Photo Journal: Rehearsing the Futures We Want
Date of gathering: Thursday 8th December 2022, 12-3pm
A throwback to our very FIRST Cultural Collaborators Gathering and the launch of the Dudley Creates network.
Photos from a gathering held on 8 December 2022 in the Imaginarium at CoLab Dudley on Dudley High Street.
This was an invitation from Dudley's Time Rebels to taste, touch, glimpse, imagine and ultimately practice together the futures we want for culture in and across our communities in Dudley borough over the next 100 years. It was the inaugural gathering of an emerging Cultural Collaborators Network, bringing together people who dare to dream of just, safe, shared, creative and flourishing futures across communities in Dudley borough.
All photos below taken and shared by: Holly Doron, Kerry O’Coy, Lorna Prescott, Becky Thompson, Sajida Carr, Sammy Al-Fihri, Helen Garbett
We Are Makers
Odette Campbell and Ruth Turnbull are an approachable, friendly and creative duo. They work in a resourceful and environmentally conscious way. They are mindful of materials they use, often frogging and giving new life to old knitwear and recyclables. They pop up in unusual spaces with their yarn bombed trolleys, offering workshops which use craft as a super power to open conversations and story sharing.
Their first project working together, Stories in the Subways, took place in the subways of Stourbridge ring road in summer 2022, supported by Dudley Creates. Odette and Ruth joined Dudley’s Time Rebels collective in autumn 2022, to contribute to Dudley’s Cultural Strategy.
Time To Make… Spaces
Local artists and makers Becky Thompson, Rick Sanders, Dan Crew, Rachel Massey and Zoe Gmaj have been growing a collaboration as a result of CoLab Dudley’s convening of Time Rebels to contribute to Dudley’s Cultural Strategy.
Time To Make… Spaces is an idea they plan to take to a range of spaces around Dudley borough in 2023. The Time To Make areas at Rehearsing the Futures We Want were a big draw, with people settling down for making and conversation, getting to know each other.
Stitchers in Time
A group of women convened by artist and Time Rebel Jan Norton have been meeting regularly at both CoLab Dudley and in their gardens and homes. They first came together through a Time Rebel project in 2021, Growing Up in Dudley, for which they produced a quilt using images from the Dudley People’s Archive.
In 2022 they began work on a new collaborative piece stitching together reflections and imaginings of the past, present and future on iconic Dudley landmarks. This banner was finished to be shared at Rehearsing the Futures We Want, with invitations to touch it and move the windmills! The stitchers joined the Time To Make activities during this gathering.
The work on this banner in 2022 has sparked ideas for their next collaboration which is also inspired by sharing of aspirations for Dudley People’s School for Climate Justice.
Dudley People’s School for Climate Justice
The idea of the Dudley People's School for Climate Justice emerged through conversations between CoLab Dudley, CreHeart, Workshop 24 and Birmingham School of Architecture and Design, rooted in recent experiences of collaborative activities with local people. The plan is to establish a Dudley People's School for Climate Justice; a community-led hub for climate justice, learning and action in Dudley town centre which nurtures connection with nature.
The People's School will nurture a culture of shared learning in which everyone is welcome. ‘Mother tree’ projects will bring climate issues into focus at the local layer through nature connection. They will reach marginalised communities so that they are better able to contribute to climate action. Community-led peer learning pods will emerge from local interests around climate and nature. They will reveal the curiosity and imagination of local people and grow the creative confidence needed for community-led action.
At Rehearsing the Futures We Want we asked for people’s ideas on potential learning pod explorations. Here’s what was added:
Edible planting and growing - including pot recycling and rooftop gardens
Foraging
Composting
Seed library
History of climate justice
Connecting the dots between urban planning, architecture, mental health and political policy
Repurposing unused buildings as greenhouses
Bee keeping
Closing the loop - reuse and recycling
Getting into Hot Water
Social artists Bill Laybourne and Helen Garbett have been collaborating with Dudley’s Time Rebels since 2020. Their Getting into Hot Water project will use creative approaches to engage communities in explorations of the climate emergency taking water as the starting point. A few were tested out during Rehearsing the Futures We Want. Intensely focused on the local in the Midlands, Bill and Helen’s social art practice builds relationships with and between participants and the more-than-human world often over months or years, exploring the seldom heard, marginal and the edge of things to help realise personal and social change.
Dudley People’s Archive
The Dudley People's Archive explores and celebrates Dudley’s rich heritage and vibrant present through photography, art, publications and stories.
We are collecting stories and material to build a living archive of works that tell the story of Dudley. All towns are changing and Dudley is no different. We hear how Dudley used to be a ‘thriving town’ and ‘the place to go’ and we still believe it is and can be. To build plans and dreams for the future you have to look at the past and learn from what has been done before. We think Dudley is worth celebrating and want to share that.
Local resident David O’Coy, curator of Dudley People’s Archive and Time Rebel, collaborated with other Time Rebels in the development of the archive and creative responses to it, and introduced local creatives to the Time Rebel Collective. The aspiration next is to develop an archive project around JB’s nightclub.
Summer of Creativity celebration
During 2022 Creative Black Country and CoLab Dudley put together a Summer of Creativity programme in Dudley (alongside Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council). 124 art, creativity, performance, workshops, music and fun opportunities popped up in 26 different spaces and places across the Borough from June to October, led by 55 local artists and creatives.
We’ve been drawing together lessons from this work to inform Dudley’s 100 Year Cultural Strategy in Action. However for Rehearsing the Futures We Want we simply exhibited stories from this diverse programme of activities in a space which popped with colour and included artefacts and videos from the creative projects.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FINAL REPORT HERE
A manifesto for Dudley’s Cultural Futures
As another act of collective imagining we are inviting people to contribute to an evolving Manifesto for our Cultural Futures that weaves the values and dreams of the Cultural Collaborators Network into a statement of intention. This began at Rehearsing the Futures We Want.
Cultural Ecosystem Vital Signs
A central part of our strategy in action approach we are paying attention to cultural ecosystem health in order to support greater cultural democracy and so cultural potential in Dudley. This is quite distinct from measuring success or monitoring for evaluation against fixed outcomes - typically audience numbers, geographic spread and economic value generated. Instead we start from a place of learning to improve and adapt.
We also start from a place of shared responsibility for nurturing these vital signs for a flourishing cultural ecosystem as well as being clear that these vital signs are locally defined based upon the lessons from the collective enquiry and so the lived experiences and creative actions of hundreds of cultural collaborators. We will continue to test these out and refine them by learning through doing together, as well as surfacing others not yet known.
At Rehearsing the Futures We Want we invited people to suggest more vital signs, or their way of framing / noticing them.
Doughnut Economics and our Digital Allotment
We are drawing upon two streams of regenerative design thinking that inform patterns and principles in practice that we use to guide Dudley’s 100 Year Cultural Strategy in Action. The first is design patterns from living systems and an ecological understanding of culture; and the second is Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics principles of practice
The Cultural Collaborators Digital Allotment which this Photo Journal is shared in is just one way of us weaving Doughnut Economics principles into this work. More will follow!
Cultural Collaborators at the gathering (and those who couldn’t make it)
Rachel Massey, mixed media visual artist
Dan Crew, animator
Rick Sanders, poet and maker, Makers Market Midlands
Jennifer Masterman, poet (part of Dudley Connect Writers Group)
Sallyann Wright,
Claire Tedstone, visual artist and poet
Kelly Hadley, photographer
Adrian Garbett
Stitchers in Time: Jan Norton | Jean | Lynne
Brierley Hill Cultural Consortium: Frank Chamberlain
Black Country Collage Club: Rebecca Thompson
Dudley People’s Archive: David O’Coy
We Are Makers: Ruth Turnbull | Odette Campbell
Workshop 24: Bill Laybourne | Helen Garbett
Ekho Collective CIC: Deb McDonald
CoLab Dudley: Lorna Prescott | Holly Doron | Kerry O’Coy | Jo Orchard-Webb
Black Country Touring: Sammy
Creative Black Country: Sajida Carr | Yvonne Gregory | Rosalind Argo | Fiona Dye
Canal and River Trust: Zylla Moranne-Brown | Laura Connor
Dudley Council: Zoe Gmaj | Stuart Connelley | Paul Mountford
Dudley CVS Children, Young People and Families team: Lauren Mapp
Dudley CVS Integrated Plus Team: Keeley Jones | Nicola Byrne
Dudley College: Sian Taylor
Apologies received from
Arts Council England: Sarah Kennedy
Dudley Council: Jane Lamine | Rachel Bradley
RSPB: Olivia James
Black Country Living Museum: Glennis Williams
CreHeart CIC: Marlene Fortes | Ailene Pereria
Black Country Touring: Frances Land
Planet Cheltenham: Raechel Kelly
Sue Bloomer
Oliwia Malanowicz
Luke Reynolds
Dudley’s Cultural Collaborators network is funded via Arts Council England’s Cultural Compact.
As you can see above, it is shaped and stewarded through the creativity, dreams and deep work of people who live, work and learn in Dudley borough.