Abstract
Art is increasingly mobilised in climate governance and policy, yet often instrumentalised for predefined human agendas of data visualisation, awareness raising, and science communication. This paper explores design research’s role as a mediator of more radical art-driven participation that cultivates more-than-human care ecologies: relational configurations that redistribute sensing, accountability, and decision-making across human and other-than-human actors. Drawing on theories of care and affective politics, we examine how design research can support art-driven participation through a critical literature review. Three illustrative case studies addressing sustainable transitions on an interregional level, urban air pollution, and disaster recovery demonstrate a move from anthropocentric frames in policy making towards situated more-than-human co-composition. We argue that by mediating between artistic practice and governance, design research can foster more open, relational spaces for change. The paper opens a debate and calls for sensitive, tentacular mechanisms to understand and articulate just and resilient more-than-human climate futures.
Keywords
art, relationality, participatory design, more-than-human governance
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2070
Citation
Huybrechts, L., Choi, J., Clarke, R.E., Mazet, L., and Ohashi, K. (2026) Mediating More-than-Human care: Art, design and climate governance, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2070
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Mediating More-than-Human care: Art, design and climate governance
Art is increasingly mobilised in climate governance and policy, yet often instrumentalised for predefined human agendas of data visualisation, awareness raising, and science communication. This paper explores design research’s role as a mediator of more radical art-driven participation that cultivates more-than-human care ecologies: relational configurations that redistribute sensing, accountability, and decision-making across human and other-than-human actors. Drawing on theories of care and affective politics, we examine how design research can support art-driven participation through a critical literature review. Three illustrative case studies addressing sustainable transitions on an interregional level, urban air pollution, and disaster recovery demonstrate a move from anthropocentric frames in policy making towards situated more-than-human co-composition. We argue that by mediating between artistic practice and governance, design research can foster more open, relational spaces for change. The paper opens a debate and calls for sensitive, tentacular mechanisms to understand and articulate just and resilient more-than-human climate futures.