Although the research network related to the SSRU represents many different interests, emphases and approaches, we are connected by certain key commitments, understandings and motivations.

These include:

• an expanded view of ‘capital’ and of art
• an emphasis on joined up thinking and practice
• an understanding of the connection between inner and outer work, between imagination and transformation, and the need to explore how we can become ‘agents of change’
• a perception of crises as opportunities for consciousness
• an exploration of different forms of ‘knowing’
• a view that the ecological crisis is not just about the environment out there
• a recognition of the connection between aesthetics and ethics: between imagination, the experiential and our ability-to-respond
• the connection between freedom and responsibility
• the relationship between the individual and new forms of viable community
• the poetics of imagination and connective aesthetics
• creative strategies of engagement and practice-based research
• historical and philosophical studies related to Joseph Beuys, Rudolf Steiner, Goethean methodology and other phenomenological thinkers and approaches
• ‘internal mobilisation’ and approaches to overcoming denial
• reflections on activism, new social movements and radical change
• a focus on experiential knowing and related phenomenological practices
• social sculpture as an enquiry into the philosophy and practice of freedom
• a commitment to shaping a humane and ecologically viable world