keynote speakers. Dylan Van Den Berg from Australia was our artist keynote and Dr. Raisa Foster from Finland was our academic keynote.
Dylan Van Den Berg is an Aboriginal Australian dramaturg, playwright and researcher, descendent from the Palawa and Trawloolway peoples of Tasmania. In his keynote address, Listen Here: Country as Character and Ecological Whispers in First Nations Playwriting and Performance, he discussed his artistic practice and doctoral research on Aboriginal Gothic on stage. Referring to the lands, waterways and skies an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person is connected to through kinship, ancestry and culture as ‘Country’, Van Den Berg addressed how ‘Country’ figures as a character in his many award-winning plays and the different ways in which this character has been staged in practice.
Raisa Foster is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar whose recent work has focused on the questions of social and ecological justice and sustainable life orientation. Building on her dance practice, Foster combines her expertise in body and movement with the communitypossibilities of digital media, creating accessible but sensuously, emotionally, and cognitively stimulating total works of art. In her keynote, she discussed how artistic research can cultivate active hope and utopias – not as escapist fantasies but as vital orientations for navigating eco-social complexity. Referencing her community-oriented work, she asked how ecologically oriented artistic and pedagogical practices can awaken affective, collective, and more-than-human forms of agency.
During this conference, we heard many passionate artist-scholars explore concrete practices of sustainability and ecology in performance conversing across disciplines and traditions. CARPA9 was critical but colloquial, and full of hope – hope that hands-on practice, fists-in-the-mud-practice, can bring in desperate times. The conference offered the opportunity to listen to urgent calls from Pacific Islanders for just and equitable transition in ocean-faring and trade practices; building sustainable design on Ghanaian stages; or thinking of paper as ancestral practice in Japan. More importantly, however, it brough such diverse practices and perspectives together in a network of artist-scholars inspired to develop further changes in how the performing arts are created and researched and how they can impact discourses beyond the arts and education fields. Ecological practice is more than just changing lightbulbs into led lights
The Colloquium was divided into three strands, running in parallel, but with some unexpected chiasmatic encounters in between, as some presenters had to cancel at the last minute. Each strand had its own call:
- Ecological Design Practices
The global ecological crisis calls for the exploration of new practices in performance production across areas such as set, costume, lighting, and sound. In this theme, focused on ‘Ecological Design Practices’, we are interested in how researchers, practitioners, educators and mentors have integrated sustainability into their processes. - Ecological Performance Making
The global ecological crisis calls for the exploration of new performance making practices across performing arts disciplines. In this theme, focused on ‘Ecological Performance Making’, we are interested in how researchers, practitioners, educators and mentors have integrated ecological thinking into their performance making processes. How is ecological thinking informing new works for performance? - Ecological Storytelling
The global ecological crisis calls for a rethinking of our relationship to the environment and how we tell stories that embraces a post-humanist approach. This theme, ‘Ecological Storytelling’, is interested in how researchers, practitioners, educators and mentors conceptualize the notion of ecological in relation to storytelling across various performing arts disciplines. In what ways can First Nations and other non-hegemonic knowledges (re)shape ecological theory and thinking in/through storytelling?
These three strands were gathered by our Australian contingent in the final ceremony, and their reflections are also published here to account for all those presentations not included in this collection. We wish that as CARPA9 recedes further back into time, this collection will sign-post a moment in time when some future ideas were germinating and hopeful solutions emerging in our climate-changed world.
Helsinki 19 December 2025
Hanna Järvinen and Liisa Ikonen, conference chairs