29 November 2024, by Co-Creation & Engagement Center

Photo: CEC UCaser 2024

The demand to achieve and ultimately measure "impact" is increasingly coming to the forefront in various fields, particularly with regard to sustainability transformation.

Interdisciplinary experts jointly examined at the one-day symposium & workshop Politics of Impact on November 29, 2024, how the political call for "impact" shapes universities, museums, and industries in specific ways. Against the backdrop of a broad spectrum of institutional and disciplinary backgrounds, discussions focused on how impact is approached, implemented, and operationalized in different areas. What concepts, practices, and instruments emerge and circulate to make impact visible and measurable for different audiences?

Public institutions such as universities or museums, as well as industry, are expected to contribute to solving pressing local and global challenges by collaborating with various stakeholders and demonstrating their effectiveness and success, but also to understand and critically analyze them. It is therefore urgently necessary to understand how existing institutional practices, new participatory approaches, and the pursuit of "impact" relate to one another, mutually condition, and reshape each other.

We thank our speakers and all participants for their inspiring contributions: Zinaida Vasilyeva and Julia Diekämper (Museum für Naturkunde - Berlin) | Lena Theiler (Institute for Social-Ecological Research – ISOE – Frankfurt am Main) | Iliyana Madina (Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy IMW – Leipzig) | Felizia von Schweinitz (University of Hamburg - Hamburg) | Lotte Warnsholdt (Museum am Rothenbaum – Cultures and Arts of the World – MARKK – Hamburg) | Tina Heyne (Atelier für Zeitgenossen & HADLEY's – Hamburg)