Getting ahead together: PACESETTERS Summit

However, this is not a standard invitation to a typical event, but an experiment with a non-conventional approach that should enable us to discuss the rapidly changing roles of art and culture, heritage and creativity. There is an urgent need to create space and time to figure out how to move forward and get ahead together by forming new alliances between creativity, research and policymaking.

At stake are the powers to create affect and to be affected. In the face of threats such as war and big tech monopolies, which seem to overshadow the urgencies of the climate transition, can artists and creators compete with the fears these threats raise? How can we address widespread engagement fatigue, the rapid depletion of creative resources and capacities, and the resulting loss of confidence?

As the climate crisis unfolds and its direct and indirect consequences become increasingly evident and complex, the ambition to transition rapidly yet smoothly to renewable energies appears to be fading away from political agendas. This creates an urgent need to develop new strategies for moving forward together.

The PACESETTERS Summit is a polyclinic of creative practice. It provides an opportunity to recline, reflect and regain agency.  

At a critical juncture in the climate transition, PACESETTERS Summit is a polyclinic of creative practice. It connects practitioners from the various fields and geographical locations within art and culture, research and policymaking. 

PACESETTERS Polyclinic operates through creative production, cultural diagnosis, artistic experimentation and strategic planning. 

We have abandoned default formats such as keynote speakers followed by panel debates or World Café sessions, complemented by digital feedback tools, whiteboards, and other forms of ‘placebo’ participation.

Instead, we propose transforming La Termica, a former hospital in Málaga, back into a clinic. The aim is to reverse engineer a cultural centre and turn it into a polyclinic of creative practice.

Rather than raising awareness of apocalyptic scenarios, imagining behavioural manipulation and perpetuating a culture of complaint, PACESETTERS Polyclinic develops and tests measures driven by artistic intelligence, promoting creative subsistence and building aesthetic resilience — the capacity to maintain and restore integrity while adapting to and shaping societal, technological and cultural change. 

Rather than taking on the usual roles of speaker and audience, we will stage a series of overlapping and interconnected creative productions in a hybrid environment. Imagine them as film sets, role-play exercises, large-scale experiments, or prototypes for future collaborative formats driven by artistic intelligence.

PACESETTERS Polyclinic of Creative Practice will include waiting and emergency rooms, diagnostic areas, and zones for triage, transition and transformation. There will be cross-disciplinary consultations, collages and dialogues, online sessions and collaborative sprints with same-day results, as well as flexible formats open to ad hoc interventions. We are planning to set up micro-radio and video production facilities, as well as policy labs and research departments dedicated to repurposing place, wool futures, documentary theatre, cross-disciplinary fermentation, game engines, audience science and virtual production, to name but a few.

With a focus on art, research, governance, creativity, heritage and innovation, PACESETTERS Polyclinic of Creative Practice is founded on a dynamic, polycentric approach and organised into seven departments.

• Unlearning the creative self: Co-agency in new division of creative labour
• Rural innovation: Art and culture driving development in rural and remote areas
• Inverting instrumentality: Creative continuity across silos and value chains
• Collective entrepreneurship: Translocal, cooperative models of creative production
• Impact investment: Alternative forms of funding cultural and creative production
• Aesthetic resilience: The powers of artistic, rather than artificial intelligence
• Creative competitiveness: Cultural diversity as Europe‘s competitive edge.
   

PACESETTERS Polyclinic seeks antidotes to the delusions of fossil fuel regimes

PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice is an open platform to develop collaborations across creative sectors, actors and disciplines and assess their potential impact and value. 

It is built on both the power to create affect and the power to be affected. It will increase the will to create change and the ability to adapt to change. It will strengthen transversal skills and creative confidence.

When times are difficult, we don't need a miracle. What we need is an opportunity to gather our forces, restore our creative confidence and regain our ability to act together.

This summit will not feature a conventional conference programme promoting best practices and set instructions on what to do. There will be no staged debates with participants who all agree, or pointless exercises designed solely for the sake of participation.

By contrast, PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice will explore the current circumstances that enable us to make a difference. We will discuss the conditions to sustain this difference without repeating the same: the same mistakes, stereotypes or delusions of success.

At a time when the value propositions of the climate transition appear unable to compete with the allure of business as usual, it is urgent to create the space and take the time to rethink at least some, if not all of the underlying assumptions.

Whether you want to visit the clinic and join in person or participate online and contribute with your expertise remotely, please register as a SUMMIT delegate by filling the form below. 

Sign up for PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice