Swarm Dynamics is a cross-disciplinary organization that harnesses arts, research and creative thinking to help engage wider audiences on sustainable development – focusing on systems level solutions. Drawing on the interdisciplinary talents of artists and experts, we promote rapid transformations towards a sustainable economy and inform awareness and action about solutions.

• Bridging research into systems level solutions with arts via accessible creative communications, connecting this with campaigners
• Commissioning creative content, or full scale public exhibitions that inform and inspire the public about solutions or possibilities
• Arts based enquiry – projects that investigate ways to break down, communicate, or educate about sustainable paradigm shift, by bringing experts and creatives together
• VR workshops – engaging audiences on pathways to alternative societies and sustainable futures
• Educational events – the art and science of communicating rapid transitions to zero carbon, environmentally and socially sustainable systems
• Advice and staff trainings for NGOs – applied creative thinking, artful storytelling and effective communications;
• Capacity building for artists about sustainable development, alternative economics, and other environmental solutions

We are a small charity based in East Sussex, doing big things, and committed to walking the walk on environmental sustainability and system change in all our projects and operations. We are proud to go through Nature Save as our ethical insurance provider for our charity. We bank with Triodos. And we use only zero carbon printing services from certified B Corporation SeaCourt to reduce the environmental impact of the physical exhibitions we have devised and created.

We collaborate with everyone who shares our charitable purpose, (see Work and Impact) and who strive for positive change on a systems level. Including environmental NGOs, higher education and research institutes, think tanks, as well as with artists who want to make a difference with their work.

Experts we have collaborated with in 2019/20 include:

• Professor Julie Doyle, University of Brighton (communicating climate change via the arts)
• Linda Gessner, Christine Corlet Walker, Amy Isham and Ben Gallant from the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) 
• Professor Jonathan Dawson (Head of Ecological Economics, Schumacher College)
• Professor Andy Stirling and the team of sustainability researchers he co-directs at STEPS Centre
• Professor Nicky Pouw (University of Amsterdam)

Our Trustees and staff combine expertise in climate change policy, campaign design, communications, arts management and arts practice. This means we can offer interdisciplinary solutions and generate informed new strategic directions in the campaign or policy work of changemakers. We strive to help others communicate effectively to the unconverted, and to translate the feasibility of system change through creative means. We believe in solutions-focused, informative and accessible art projects and communications strategies with popular appeal. Therefore, we have no interest in commissioning melting ice statues, or inaccessible art that remains stuck in small galleries and will not reach people’s daily lives. But we are interested in short films, graphic novels about system change, immersive exhibitions, online games about solving climate change, or cultural events with potential to help mainstream the issues and, step by modest step, shift the public understanding of what is possible. We also work to embed artists with experts to spark new thinking about solutions and how to communicate them. In this way, we restore the role of the artist as thinkers as well as makers. We seek to harness their unique sensitivities and imagination capital in advancing awareness and rapid action towards sustainable futures.

Swarm Dynamics works predominantly in England. We are based in Brighton/Lewes in the UK, while also having some satelite staff or volunteers also based in London, Birmingham, Brussels and Lisbon. Our creative and expert contact network extends to Europe, Australia, and Canada.