Sustainability Network

            University of Brighton Sustainability Network 

The Sustainability Network takes a critical view of what 'sustainability' means both in terms of our university and our impact on the region and beyond. The facts of climate change, and the unsustainable human contribution to it, are gaining mainstream acceptance. At the same time, the term 'sustainability' is being used so indiscriminately, it now borders on the meaningless. The word originally referred to achieving a successful balance between all its constituent parts simultaneously: the social, the economic, and above all, the environmental. "Above all" because ecology's demonstration of the interdependence of humans and habitats is increasingly influencing governance and material production. This is a challenge to universities in general, and to Arts Faculties in particular, as they are major contributors to material culture. The Network is part of an ongoing questioning within the Faculty of the relationship between creativity and consumption.

The Sustainability Network brings together disciplines, research clusters, action groups and projects across the Faculty of Arts to increase the exchange of knowledge, the forging of new research alliances and the development of new and critical views of 'sustainability'. All entries share a common reconsideration of our environments – given, grown, imagined, built – and an appreciation of their social and cultural complexity.