Author of the book "The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: culture's essential role in public planning". With this book, Hawkes significantly contributed to transforming the basic structure of public policy making. The core concept that informs his work has become central to many policy development strategies at the local level throughout the world. By proposing culture as a fourth perspective from which to view sustainability (and indeed, all of the key concerns of public policy), Hawkes not only raised culture to the same level as the three traditional dimensions of policy development – economic, social and ecological – he also helped to focus the "sustainability" discourse on culture. For Hawkes, culture "has always been a process rather than a product" and its value "lies in its making far more than in what is made." Consequently, locally generated cultural action becomes the key to sustainable development and takes place within and between communities. Without a vital and inclusive public culture, imagining a future (what else is planning?) can never be effective or wholesome. Always committed to practical local action, Jon currently works with Melbourne-based organisations, Ilbijerri Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative, The Substation Multi Arts Centre and J-Studios, an artist run studio collective.

Website: ‘The Hawkes Library’.

Sociologist and activist, she is a member of the free independent collective Colectivx Ch’ixi in Bolivia. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has been professor of Sociology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz (UMSA), where she is now Emeritus Professor, and has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Columbia (New York, USA), Austin (Texas, USA), La Rábida (Huelva, Spain), Jujuy, and the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito, Ecuador). Along with other intellectuals, in 1983 she founded the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA), a self-managed group which focuses on orality, identity and the indigenous and popular social movements, particularly in the Aymara region. In the last few years she has also been involved in the setting-up of El Tambo Colectivo, a cultural centre in La Paz which aims to combine academic knowledge, manual work and environmental practices. She is the author of several books, and she has also directed fiction and documentary videos and films. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s work deals with continuity in the logic of domination of indigenous identities and cultures, including in those contexts where diversity and the value of indigenous cultures have been officially recognised.

Website (in Spanish): www.colectivachixi.blogspot.com.es

Facebook (in Spanish): facebook.com/colectivxchixi

Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of City and Regional Planning of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) in the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Manuel Castells’ work has emphasized the important role of social movements and new technologies in the transformation of the city. He has documented urban transformations, recognizing the important role that culture plays in these processes. He has promoted a more decisive role of cities and local governments in a globalization created by and for the people and social movements. He has systematically advocated a new model of sustainable society which includes diversity, locality and creativity as basic elements. He has promoted the concept of “project identity” to describe the collective action needed to guide the future of all societies.

Pakistani sociologist, Farida Shaheed has worked on projects which incorporate culture to reinforce human rights. Her career in the United Nations began in 2009 as an independent expert and since 2012 she has been the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights. From her position, Shaheed has proposed several initiatives to integrate culture and human rights. Farida Shaheed’s periodic reports are fundamental references in the relationship between culture, human rights and sustainable development. She has identified and documented the main challenges of cultural rights present in our societies, including the freedom of artistic expression, memory processes and cultural rights of women. She is an essential reference in the struggle for explicit consideration of culture in the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.