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The Atlas Workshop project discussed with the participating scientists, artists, students, and local stakeholders how to counteract possible tipping points and thus
promote sustainable development. The following points were highlighted:
• Strengthening the community and maintaining the traditional common pool
resources management to avoid social conflicts;
• Maintaining sustainable oasis agriculture also under agricultural intensification
in order to keep the socio-ecological system resilient;
• Implementing a circular economy to achieve a better resource efficiency and to
avoid waste problems;
• Promoting sustainable tourism jointly with the local stakeholders in order to
mitigate environmental and cultural problems;
• Searching for compromises between traditional and modern construction; as a
suggestion, architects at Oldenburg University (Florian Schick, personal communication) propose hybrids that combine steel skeleton construction with
earthen architecture;
• The Ahwash performers explicitly want to make the Ahwash known beyond the
borders of the community and thus strengthen it as a cultural asset of the Amazigh
in Morocco, and at the same time open it for new ideas.
The Third Space
The great diversity of the cultural backgrounds of the participants had a significant
impact on the Atlas Workshop project. The Third Space is characterized on the one
hand by demarcations and on the other hand by communication and hybridization
of cultures. This semi-permeability includes not only a spatial, but also a temporal
extension and can be understood as a process with an uncertain course for the participants. The challenge in such an arrangement is to examine the values of one’s
own culture, to question one’s own cultural predisposition, and to integrate it as a
participant into a common work. The cultural diversity and the artistic and scientific
environment fostered an open exchange and resulted in (a) new methodological
approaches, (b) synergies and hybrid artistic paths, and (c) a revitalization and valorization of tangible and intangible heritages.
New Methodological Approaches
The intercultural and transdisciplinary exchange showed the natural and social scientists that music and dance have very different approaches and methods than the
ones they are familiar with. The artists invited all the participants to a “Tuning in”
in the morning and to “Drift ‘n’ dialogues” during the day.
– “Tuning in” is a method of starting the day with somatics (according to Hanna
1986, soma is the unity of the conscious and unconscious sensory–motor
U. Nehren et al.
The Atlas Workshop project discussed with the participating scientists, artists, students, and local stakeholders how to counteract possible tipping points and thus
promote sustainable development. The following points were highlighted:
• Strengthening the community and maintaining the traditional common pool
resources management to avoid social conflicts;
• Maintaining sustainable oasis agriculture also under agricultural intensification
in order to keep the socio-ecological system resilient;
• Implementing a circular economy to achieve a better resource efficiency and to
avoid waste problems;
• Promoting sustainable tourism jointly with the local stakeholders in order to
mitigate environmental and cultural problems;
• Searching for compromises between traditional and modern construction; as a
suggestion, architects at Oldenburg University (Florian Schick, personal communication) propose hybrids that combine steel skeleton construction with
earthen architecture;
• The Ahwash performers explicitly want to make the Ahwash known beyond the
borders of the community and thus strengthen it as a cultural asset of the Amazigh
in Morocco, and at the same time open it for new ideas.
The Third Space
The great diversity of the cultural backgrounds of the participants had a significant
impact on the Atlas Workshop project. The Third Space is characterized on the one
hand by demarcations and on the other hand by communication and hybridization
of cultures. This semi-permeability includes not only a spatial, but also a temporal
extension and can be understood as a process with an uncertain course for the participants. The challenge in such an arrangement is to examine the values of one’s
own culture, to question one’s own cultural predisposition, and to integrate it as a
participant into a common work. The cultural diversity and the artistic and scientific
environment fostered an open exchange and resulted in (a) new methodological
approaches, (b) synergies and hybrid artistic paths, and (c) a revitalization and valorization of tangible and intangible heritages.
New Methodological Approaches
The intercultural and transdisciplinary exchange showed the natural and social scientists that music and dance have very different approaches and methods than the
ones they are familiar with. The artists invited all the participants to a “Tuning in”
in the morning and to “Drift ‘n’ dialogues” during the day.
– “Tuning in” is a method of starting the day with somatics (according to Hanna
1986, soma is the unity of the conscious and unconscious sensory–motor
U. Nehren et al.