Corelia Baibarac-Duignan a
a Department of Technology, Policy and Society, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
Abstract
This article addresses the emerging interest within the degrowth community in the potential of the arts and artistic research to complement social-scientific methods in driving transformation towards more convivial and less materially intensive futures. There is an increasing acknowledgement that the type and scale of change implied by a societal transition beyond growth cannot be triggered only by scientific facts or macroeconomic perspectives. Change is also needed in collective imaginaries, cultural values, and practices. This requires situating the transformative process in everyday life and the lived realities of communities to collectively imagine a life beyond consumerism as possible and desirable. Artistic practices can play an important role in subverting hegemonic worldviews through different aesthetic propositions. In this article, I focus on their potential to shape alternative imaginaries and foster degrowth-aligned values by enhancing awareness of alternative paradigms through multi-sensory engagements in everyday public spaces that expose frictions. I do this by drawing on a collaboration with an artist collective involving a co-created walking-based method (‘walkshop’) carried out in a relatively new neighbourhood of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Reflecting on this experience, I propose situated civic-artistic pedagogies to cultivate degrowth sensibilities in everyday life. This proposition contributes to the debate on prefiguration and the popularisation of futures beyond growth by highlighting the need to anchor such futures in communities, local knowledge, and lived experience.
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References
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How to cite
APA
Walking for change? Cultivating degrowth sensibilities in everyday life through multi-sensory artistic engagements in public space. (2026). In Degrowth Journal (Vol. 4). https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.004.01.06
MLA
“Walking for Change? Cultivating Degrowth Sensibilities in Everyday Life through Multi-Sensory Artistic Engagements in Public Space.” Degrowth Journal, vol. 4, Oct. 2026, https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.004.01.06.
Chicago
“Walking for Change? Cultivating Degrowth Sensibilities in Everyday Life through Multi-Sensory Artistic Engagements in Public Space.” 2026. In Degrowth Journal, vol. 4. https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.004.01.06.
Harvard
“Walking for change? Cultivating degrowth sensibilities in everyday life through multi-sensory artistic engagements in public space” (2026) Degrowth Journal. Available at: https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.004.01.06.