johnthorne521

What does a positive, meaningful response mean to crises like Climate Change? I've spent 20 years at Glasgow School of Art, Cairngorms National Park Authority and Heriot-Watt University asking what we can all do, whatever our discipline or sector, about the social and economic issues that affect our environment. At GSA I'm the in-house environmentalist, working through the curriculum on how we can as designers redesign our society and economy, and as artists how we can emotionally connect everyone to the need for urgent change. We need a positive, future vision which art can provide. We need to care and we need the agency to change. We need the ideas for change in place, and creative people are key to this process.

I support charities through my fundraising and report writing expertise, and sit on the Board of theatre group Vanishing Point. I talk regularly to artists in Ireland through Visual Artists Ireland. Whenever possible, I outreach to arts and science disciplines at universities across Scotland, asking students what they can achieve as business people, engineers, historians, psychologists and in many other subject areas in addressing the crises we face. I work closely with the Climate Psychology Alliance and helped form the Scottish branch.

With a BSc in Rural Development, an MA in Global Development Management, and a Pg Cert. in Teaching the Creative Disciplines, I take a broad interest in how economics, society and nature interact. And how humans must change to survive. I am not academic staff, but as a development professional have a unique position and approach to working with and across academic disciplines, holding tutorials with students, being involved in their projects, supporting their well-being, and giving them the agency to take action in their own field.

John Thorne