Our group represents a diverse field of interests within sustainability and the arts. They cover a range of practices: visual arts, such as painting or dyeing; sculpture; handcrafted artifacts; performance and immersive theatre; and food. A quite wide range of practices, meaning that the Artcycling products will potentially be very diverse.

The artists in the group work with questions like: What you can learn from studying nature’s processes of making; exploring the beauty of the broken through exquisite handcraft techniques; the value of making by hand; changing perspectives on trash to something useful and possibly beautiful; expressing from the essence; enabling learning processes in how to behave in more sustainability-oriented ways, to mention a few.

This is a quite ambitious group, stemming both from their relatively high experience level as artists and/or professionals in other fields, but also from the fact that sustainability is well-established value in Denmark. It is no longer a strong ‘key performance indicator’ to be able to say that you are re-using materials or using environmentally friendly elements in your production. The field of upcycling and recycling of materials, especially in the design market, is booming. This attracts many artists to working more sustainably, and raises the bar for what is seen as a unique value in the work of an artist.

The Danish Artcyclers are eager to learn and look forward to integrating upcycling and working creatively with new ‘living’ materials in their work.