Sustainability – the system as a whole

When I first started working in sustainability, I equated sustainability with environmental issues. Like most people, I knew the situation was dire. There are arctic glaciers melting faster than our Government is capable of implementing climate action. I enjoyed working in something with a bigger purpose but I had no training or qualifications in sustainability. My background is actually in theatre where being ‘sustainable’ once had quite negative connotations.

In the late 1990s government funding bodies, researchers, and academics began to rebrand the sector as the ‘Creative Industries’ – aligning creativity with economic outputs and placing visual artists and actors alongside engineers, architects and industrial designers. This approach, combined with ever-diminishing government funding meant that artists and arts organisations were increasingly expected to be ‘sustainable’; that is, self-sufficient, commercially viable, and, ideally, independent of government support. This was the beginning of the end for arts practices not capable of or contradictory to commercialisation (e.g. youth and community arts, experimental arts, most theatre).  Now, over twenty years later, we are seeing the consequences of this erosion. Larger, commercial theatres struggle to find original content and the younger generation of artists traditionally responsible for shaping the sector’s future has almost disappeared with the loss of support for youth arts.

Although I came to work in sustainability by accident rather than design, I realised that sustainability, like the arts, is an entire ecosystem and more than the environment alone. Sustainability is the ultimate in design or systems thinking – it doesn’t separate people and human behaviour from their environments – and my background as a dramaturg in theatre has helped me see the bigger picture of sustainability.

In theatre, dramaturgy refers to the theory and practice of script development and requires a broad and deep understanding of all the elements of a play – characters, dialogue, themes, images, structure, plot, symbols, tension, form, style etc. – and how they constitute a, hopefully, seamless whole. A script is a unique kind of text – written to be spoken aloud and enacted before a live audience, not read. Aside from children’s books, plays are possibly the most excruciatingly difficult form of writing – requiring intense collaboration with directors, actors, designers, and dramaturgs to create something entirely ephemeral and alive.

One of my favourite Australian playwrights is David Finnigan. His award-winning 2014 play, Kill Climate Deniers, invoked the reactionary rage of Andrew Bolt without even reading or seeing the then unproduced work. The title was enough to upset Bolt’s fragile superego. What I love most about Finnigan’s work is not just his anarchic satirical style (extremely rare in Australian theatre) or the way he merges science and art as performance activism – it’s his understanding of dramaturgy.

Unlike the writer, a dramaturg doesn’t create the actual script, but they do help design it. Sometimes a play is referred to as a ‘blueprint for action’ and sometimes a dramaturg as the ‘architect’. But the most accurate description of dramaturgy I’ve ever read is Finnigan’s comparison to ‘design thinking’ – where dramaturgy helps create an experiential map that will lead the audience on an emotional journey. In his analogy, dramaturgy is a form of systems thinking that accounts for not just the script elements but the entire performative experience – from the moment the audience enters the space (or, in Bolt’s case, from the moment they even hear about the work) to long after they have left. The script becomes a kind of set of instructions outlining the system for a specific set of ideas and how to put these ideas into actions that encourage people to think and feel and, maybe, change. Finnigan uses this dramaturgy and collaborates with scientists and researchers to create highly interactive and transformative Green Dramaturgy: “performances and… games at the intersection of science and art”.As Finnigan succinctly explains: “We live in systems… There are climate systems, social systems and political systems – and they are all interconnected and linked”. Sustainability and dramaturgy are about understanding how the parts fit into and impact each other as part of a whole; a much bigger system.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are designed to provide a framework for action, a dynamic script, for changing our socio-eco system. Introduced in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 17 SDGs are “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere”. Each Goal has its own specific targets but are, crucially, interrelated. Ending poverty (SDG #1) is inherently tied to eliminating hunger (SDG #2) but neither of these can be achieved without climate action (SDG #13) and access to clean water and sanitation (SDG #6) to improve food production and good health (SDG #3). Reducing the social inequalities of poverty and hunger also means addressing gender, cultural and educational equity (SDG #5, SDG #4, SDG #10) as well social justice and peace (SDG #16), since it is women, people with disabilities, and indigenous and culturally diverse peoples who are, globally, largely excluded from decision making in a range of political and socio-economic spheres and most likely to be un(der)employed or unpaid for their labour (SDG #8), impacted by war, and subject to biased health, education and employment systems. While the SDGs are not a perfect system, they are currently the only internationally accepted one we have and there are now less than ten years to meet their increasingly elusive targets – “end poverty, rescue the planet and build a peaceful world”.

This is why a broader understanding of sustainability is so important. A sustainable approach to any organisation, school, industry, or workplace sees how all its elements – people, products, productivity, policies, public profile and engagement – are interrelated and treats that workplace as an ecosystem. Embedding the SDGs into universities, for example, means mapping work and achievements, capacity building, prioritisation, and implementation of the SDGs across teaching, research, operations and governance as well as external partnerships.

The importance of acknowledging sustainability as an ecosystem in higher education can be demonstrated through gender equity, for instance. Many universities encourage women to return to study to upskill or improve their employability within the workforce after childcare duties. But no Australian university offers free or heavily subsidised childcare for employees or students although most have (predominantly female) students in early education. Female academics are still underrepresented at higher levels of management, governance, teaching and research despite decades of activism and STEAM programs. A recent Conversation article highlighted the inherent and subconscious sexism of mentoring programs for women. All of this is part of a broader, systemic problem. A few years ago, I was at a children’s party with about eight other women. All of us had postgraduate degrees. Not one of us had a full-time job. One of the women had never had full-time job in her life despite having a PhD in mathematics because she was the primary carer for three children. Addressing the problem of gender equity in education and the broader workforce takes more than prioritising female applicants or offering mentoring programs. It takes long-term and strategic planning that facilitates women’s participation in education as students and employees both within and without the university sector. It means addressing at least five SDGs - SDG 4 Quality Education, SDG 5 Gender Equity, SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 10  Reduced Inequalities, and SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals.

SDG 17 is perhaps the most important Goal. It requires us to work together, to collaborate, and acknowledge that it takes collective effort to change the world and address the complex challenges we, and future generations, face. Individual industry, even small teams, can only go so far. It isn’t until we recognise that we are all part of an ecosystem not just an environment that significant change will happen. But unlike dramaturgy, you don’t need expert training or specialised knowledge or long-held experience to make a difference in sustainability – you just need to see the bigger picture.