From Ideas to Impact

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From Ideas to Impact

Collaborating with Salzburg Global Seminar provides people and institutions with opportunities to expand their work, launch new joint initiatives, and advance shared agendas. To foster lasting networks and partnerships, we are integrating a range of practical activities for impact into our program design. 

ALISON TICKELL. Julie’s Bicycle founder launched campaign #Art4Climate after meeting Nuttall at The Art of Resilience: Creativity, Courage and Renewal.

Combating Extremism and Promoting Pluralism 

Discussions in Salzburg spark new ideas and initiatives. To help ignite innovative projects, Salzburg Global and our partners have started offering travel and project grants.

Throughout 2017, Salzburg Global and UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office supported pilot projects from the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention series, aimed at combating extremism and promoting pluralism.

Fellows from Rwanda and South Africa collaborated in launching the Change Makers Program, a leadership program for high school students. Using case studies on the Rwandan genocide, South African apartheid and the Holocaust, students develop critical thinking skills and are empowered to be agents of positive change. 

In Egypt, educators at the American University of Cairo (AUC) established the Civic Peace Education Initiative. This strives to integrate community-based learning, intergenerational dialogue and storytelling into the curriculum and prompts students and faculty to think about societal divides and adopt values of global citizenship. Similarly, Fellows at the International University of Rabat in Morocco developed a graduate degree program in Conflict Resolution and Peace Governance. 

In Pakistan, as part of its mission to protect youth against extremist recruitment efforts, the Renaissance Foundation for Social Innovation, Pakistan (RESIP) used this funding to conduct a study on the effect of socio-religious identities in shaping university students’ behavior. Elsewhere in the country, our Fellows at Kohat University launched a study circle to connect students across the country’s northwestern provinces. 
All five pilot projects are poised for expansion or replication over the course of 2018 and 2019.


Sparking Creative Responses to Climate Change

UK-based charity Julie’s Bicycle helps the creative community inspire action on climate change. Following The Art of Resilience: Creativity, Courage and Renewal, they partnered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Salzburg Global to take this to the world stage.

Alison Tickell, founder and CEO of Julie’s Bicycle, and Nick Nuttall, UNFCCC Director of Communications, harnessed our Fellowship network to launch #Art4Climate. In the run-up to the 2017 UN Climate Conference, this campaign showcased innovative arts initiatives every week on the UNFCCC website, featuring the world’s first “sustainable dance floor,” comic art, interactive art exhibitions, pollution mask art and much more.
Tickell believes #Art4Climate was just the “tip of the iceberg” and has already returned to Salzburg to expand awareness of artistic activism with the international research and development community.

Extending Human Rights

Driving sustainable change requires coalition-building. The Salzburg Global LGBT Forum has created many mutually-beneficial partnerships among civil society, governments and international agencies. 

“Taking part in the conversations and understanding the main topics, not only globally but in Africa and Latin America, and understanding how they relate to Asia has been invaluable,” says Edmund Settle, UNDP Bangkok Regional Policy Advisor. 

To mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOT) in 2017, Salzburg Global Fellow Tamara Adrian, Chair of the IDAHOT committee, helped adopt the theme of “LGBT families” following her participation in our “Family is…” project, run in partnership with the German Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women & Youth since 2015.

The LGBT Forum also joined forces with the World Bank on IDAHOT to call for inclusion and equality for families and their LGBT children, sharing the message of “Family is Love.”

Marrying Implementation and Evaluation

In 2016, researchers and evaluators attended Better Health Care: How Do We Learn About Improvement? The discussions led five Fellows to co-author a supplement for the International Journal for Quality Health Care (ISQua), published in April 2018.

Rashad Massoud, Leighann Kimble, Don Goldmann, John Øvretveit and Nancy Dixon also invited other Fellows to contribute peer-reviewed articles, reflecting on the Salzburg program and the need to design, implement and evaluate improvement in health care. 

Concluding the ISQua supplement, program chair, Massood wrote: “The principal accomplishment of the [meeting] was to ‘marry’ the world of improvement and evaluation… A ‘wedding ceremony’ between rigorous implementation and insightful evaluation concluded the [program] in the inspiring environment of Schloss Leopoldskron.”

Inspiring Artistic Exchange

As an internationally-acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist and designer, Francis Sollano is known for his work with unusual fabrics, such as upcycling garbage into wearable art. He has now also become an advocate for the welfare of aboriginal communities and the use of their fabrics. He said, “It was during the Salzburg week that I realized that I have to work closely with the indigenous communities.” Sollano has since launched a collection of shirts made with indigenous fabrics, helping to provide a community with higher profit margins for their products. 

As Executive Director of Youth for a Livable Cebu, the Filipino artist has taken part in campaigns on urban sustainability. Thanks to Salzburg Global, Sollano has found more “complementary” collaborators, including Margaret Shiu, an artist based in Taiwan. Together they have formed a program teaching students about environmental conservation.