The Sustainable Development Goals in Practice: Partnerships for Action
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
Key Takeaways from the Webinar
1. Integration of Culture and the SDGs
Culture inspires and motivates stakeholders across contexts towards sustainability, especially through SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.
Futures Literacy uses future scenarios to promote sustainable action.
Different visions of the future can break down silos and create shared goals.
2. Methods for Promoting Partnerships
Structures and communities help bridge actors and strengthen collaboration towards common goals.
Informal meetings, such as coffee meetings, encourage dialogue and partnerships.
3. Creating SDG-Based Offerings
Use existing structures and successes to develop new initiatives that engage new target groups.
Culture inspires and motivates by providing knowledge and facts instead of wagging fingers.
4. Experiences and Advice from Thomas
Democratizing visions of the future engages people in sustainable action.
Create new communities and collaborations to achieve the SDGs.
Build on existing structures to create SDG-based cultural offerings.
5. Implementing SDG-Based Projects
Cultural institutions can contribute to sustainability by offering artistic content and participating in community activities.
Find intersections and build on existing successes to reach new audiences and create meaningful cultural offerings.
Interview with Speaker Thomas Sture Rasmussen, DB2030, Danish Library Association
How can cultural experiences contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals?
“How does the future look?
Is it flying cars and skyscrapers that we can simply Google?
And who decided that?
One of the greatest challenges is our ability to imagine a sustainable future. This can be seen both in opinion polls where young people consider whether to have children, and in the population’s general hope for the future. Here, culture can play a decisive role in democratising our visions of the future. If these visions are based on people’s own hopes and dreams, they can lead to active engagement and thereby a broader sustainable transition.
UNESCO has developed Futures Literacy, which can be translated as ‘future competencies’. We work concretely with this through literature. Literature is already on our shelves; we are familiar with utopias and dystopias. But by incorporating Futures Literacy, we can together create ‘protopias’ of the future. And by including different visions, we open up between the silos that are so important to break down if we are to live up to SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals. If we can see a shared future, we will also work for it - together.”
What methods do you use to promote partnerships within the framework of culture and the SDGs?
“Besides Futures Literacy, the simple answer is coffee - lots of coffee. It is striking how many people work towards the same goals but struggle to look sideways. Many become too absorbed in their own work and forget that the most important prerequisite for achieving the goals is that we can only do it together.
Here, culture can also play a crucial role because it enables us to bring people together across boundaries for shared experiences - and when we truly succeed, for concrete action.”
Based on your experience coordinating SDG-based activities and fostering communities around them, what advice would you offer cultural actors who want to create more SDG-based cultural offerings that reach new audiences?
“My best advice is to look at structures: identify where the intersections are, and build on what is already working. Replace wagging fingers with knowledge and facts. Culture can inspire and motivate, provide hope and opportunities for action - that is where we differ from many others.”
Finally, please share your thoughts on how other cultural institutions can implement similar projects to support work with the SDGs.
“WEEK17 is a tool for gathering and scaling efforts - we will not solve all the world’s challenges in just one week - but it is a cornerstone for creating new communities and, not least, new collaborations.
Many things are already working, and it would be easy for the rest of the cultural sector to contribute. As a concrete example, I can mention Climate Action Day, with more than 100,000 participants here in 2024, where people among other things eat plant-based meals together. Here, theatres/actors, musicians, and authors could contribute artistic content to attract even more citizens, who could then become part of communities and active sustainable action.”
Information from the presentation
Hvidbogen fra CONCITO og Democracy X. Marshall Ganz teori er beskrevet i kapitel 4 og 5.
Futures Literacy LAB guide fra UNESCO.
Udviklingsprojektet Litterære Folkehøringer
Upscaling sustainable collaborative consumption using public libraries, from Nordic Journal for Library and Informations Science. Vol. 4, no. 1 (2023). https://tidsskrift.dk/njlis/article/view/138194
What Is ‘Futures Literacy’ and Why Is It Important? Af Nicklas Larsen
Libraries Importance to Future Studies af Peter Bishop
Best-practice fra DB2030 certificeringen.
DB2030 vidensbanken, her findes alle ressourcer samlet med notifikationer.
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