2025年6月26日是联合国宪章发表80周年的特殊日子，在这历史性时刻，由联合国训练研究院纽约办事处（UNITAR-NYO）、国际艺术与文化研究院（IAA）联合主办，全球芭蕾中心（GBC）承办的“可持续发展的艺术：通过文化合作推进可持续发展目标（SDGs）”国际会议/ Arts for Sustainable Development: Advancing the SDGs Through Cultural Collaboration于纽约联合国总部正式举行。会议邀请来自中国、美国、意大利、西班牙、韩国的全球政策制定者、学者、艺术家与文化机构代表齐聚一堂，围绕文化合作与艺术赋能展开高水平交流与合作。
本次会议强调，数智时代的艺术不仅是审美表达的媒介，更是跨越语言与社会边界、连接人类共同价值的重要桥梁。在“可持续发展目标”这一全球议题下，会议通过主题演讲、跨界对话、青年特别环节、数字艺术展演等丰富形式，展现艺术在推动和平、公平与可持续发展中的独特价值，并重申全球文化团结对于未来人类社会的重要意义。
华中科技大学设计学院院长蔡新元教授受邀出席了在联合国总部举办的“可持续发展的艺术：通过文化合作推进可持续发展目标（SDGs）”国际会议，并作为“教育与艺术的未来格局：全球化时代的创新与发展”专题会议的特邀嘉宾发表演讲，围绕“共创未来——在全球化与智能时代重塑艺术教育与协作的可能”这一主题展开论述。
蔡新元教授以“全球化时代的创新协作与发展”为切入点，深入探讨了人工智能时代艺术教育的转型路径，特别强调人工智能教育在推动艺术创作与教学模式变革中的核心作用，聚焦如何在快速变化的全球环境中融合多元文化与技术革命，共同构建面向未来、可持续发展的全球艺术生态系统。
蔡新元教授的发言共分为四个部分：首先探讨人工智能对艺术创作模式所带来的深刻变革；其次分析全球化语境下艺术教育范式的跃迁趋势；第三描绘构建跨文化共创网络的未来愿景；最后呼应人类命运共同体的时代命题，提出新时代教育者的文化使命与责任。整场发言逻辑严谨、思想鲜明，体现出他作为艺术教育实践者和思想推动者的独特视角与坚定担当。
01.人工智能重塑艺术的可能性
蔡新元教授认为，人工智能正从工具走向“共创主体”，深刻改变艺术的生成方式和认知逻辑。其一，AI正去中心化艺术创作的权力结构，使创作不再局限于个体天赋，而是形成“人—机—社群”的协同机制，更加民主与多元。其二，AI艺术融合了科技、伦理、文化等多维视角，推动艺术教育向跨学科整合转型。其三，AI生成背后的文化偏见与价值预设，也对创作伦理提出新挑战，需要艺术教育者引导学生在实践中进行批判性反思。
02.全球视野下的艺术教育跃迁
面对全球化与智能化并行发展的时代，蔡新元教授提出，艺术教育必须从传统的“技能传授”走向“能力激活”。他强调，未来艺术人才需要具备三项核心能力：一是感知力，在信息过载与算法主导的社会中保持对真实的敏锐洞察；二是协作力，能在跨文化、多专业团队中完成复杂的集体创作；三是想象力，不仅适应未来，更有能力共同构建一个值得抵达的未来世界。他认为，AI不应被视为威胁，而应成为推动这些能力生成的“共谋者”。
03.构建全球共创的艺术教育网络
蔡新元教授提出，艺术教育的未来应突破国别、体制与资源的壁垒，走向“跨文化的创意网络”构建。回应联合国可持续发展目标（SDGs）他设想构建三类关键平台：其一，全球高校共用的AI艺术实验平台，让学生跨地域协同创作；其二，多语种、多文化的AI艺术数据资源库，增强AI系统对非西方文化语境的理解与表达能力；其三，艺术家、程序员与研究者组成的国际共创机制，重塑“创作与研究”、“艺术与工程”的边界。这种网络式协作，将为全球艺术教育注入前所未有的开放性与系统性。
04.结语：将未来变成正在发生的实践
在结语中，蔡新元教授强调，艺术教育工作者的核心责任，是把“未来”从空泛愿景变为正在发生的实践行动。这要求我们回应三个关键问题：如何培养具备技术理解力、审美判断力与文化批判力的新型创作者？如何通过协作机制，构建一个共享工具与价值的全球艺术共同体？又如何通过艺术实践，使“人类命运共同体”不仅是政治语言，更成为可触可感的文化体验？最后，他引用T.S. Eliot的诗句——“现在的时间与过去的时间，或许都存在于未来之中，而未来也被包含在过去之内”——表达出对人类艺术共同命运的诗性理解与庄重承诺。
英文演讲稿全文：
Co-Creating the Future: Reimagining the Possibilities of Art Education and Collaboration in the Era of Globalization and AI
Cai Xinyuan, School of Design, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
It is an honor to gather with friends from around the world at the“Arts for Sustainable Development：advancing the SDGs Through Cultural Collaboration”, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, where we discuss the future of art and education. In this forum, I will explore the transformation of art education in the AI era, and how we might co-build a future-oriented art ecosystem within a global context, starting from the theme of “Innovative Collaboration and Development in the Age of Globalization.”
In our rapidly changing world, we face not only the challenges brought by technological revolutions but also fundamental questions about how human civilization can navigate a path forward amidst pluralistic coexistence. Issues like climate change, regional conflicts, social fragmentation, and the disintegration of shared values profoundly shape the next generation’s lived experiences and modes of perception. Art education now stands at an unprecedented critical juncture: it must simultaneously respond to urgent realities and chart the course for the future.
I. Artificial Intelligence Redefining the Possibilities of Art
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transcended its role as a mere instrumental technological tool to become an active co-creator in artistic production and cultural expression. From AI-generated multimodal artworks to immersive video installations and intelligent sound design, AI has revolutionized not just how we create, but how we conceptualize creation itself. This paradigm shift presents three critical challenges and opportunities:
1) Decentralized Power Structures in Creation: AI dismantles the myth of the “lone genius artist,” transforming creation into a human-machine-community collaboration. This democratizes artistic practice, fostering unprecedented diversity in voices and visions.
2) Cross-Disciplinary Fusion in Expression: AI art inherently converges technology, philosophy, ethics, and cultural critique, demanding interdisciplinary integration in art
education. Future curricula must bridge coding, critical theory, and cultural studies to
equip students for hybrid creative landscapes.
3) Ethical and Cultural Reckoning: Whose aesthetic preferences are encoded into AI systems? Which cultural contexts do they inherit, and which marginalized narratives do they erase? These questions about embedded biases and ethical frameworks must be urgently addressed through education and practice.
II. The Transformation of Art Education in a Global Context
In an era where globalization and intelligent technologies converge, art education must evolve from skill inheritance to activating creativity, and from singular craftsmanship to multidimensional thinking. I propose three pillars for future art education:
Perception: In a world saturated with information overload and algorithmic recommendations, we must cultivate nuanced perceptual awareness—the ability to discern authenticity amid digital noise. Art remains the most potent medium to awaken this critical sensitivity.
Collaboration: Future creations will increasingly transcend temporal and spatial boundaries, emerging as cross-cultural, co-creative endeavors. Art education must prioritize training in cross-cultural understanding, collective co-creation, and fluency in shared technological languages.
Imagination: Education should not merely prepare students for the future but empower them to build a future worth inhabiting. The ultimate value of art education lies in nurturing humanity’s future-building capacity, where AI serves not as a replacement but as a co-conspirator in redefining possibilities.
III. Building a Co-Creation Network: Connecting Global Cultures through Education
“Arts for Sustainable Development” is not just the theme of this exhibition but the essence of today’s discussion. The future of art education must transcend the confines of national borders, institutional frameworks, or resource limitations to become a cross-cultural creative network.
Let us envision: a global AI experimentation platform uniting art institutions worldwide, where students across regions access open-source tools for collaborative projects. A multilingual, multicultural AI art data repository that empowers non-Western visual contexts to be recognized, trained, and expressed within AI systems.
An international collaboration framework integrating artists, programmers, and researchers to redraw the boundaries between creation and research, art and engineering. By weaving education into this network, we transform classrooms into global studios— spaces where cultural heritage and technological innovation converge to shape inclusive futures.
IV. Our Shared Mission
As art educators of this generation, our responsibility is to transform “the future” from an abstract vision into an unfolding practice. This practice must address three urgent
questions:
How can education cultivate new creators equipped with technical literacy, aesthetic discernment, and cultural critique? How can collaboration build a global art community that shares not only tools but also values? How can art transform the concept of a “shared human destiny” from political rhetoric into a lived emotional reality and cultural bond?
The answers lie in our innovative endeavors. To conclude, I invoke T.S. Eliot’s words from Four Quartets: “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.” Yes—in the depths of time, we share this moment while co-shaping the future of art education.
Thank you！
