The Mediterranean countries are feeling the first tangible outcomes of the rising global temperature with annual fires and deadly heatwaves, the statistics of global (and national) temperatures in North Europe keep going upwards, and the science is getting outright alarming, considering the possible outcomes. No-one can dispute that climate change is happening, and fewer and fewer people still maintain it is not caused by humans. It is a reality and it is happening now. This is why Tiny Spaces Deep Connections is committed to ecological sustainability in forms of mandatory slow travel and preferring recycled or reused materials, creating new use for unused buildings, and developing ways to reduce travel altogether by using digital tools within the creative process. We also raise the awareness of social sustainability – during the artists’ travel and residency they get to connect with local communities and each other, so that they can find opportunities in those networks after the residency has ended.
All this is not based on a whim that it’s nice to travel in trains, but data. Let’s look a little closer to why we think all that data is so important. First of all, we now know that in the recorded 174 years, the global temperature has risen about 0,6 degrees Celsius per decade, ending with the hottest year ever recorded in 2023 – a record that will be broken once 2024 ends. The European Union has decreed that it will be totally carbon neutral by 2050, Commercial flights make only 2.5% of annual CO2 emissions, but are the densest carbon dioxide emitter. For instance, a one-way flight from Helsinki to Berlin releases 151 grams of CO2 per kilometre – half a ton in total, per passenger. Taking a train is roughly one fifth of that amount. So, even though slow travel is slow (it’s in the name), there’s a huge difference in CO2 emissions.
You might think that fossil fuels in road travel, aviation and smokestack industry are the main culprits for the climate change. Actually, it is construction – and especially concrete construction, which is the bulk of urban construction by far. The construction industry covers approximately 37% of all CO2 emissions when extraction and replacement of the ground soils are taken into account. And concrete is the culprit for 8% of all CO2 emissions in the world, more than three times the emissions of all aviation. So there is a good reason to use buildings that otherwise would become decrepit hovels and would be torn down so another building could be erected in their place. A building re-used is a building worth keeping.
To add to the ecological side, we improve the social sustainability of the residency locations by forming international and local communities that can interact during the artist’s travel and the residency proper. The urban centres have a habit of neglecting local communities in favour of larger, more commercial backgrounds of business, culture or entertainment. We want to introduce local residents, entrepreneurs and artists to the residency visitors, and allow them to create together. They could have workshops, small exhibitions in a café, use a local business for panel discussions on culture and locality, express pop-up creativity, whatever comes to mind. The beauty lies in the small things that exist in the immediate neighbourhood, and we are all for that.
And while we are on the subject of networks, no artist in the modern world can cope without at least some, and in our minds, the more the better. We will collaborate with existing artists’ networks during travel by meeting them during stopovers while on the rails, letting the creators get to know each other and gain the possibility of collaboration, mutual support, and extending their reach in the European cultural landscape.