Creative Futures Studio
In a real world studio space, we explore the movement and art of Solar Punk.
The Creative Futures Studio envisions how the future might be, and how we might express and create that future. The Creative Futures Studio is a venture of WorkSmith Permaculture.
Commenced 2022
Resources
Stuart Candy – futurist frameworks –
six pillars: future thinking for transformation
Studio Diary 2023
What’s happening Right now?
December 2024
loosely supporting the Solar punk conference organising 2024 – planetary time zones the last frontier?
studies of living systems
research on art, wellbeing and imagination – futuring
Studio Diary 2023
Private work in creating
Trying to find an affordable studio space locally with sunlight…
Talking with movers and shakers in Woollongong…planning a solarpunk fashion workshop for 2024
Invited the locals to join in on ongoing monthly studio space (starting in July – Now!!)
Planning a summer place and space for youth.
Live sketch-noting solar punk 2023 conference speakers
SOLARPUNK STUDIO DIARY 2022
Explorations in solarpunk with Vee Malnar
https://www.portfolio.worksmith.com.au/solar-punk/
Exhibition
Vee and I make a video and exhibit it in South Australia.
Final week
Final week of the studio. We had a show and share and a party.
Aim for a small studio exhibition sometime maybe in summer at a friendly gallery.
I finished 4 pieces inspired by the energy of the group the week before!
Radio fun
2xx community radio interviewed Vee and I early one Friday morning
- find the recording here 12 AUG 9 am show (first interview after the news).
halfway…
The studio workshops are halfway /over through our first series – ‘they get it’! we declare….what will happen next? who knows! our next most elegant step will be creative!
Our first studio collaborative piece (acrylics, stencil, wrapping and card paper collage on corflute – recycled election posters, A2)
the in between
Group dynamics – as we learn and set our directions
corresponding with Jay Springett about the studio, exploring grants and wondering why I have to, presenting to the PEI Permaculture Education Institute and drawing/exploring methods.
Keeping up with our journalling for benefit of the curriculum and what we learn, reflect, process and create
Second session preparation – tonight is about backgrounds and layering textures.
Went to Sydney and saw a speculative design exhibition using 3 D printing –
& a brilliant exhibition of biomimicry with plants imitating underwater plants.
First studio session
Our first session went so well in a warm and cosy HIVE environment.
We talked about solar punk and saw some of the popular images on the internet.
We meditated on what our local neighbourhood might be like in 10 years time – how will it smell, what will we be wearing, how will people get around? Everyone saw a different view (of course that’s the beauty of a group!)
We played with creating some quick backgrounds in acrylics using colour, blending and creativity.
Final weekend before we start
– Getting our gear together for the solar punk art workshops – & all those last things while the 2 of us are in separate places for the week before :0
I found all my old art materials and a few art books with pages unused left over from my kids’ years at Steiner schools. Very useful to share over the next 10 weeks.
Realising we want to record our sessions with our small group of ‘founders’ – a new task to do.
Typical for me I am swatting up on solar punk and listening to Jay Springett (the solar punk human encyclopaedia) and loving that he tells me ‘solar punk is what you want it to be’ ‘world creating’ and ‘axioms not rules’ to guide us.
The more I say ‘the nexus between humans, ecology and technology in the future we want to live well in’ the more people I talk to say ‘wow that sound interesting’. (so polite!).
Belief driving this action – it is important to talk loudly about the future we want and show what it might look like in as many ways as possible to engage our imagination and inspire our daily actions.
Starting up
Solar Punk Art Workshops – invitation poster
Feeling shit scared, anxious and pleased.
Collaborating with Vee Malnar, artist, Creative futures studio aims to explore the style of solar punk and immerse ourselves in envisioning possible futures.
What will the intersection between nature, humans and technology be?
What can you imagine? How would you visualise or express that future?
Phase – invite – engaging with our artists and audience, building a tribe to participate in workshops and share ideas
https://www.facebook.com/CreativeFuturesStudio/
https://events.humanitix.com/solar-punk-art-space-creative-futures
Broaden and build – ideas tossing, practice sessions with me as tester/guinea pig – contender for a prize of not so very good art student to teach ever. Tested our limits, identified our personal bias and worked pretty amazingly well together considering we only met 2 months ago. Socialised the idea and got a venue to run the whole shebang. Worked the budget to make it work for all.
initial exploration with Vee Malnar (visual artist) – Experimentation phase – proof of concept, subject of one.
First session with Vee exploring collage
Second session with Vee. Dismembered collage and acrylics
Exploration – ‘where will the children play?’
Collage, acrylics on paper – Lizzy Smith 2022
Using a photograph I took while on a farm in Victoria Australia that was being restored by a permaculture designer, I came across this lovely creek slated to be a ‘glamping’ site. Glamping puts people into natural settings without the discomfort and depravity of camping.
Thinking of the future natural environments – maybe the only natural scenes and experiences left to us will be holographic experiences, despite the holistic systems design and best efforts by permaculture designers to regenerate natural places.
Where will our children go when we say ‘go out and play’. Here the little boy of the future is exploring a creek bed just like I used to do as a child. His experience is only preserved by the efforts of the restoration allowing holographs to capture the beauty of a creek in the Australian country.
The second image shows the boy leaving to return to his reality with the fragments of remembered nature dissolving behind him.
Reflections: I found it hard to imagine a positive future here. I had to stop myself going down a dystopian path. Thinking of our future children and why their needs would change at all, surely our brains will need to develop just as they are now? Hence the far flung use of holograms to experience ‘play’. Maybe our devices and ‘theatre rooms’ in homes already serve this function for our kids? Why go outside and explore at all when you can have an amazing experience on screen with VR? Who can find creeks to play in anyway nearby? The drive to preserve and restore is still strong. Maybe it won’t matter what is remembered of nature for future children?
Second session
Studio went inside tonight on a summer’s eve in Queanbeyan Australia – the mossies were too nasty outside on the patio
Recharged with home grown mint tea we were energised and got stuck into recreating an intricate swamp scene with a ‘Robinson Crusoe’ style treehouse. Vee’s guidance was structured and clear.
Start with the background.
So easy to get lost in adding more layers and blending, blending, blending – truly a way to mindfulness/mindlessness (flow) – like the misty sky and waters we created.
As the waters rise around our homes, only pole homes be able to might remain. Swamps, bayous, everglades may become our normal habitat. Those mossies better behave.
[journal continued on Solar Punk]
(C) 2023 WorkSmith Lizzy Smith – all rights reserved.