Across Sweden, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands three collective residencies brought together an intergenerational group of people who, as Arjen Wals reports: “played, ate, (re)imagined, learned and created together” in order to design “alternative futures around a selected glocal (sic) issue”, and explore “what needs to be disrupted” to realise these imagined realities. Wals says that two hopeful examples of local residents and one from academia show the power of arts-based approaches and the importance of hope and lightheartedness. The research was initiated and led by Natalia Eernstman.
Wals says that these are some of the things they aimed to find out:
– What arrangements and conditions are needed to disrupt daily routines and generate new ones?
– Does the recognition and inclusion of situated knowledges generate radically different perspectives on how we can live well and environmentally, or do they represent the fine-tuning and, thereby, the maintenance of the status quo?
– What happens if you put adults and children in the same learning arrangement and invite them to learn, play and experiment collectively? Chaos or…?
– (How) is the knowledge produced through this heterogenous, vernacular, artistic, non-hierarchical and intergenerational process ‘useful’ to the community in question and a wider subject arena around it?
– What is the added value of creative / artistic techniques in the social learning that will take place?
You can find more information and a link to the video here: Imaginative Disruptions Video