The intention in this workshop to invite communities to define their own outcomes through inspired imaginative actions. (This can be modeled to address specific challenges or be left open ended)

We begin by leading participants on a walk through their community or neighborhood. This can be done through reflective memory mapping or a collaborative mapping exercise or even a guided walk. Next up is identifying spaces within this area that offer opportunity for change. Careful facilitation about understanding how spaces are used help us recognise our own biases and select with others in mind.

From here we dive into the imagination. Participants are guided to imagine multiple impossible scenarios - ones that defy all natural laws - physics, time, money, reality of any sort.

This freeing of the imagination allows us to stretch and reach beyond what is merely possible and allows us to really see more grand, humourous, or inspired possibilities for the spaces around us.

Through group sharing and a facilitated conversation I lead participants to recognise what within these impossible ideas might point to something possible and actionable. This then leads us to building real actionable steps to achieving new and exciting concepts and ideas for our communities.

Part imagination exercise, part origami, part guerrilla marine gardening – this 2-hour workshop invited participants to step into their imagination as well as partake in a ritual of giving back to the ecosystem of the river Clyde.
I guided participants in creating dissolvable words and pictures, paper boats of memories and gift frozen fish filled with elder seeds to the Clyde. The seeds will disperse and help replenish the Clyde’s ecosystem. At the same time, you’ll collectively discuss, explore and imagine possibilities about a future of environmental care and regeneration.
This event was part of the Create:Network Inverclyde, funded by Creative Scotland and managed by CVS Inverclyde in partnership with Inverclyde Council.

For the open studio, I created an interactive map where we invited participants to find their sewage-shed and connect themselves to the waterways by drawing images, maps, paths, or concepts.

In addition we invited guests to re-imagine a park for the future on , in or below the water. The design prompts invited the young designers to imagine,
“Will your design be…on water? on land? on water and land? underwater? moving? still? floating? submerged? tall? small? round? pointy? solid? clear? metallic? wooden? sandy? plant-filled?” As well as,
“1. How does your design interact with the water? How does it interact with the land?
2. What is the primary function of your design?
3. What materials will your design be made out of, why? glass? metal? wood? plants?
4. Who will use your design the most? athletes? dogs? farmers? families?
5. How will your design interact with the existing landscape and structures?
6. How will your design impact the wildlife and ecological health of the Hudson River?
7. How long will your design last?”

Working creatively with water and waterways is inherently interdisciplinary, and requires creativity and collaboration across many different sectors. Issues related to water cross social, cultural, ecological, and political boundaries.

Power of Ten was an opportunity to intersect with people from different fields who are focused on water, and initiate concrete cross-disciplinary collaborative projects. All thinkers and do-ers were welcomed—scientists, social/environmental justice activists, designers, artists, performers, planners, architects, and more.

The Power of Ten was a path to problem-solving, re-imagining, unearthing inequity, finding new approaches and understanding how to become accomplices. In this workshop we facilitated a process of creative collaboration with the aim of realizing projects on, in, and around the water.

I was invited by MEAD – Maine Environmental Artists and Designers to visit and spend a couple of days working with local artists interested in making change happen in their communities. I was interested in creating an interactive experience and learning model that would result in tangible outcomes for the group. The first evening was a session in which I shared about my work, this was followed on the next day by a full day workshop that led with storytelling and transformed into collaborative creative invention.

The morning started working in small groups on developing a story – a story that tells of a personal transformation in one’s life that helps to define who you are today. It could be be a story of personal experience or a story of professional transformation. We identified triggers or moments that presented challenges or moved us emotionally and then the story of how we overcame the challenge and how that changed our lives.

Participants then had the option to share the stories with the whole group. The idea was that we begin as a disparate group (academics, artists, scientists, journalists, activists, administrators) and through the personal transformation story we forge a connection and a deeper understanding of each other. These bonds allowed us to speak more freely and collaborate in a deeper way – rather than jumping straight into a collaborative process. We began to find things which we shared or which had resonance with one another.

The afternoon began with an overview of food access in the region and the challenges that exist in a farm rich community that simultaneously suffers from food depravation. We then went on to a brainstorming process noting what the collective challenges and resources that exist in the community. From the list of challenges we chose (through a voting process) three which would be the prompts for creative interventions that we developed in the afternoon session.

The afternoon involved breaking into three groups to collaboratively co-create one or more creative interventions that responded to the challenge and utilized existing resources. The collective favorite was to use the public library as a space to house a community crockpot which would be checked out and used to bring together diverse groups to discuss food, food values and access to food. What ultimately resulted from the workshop was one participant - a professor, taking forward one of the ideas to create a community food truck which worked to collect and reuse (with local chefs) and then redistribute throughout the area.

Thank you all in Belfast for a wonderful experience!