This year has been exciting for a number of planet-centred things I have been a part of doing. All of them have had a focus on positive transformative action. In a global context that is frightening, working with others, focusing on the local and doing beautiful things together is some kind of heartening response.
In no particular order…
Earth Day this year saw me collaborating with ONCA and Culture Declares Emergency South East Coast Hub, grateful to the Sussex Impact Accelerator Fund and a team of colleagues, for “From Eco-Anxiety to Action” day at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, UK. So many high spots during the day, thanks to the inspiring curation by CDE. See a CDE discussion session on the same topic.
I’ve been following the wonderful Zoop project across Europe (as far as possible by train) while it rolls out project zoops in Italy, Portugal, Germany and Sweden with Speakers for the Living. As watcher-in chief, I’ve seen their workshop format develop and even had a little input as the ecological dimensions took on a life of their own.
In Felixstowe, a small English coastal town, Ruth Catlow of Furtherfield and I created and ran #thiscoastaltown to see what eco-social readiness and resilience might look like if inspired by doing live action roleplay (LARP). The first outings were encouraging and we are planning more.
I presented a paper on More-than-Human Participatory Approaches for Design: Method and Function in Making Relations and ran a workshop about Affective Prefiguration (the chance to taste different possible relations that we want in the future) at academic conferences during summer.
I turned many of the key points from the CreaTures Framework into cards that can be used for workshops, with thanks to some University of Sussex budget and help from Nora Davies. (Ping me if you want the digital set to print out locally.) You can see them if you scroll down in this CreaTures case study, prepared for the Institute of Development Studies’ pages on participation.
I looked at some old resources that might be worth digging out again. Sprouting Bonds is a community booklet about why growing things to eat serves more than just to provide food. Making Media with Communities is useful for arguing about a more equitable basis in giving credit when working with groups. And even some of my early writing for a service about user-centred design could be resurrected through the Way Back Machine to critique tech.
My fellowship on participative embodied encounters has been enriching, bringing me into contact with people and ideas that would otherwise be wishful thinking in my pursuit of cutural change. I hope to share more soon. Finding a good way to speak about the phenomenon I am studying would be a start.
With Ruth, I have been revisiting The Treaty of Finsbury Park to hear how people experienced it and to catch people after their Interspecies Meditation in the park. Our chapter on Treaty with Lara Houston is also now published.
Rachel Clarke, Sara Heitlinger and I gave a mini-performance at the EASST conference of our short pieces projecting into the life of an urban river and what brews when it floods. This is now a chapter under review for thinking about more-than-human temporalities.
The Tidal Garden, Lewis White and I had a look at salt marshes around Sussex Bay to consider if the new local coastal initative would provide a good counterpoint to their work growing and foraging salt-tolerant species in the Venice region.
The Lorentz Center, NL, workshop on “And then what? From Narratives and Scenarios to Climate Action” brought a range of humanities and social science scholars together with artists and designers for four days to discuss action beyond scientific (and other forms of) analysis.
Most of this has been in addition to work on two European more-than-human-flavoured projects: Bauhaus of the Seas Sails and ReWorlding.
And a bit of MTH fun that turned up during the year: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=421306149443915&set=pcb.421306219443908
Now I’ve begun planning a monthly series of events at the University of Sussex called “Immersing in Alternative Futures” for 2025.