MOVING GROUND as initiated by The Duncan Dance Research Center, is a platform that connects dance, education, community engagement and environmental action embodying the practice of permaculture principles: care for the earth, care for the people and awareness of limits to growth. The project addresses a densely built environment and a neglected open space in Athens, within a cultural heritage site associated with the birth of modern dance.
Local
Greece
Municipality of Vyronas
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Duncan Dance Research Center Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Penelope Last name of representative: Iliaskou Gender: Female Nationality: Greece Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Chrisafis 34 & Dikearchou Town: Vyronas Postal code: 162 32 Country: Greece Direct Tel:+30 21 0762 1234 E-mail:ddrcathens@gmail.com
MOVING GROUND (MG) was a pioneering project initiated by the Duncan Dance Research Center (DDRC) which involved architects, choreographers, artists, botanists, permaculture educators, and the community of the Municipality of Vyronas.
In a process of self-reflection, observation and commitment towards environmental action, MOVING GROUND set out to rethink DDRC’s mission. By engaging the dance professionals and the local community, MOVING GROUND introduced participatory, critical and sustainable practices and sought to enhance its capacity to support innovative artistic and educational projects that connect with nature and everyday life, and empower social cohesion.
The year-long program (9/2021-9/2022) was framed by four interconnected pillars: dance, community, education, and space. These four pillars converged in the vision and implementation of a garden and were developed in parallel, revealing aspects of sustainability through practice. The project seeked to identify and document the typology of DDRC’s landscape, explore social and environmental practices, and regenerate the local ecosystem including the soil, the flora it hosts and the environment relevant to the Athenian context. The project articulated a supportive learning environment based on bottom-up mobilisation, in partnership with institutions and networks. It deployed experimental, participatory and interdisciplinary actions as a means towards community empowerment, and ecological awareness, through innovative learning, hands-on and theoretical interventions. The initiatives that MG launched served as a testing ground for cultivating ecological awareness, connecting with nature and embracing green transition, and climate change adaptation.
Net-positive
Dance practice
Permaculture design
Social inclusion
Participation
Key objective 1: Sustainable artistic and daily practices
In the cultural sector sustainability is understood and evaluated at various levels which involve the physical space, the community of artists, the type of energy and resource consumption required for artistic production and routine activities, as well as audience behavior and training. MG approaches sustainability in a comprehensive way by envisioning the redesigning of the DDRC infrastructure and its grounds, and by redefining its outreach communities coming from the world of dance and the neighbourhood, as well as the greater urban environment of Athens. One main mission of the project was to explore new areas of community involvement, artistic practices, and educational activities. Participatory methods, bottom-up approaches, and transdisciplinary partnerships with institutions and networks were adopted in order to promote community empowerment, equity, and inclusivity. During the project, the DDRC addressed consumption and waste patterns and has adopted an upcycling and reuse policy for all its functions, and composting for all its organic waste.
Key objective 2: Sustainability of the urban environment
MG addressed sustainability of the urban environment through a regenerative transformation process of its surroundings by adopting NbS and by integrating Permaculture principles aiming towards nature-positive impact. The garden was based on two different schools of thought. The first acknowledges indigenous plants adapted to the Mediterranean climate of approximately six months of rain and six months of dryness. The second involves the introduction of irrigation for the making and maintenance of a productive garden for experiential involvement, and training. By incorporating resilient species the MG project improved the microclimate, in an attempt to offset overall biodiversity losses.
An urban oasis
The main aesthetic contribution of the MG project was the improvement of the daily quality of life and of the experiences available to the visitors. This is reflected in the transformation of a neglected urban space into a community garden which is now open to the public. In the past trespassing the fenced off public space around DDRC triggered neglect and vandalism. The intervention that successfully rendered the site accessible, along with the participatory transformation of the neglected space into a garden, highlighted its unique characteristics. Location, orientation, geometry, patterns, shapes, colours, forms, and temporality are now appreciated from a different perspective. The perception of the site has changed into a place to be cherished and cared for, and has fostered a sense of collective ownership and pride.
Response art
Attempting to enrich the feedback process and communication patterns, a visual artist was invited to make “response art” during the artistic and community project activities. Coming from the art therapy context, Response art enriched the feedback process, communication patterns, and provided an aesthetic awareness in the act of witnessing and responding to the projects. The kick-off event, a mandala produced by the waste collected from the plot, was transformed into a visual response and aesthetic experience. Response art was consequently exhibited in the space providing an aesthetic experience and appreciation of the activities.
The Living Room project
The ARK project hosted by MG drew material from interviews with local residents and students of DDRC and exchanged ideas with different communities using the facility (neighbours, parents, students, teachers, dancers and choreographers). This process resulted into the birth of a Common Space of study, rest, and encounter called “The Living Room”. The Living Room has transformed the daily lives of DDRC users and upgraded the quality of experience of the space.
MOVING GROUND created an exemplary framework of inclusiveness by adopting an intergenerational approach, focusing on socially isolated or underrepresented groups in the neighbourhood, such as preschool children, seniors and the unemployed, that interacted with professionals, students, artists and scientists. Artists of a wide age range, experience and artistic practices were invited to think through their needs, interests, and energy in all four pillars of MOVING GROUND in order to generate their proposals for artistic and educational programs. The series of educational programs that was established during the MG project encompass all age groups. Workshops on dance, creative movement, and visual arts address kids (Preschool + Primary school ages 4-8). A series of environmental and educational actions addressed and actively involved high school adolescents (ages 12-17) from the public schools of the municipality of Vyronas and were based on fundamental principles of experiential methods, and active participation in the learning process. In addition, a gentle dance practice enhancing ease and creativity addressed retired people and third age groups (ages 65+). All events were accessible and free of cost to participants.
Inspired by the visions of eco-communities that preoccupied the founder of the DDRC, Raymond Duncan, MG acted as a bridge between art, science and community, and created a participatory framework for the redesign of the DDRC and its surroundings, both human and more than human, with an open-ended, holistic, and inclusive approach.
MG aimed at inspiring group connections and building relationships between community members through hands-on activities involved in conceiving and making a garden together. Intricate relationships between the personal, the social and the environmental spheres were forged through the experience of simultaneously observing and choreographing actions addressing the four pillars of the project.
Rather than being mere observers or consumers of experiences and knowledge, audience members were invited to participate and to contribute to the curatorial tenets. By embracing audience engagement the quality of life in the community was improved. Communal interactions offer joy, conviviality, inner fulfilment, and a different set of ethics. The educational workshops triggered new activities in the context of the curriculum of various schools in the area.
The year-long program positively affected the DDRC staff members, the artists participating and the people of the neighbourhood, many of whom used and enjoyed the public space of Duncan Centre's surroundings. The MG project inspired a sense of care, advocacy and active engagement in the management of the tangible and intangible commons and the dance community discovered new territories of knowledge and developed new methods of working. People were inspired to participate in the maintenance and care of the DDRC communal garden. Their involvement encouraged them to rethink their daily practices and their immediate surroundings. During the year that the MG project unfolded, numerous educational programs with schools of neighbouring municipalities were hosted, catering to different age groups and succeeded in raising awareness regarding responsible practices of sharing limited resources. The local community became activated towards adopting different daily habits and mindsets about their neighbourhood.
MG interacted with a great number of stakeholders, ranging from local to EU level for the design and implementation of the initiative. These include local community members of all age groups, the dance community, the Municipality of Vyronas, the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP), several NGOs, neighbourhood organisations, educational institutions of all levels, the European Dancehouse Network (EDN), and peer organisations in other European cities. DDRC collaborated with EYDAP for the use of the adjoining plot that was transformed into a garden and the Municipality of Vyronas for water supply, tools, fertilizer, and irrigation infrastructure. The MG project benefited from collaborations with Filodassiki Enossi Athinon, a foundation working for reforestation, Organization Earth an NGO providing community-driven change towards a fair and resilient society, Support Earth, an activist group defending nature’s rights in Greece, and the Save Your Hood network for neighbourhood revitalization. Through educational activities the MG project addressed four municipal nursery schools, and two public elementary schools. Two courses were taught at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens where the DDRC and the MG project were used as a case study to discuss issues around climate change, community participation, permaculture, Nature-based solutions, and net-positive design with post-graduate students. Through an impact and engagement award from the University of Salford a workshop series was funded, exploring the life cycles connected to soil and plant life through movement. MG was presented to DDRC’s EDN international partners in June 2022, through the EDN Atelier, a platform of workshops, training and other meetings designed for the professional dance sector, where the organisers approached the theme of sustainability from the perspective of artistic practice inspired by permaculture.
Curating and design have been undertaken by an interdisciplinary team consisting of two choreographers, a visual artist, two architects, a film director, two botanists and the artistic director of the DDRC. MG involved dancers and choreographers, students, architects, researchers, artists, botanists, permaculture educators, scientists, and teachers, as well as citizens of all ages as well as the community of the Municipality of Vyronas. The representatives of the different fields interacted in a non-hierarchical manner, blurring the limits between their practices and allowing to radically rethink them, by interacting with other disciplines, methodologies, and approaches. Permaculture principles such as designing from patterns to details, or the concept of edge dynamics affected the form of the choreographies developed, while the capacity of spatial practices to transcend time, and envision alternate futures, altered their structure. Scientific understanding of botany such as indigenous species, resilience, adaptability and versatility were paralleled to artists themselves and their trajectory. The rigidity that spatial practices often demonstrate when approaching space was softened by versatile dance practices, influenced by the underlying and interconnected structures of nature. “Response art” provided an alternative way of witnessing and responding to art projects, creating a field of interaction and a positive feedback loop between artists engaged in different fields reflecting and commenting on each other’s work. This was perceived as a way of developing net-positive approaches for artistic practices. Designing and maintaining a garden created a methodology and toolkit for life in general, where understanding the interrelations of the human and non-human worlds was prevalent. The connections established between the corporeal aspects of dance practices with permaculture contributed in novel ways to the debate about regenerative practices and the world of dance.
The project's innovative character lies in cultivating ecological consciousness through the combination of actions that bridge the distance between art and life and motivate students, parents, artists, neighbourhood inhabitants, and visitors alike. Looking at nature, dance, and the body as generators of knowledge infers processes that are guided not solely by rationality, but also by speculation in the form of radical imagination. The artist may be understood as an agent who is just as involved in generating knowledge, as the environment, or the plants themselves.
The underlying question was whether dance can develop the capacity to inspire change in social and ecological attitudes and what kind of knowledge can be generated through such awareness. MOVING GROUND invited projects that would be intertwined with the design and making of a communal garden. The idea of the design and creation of a garden was pursued with the conviction that all stages from the design, to its implementation, observation, and maintenance, have the potential to bridge the distance between local and global concerns, and may contrivute to the need for global and collective action with far-reaching and long-term impact.
According to Michel Foucault the garden is a real environment which serves as a heterotopia bringing together different layers of meaning and providing a glimpse into alternative future scenarios and the potential for positive change. The design, cultivation, and maintenance of the garden are intertwined with notions of care, diversity, and the ecosystem, and were used as a metaphor for the flourishing and thriving of artistic practices, and for an awareness of interconnectedness, evolution, and ecology.
The garden as an experience and educational tool
A plant nursery workshop introduced seeds and knowledge of growing plants from seeds to inhabitants. Workshop participants were encouraged to grow plants from seed for themselves for-home use, as well as for returning some of the plants that they took care of to the newly established community garden. Compost-making and compost bin construction were offered as workshops open to the public in order to disseminate know-how and experiential knowledge.
MG was based on interdisciplinary actions at the crossroads of artistic and spatial practices, environmentalism and education. Through an experimental educational aproach which combined artistic and social innovation MG achieved active citizen engagement towards the gradual transformation of the DDRC’s grounds, infrastructure and social constituency. With a communal garden as a starting point that the projects evolved around, MG created an essential framework that goes beyond usual awareness raising into actually shifting urban paradigms, by providing tangible results of positive realised examples that occur at the neighbourhood level which may inspire and may be replicated elsewhere.
The project’s success highlights the potential of local initiatives, top-down and interdisciplinary action for and within communities, focusing on solutions that address the specific urban and societal context while developing methodologies that can be replicated at all levels and patterns of urban living.
MG introduced a tangible model of community engagement and educational practices that may be replicated as a methodological approach model in its entirety, or in parts, throughout the city of Athens and elsewhere in Greece and throughout Europe, which are adaptable with the involvement of local communities to various conditions and factors, towards the creation of living labs that contribute to nature-positive change.
The principles of “Earth care, People care, Share the Surplus” and the twelve Permaculture principles inform the project and horizontally in all four pillars: The making of a garden, Sustainable artistic practices, Education, and Community building.
1. The making of a garden
The challenge was to transform the neglected site characterised by aridness, erosion, and depleted topsoil. The garden was founded on two schools of thought: The first recognizes the particularities of the Mediterranean climate of six months of rain, and six months of the dry season, and favours plants resilient to rising temperatures due to climate change. The second involves the introduction of irrigation for the making and maintenance of a small-scale aesthetic and productive garden by incorporating food production, experiential involvement, and training.
2. Sustainable artistic practices
Artists of a wide age range and experience were invited to generate proposals and rethink dance as a form of artistic creation capable to inspire change in social and ecological attitudes, and to examine the type of knowledge that might be generated through questions such as: How can dance be inspired by permaculture theory and practice, involve the community with ecological concerns and bridge the distance between art and life.
3. Education
The MG educational programs catered to different age groups with workshops on dance, creative movement, and visual arts (Preschool + Primary school 4-7), an environmental and educational series of actions involving adolescents (12-17), a gentle dance practice enhancing ease and creativity for seniors (65+).
4. Community building
MG engaged various communities in a culture of sharing and commoning encouraging active participation through working together, learning, playing, and volunteering. These actions strengthened social bonds, enhanced a sense of purpose, and have the potential to make roots and to grow. make a place sustainable and resilient.
MG intended to examine the global challenges of climate change and local ones of an overbuilt, dense urban environment, lack of social and community facilities, aridness, erosion, and degraded top soil by introducing social cohesion, community empowerment, and green transition. It responded with a series of systemic interventions in life cycle terms, by attempting a gradual transformation of both the mindset of participants and the physical space.
The project intended to tackle sustainable development goals 11/12/13 and 15 specifically sustainable cities (11), sustainable consumption and production patterns (12), Action to combat climate change and its impacts (13), and protect restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss (15). Yet, MG considered some SDG targets and indicators as often mild, insufficient, or contradictory based on economic measurements like the GDP. The MG project is based on the hope that humans may not only strive to reduce harm which steadily continues by human settlements, primarily urban areas, or even strive towards Zero Energy, but they could contribute to restoring the climate, ecosystems and communities, as well as the habitat of a particular region. The challenge originates from the structure of the present economic system, the dogma of unlimited growth, and the physical infrastructure of urban centres operating in most cases in ways which are unsustainable. Net positive development would give back to nature and community more than it takes in both whole system (space) and life cycle (time) terms.
Achieved benefits
The physical challenge has been to transform the desolate and neglected grounds around the Duncan Center. The yearlong goals addressed community activation and the first stage of the regeneration of the immediate surroundings of DDRC which experienced a gradual, but drastic regenerative transformation around the creation, use and maintenance of a communal garden. Biodiversity has increased. The local community was mobilised towards adopting different daily habits and mindsets about their neighbourhood. The dance community discovered new territories of knowledge and developed different ethics. People were inspired to participate in the maintenance and care of the DDRC communal garden and think about practising similar methods in their immediate surroundings.
Development plan of the initiative
Following the completion of MOVING GROUND the DDRC intends to go further in incremental steps. The MG one-year plan will be succeeded by a three-year mid-term plan, The Living Project, followed by an up to ten years long-term plan. MG’s participatory activities and the knowledge gained around permaculture are the foundation for a new collaboration between DDRC and two artistic collectives from Spain and Portugal, and the Technical University of Berlin around PLANT, a two-year EU-funded Creative Europe transdisciplinary project at the intersection of Contextual Performing Arts, Ecology, and Cultural Mediation. Its main scope is to encourage the development and experimentation of artistic and curatorial practices that cross performing arts, permaculture and local life. The long-term goal is the gradual shift towards regenerative practices, in tune with the urgent environmental, artistic, and political issues of our times, and the specificities of the Athenian urban condition. Artistic practices and educational activities will further address biodiversity, consumption and waste patterns, as well as saving and storing rainwater and reusing grey water.
MG strived to develop a holistic approach of learnering based on knowledge, and skills acquired which are adapted to the specificities of the densely built urban environment of Athens and other cities with a Mediterranean climate which face risks of desertification and extreme weather phenomena by articulating, implementing and making accessible a local model of adaptation towards a more sustainable economy and more participatory and better informed society.
Local institutions such as the Duncan Dance Research Center can play an important role through their operations and curicculum in demonstrating and disseminating transformative changes for the green transition.
