The 2012 Summit is a major arts and sustainability event presented by Volcano and the Centre for Alternative Technology, beginning with a Land Journey on foot and converging upon CAT's extraordinary and beautiful site in Machynlleth, mid-Wales.

Emergence 2012 brings CAT's pioneering work on low-carbon infrastructure together with Volcano's work on developing the role of the arts as a crucible of ideas and visions for a sustainable society. The Summit has two parts: an international conference of leaders, thinkers and visionaries; and a five-day land journey on foot through Wales, curated by Welsh artist Simon Whitehead, that will culminate at the conference.  

The purpose of the Summit is to reach across a gulf. Not a gulf between people, or between disciplines, but the much greater gulf between our objective understanding of the scale of the challenge facing humankind, and our ability to imagine a positive, practical future in which we have risen to that challenge and found new ways of living.

We know that this positive future is technically possible. One of the things that CAT brings to the Summit is Zero Carbon Britain - a  body of work and a wealth of resources that describe how we might bring about a zero-carbon future using existing technologies. We have the technologies we need: the main challenges now are much more social and political!

Invited delegates are given the opportunity to take part in the land journey and the conference, or the conference only. Several artists will be specially-commissioned to work at and around the Summit, and we envisage that considerably more art will be created along the way as part of the event. We actively encourage delegates to be participators and creators, not merely recipients of information.