N.E.W. Loops, Associação Transdiciplinar

N.E.W. LOOPS stands for Nutrients Energy and Water LOOPS; it is the name of our non profit organization that aims towards preserving and
enhancing broken material LOOPS. Majority of human settlements, particularly bigger cities are breaking the natural LOOPS: we import water, food and energy; produce ‘waste’ and release it to the environment, where it acts as pollutant and devastates our ecosystems. To close the LOOPS we aim towards following concepts: harvesting resources locally such as rain water harvesting or decentralized energy systems; producing food locally (also within cities) by using local nutrients and water; turning our waste(water) into valuable materials, such as fertilizers (nutrients), energy and clean water, which is again used in our food production. In other words we aim to turn our human settlements into healthy ecosystems.

To reach our goals we are active in education, e.g. permaculture education, in developing and applying various environmental technologies and in awareness rising for sustainable living. We aim to establish an integrative educational platform, where profiles like environmental specialists, artists (from different roots, fields and specializations), school systems, municipalities and others interested in sharing knowledge on sustainability will meet.

By using artistic creativity and by mixing formal and non-formal education, this platform of mutual learning will serve as a base for the creation of innovative models of sustainable living. It will also stimulate creativity in people and, hopefully, it will also produce a more culturally enhanced environment in our society. Communitarian Theatre as one of our artistic tools is a powerful transformative art, because it includes non-artists and the community as players. As Augusto Boal said “Theatre is a way of knowledge, and it also must be a way of transforming society, it can help us to build the future, instead of waiting passively for it to come.”