This is an invitation to visit and contribute to the PACESETTERS Summit, which will take place from 12 to 16 November 2025 in Málaga. The event brings together artists, creators, researchers and policymakers for four intensive days in a Polyclinic of creative practice.

La Termica

The PACESETTERS summit will be held from 12-16 November 2025 at the cultural centre La Termica, a cultural centre in a former hospital located outside the city centre of Málaga

Photo: Florian Schneider

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. 

La Termica corridor

PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice is a dynamic platform for networking, experimentation, exchange and planning 

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. 

With a focus on art, research, governance, creativity, heritage and innovation, PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice is founded on a dynamic, polycentric approach. It includes cross-disciplinary consultations, diagnostic collages and dialogues, online sessions and collaborative sprints with same-day results, as well as flexible formats open to ad hoc interventions.

PACESETTERS Polyclinic is focused on creative production 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.
     
Impact, value, quality

PACESETTERS Compass of Advanced Practice presents a diagram of practical propositions and postulations.

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. 

PACESETTERS Polyclinic seeks antidotes to the delusion that regressing to the fossil fuel regimes of the past century is still an option. 

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.

However, this summit will not feature a conventional conference programme promoting best practices and set instructions on what to do. There will be no keynote speakers, staged panel debates with lparticipants 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 by filling the form below. 

Sign up for PACESETTERS Polyclinic of creative practice

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The data will be collected and processed in accordance with EU GDPR and PACESETTERS Privacy Policy. Personal information will not be shared outside the PACESETTERS consortium partners. 

 

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