Hi there!
How has April been for you? Here in Melbourne it has been a month of variable weather and Covid rates of infection as we slide further into autumn. Yesterday I spotted, for the first time this year, the two black swans who build their nest in the lake I walk beside every day. The year feels like it is galloping past.
I have some resources, events, and opportunities to share with you, but first…
Creative prompts:
This month’s creative prompts were inspired by three things:
This tweet by Future Narratives (well worth a follow if you’re on Twitter),
and the Australian public holiday of ANZAC Day, during which we commemorate those who served in the military, and the fact that Australia is currently undergoing a federal election campaign.
These three things made me think of the narratives we all collectively contribute to and, simultaneously, are influenced by. These kinds of narratives fascinate me because they involve collective imagination, but also individual imagination as we all can make choices as to how we, as individuals, react to and then feed into – with either endorsement / reinforcement or dissension / subversion – those narratives.
So, your creative prompts for today are taken from the British Philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, who was quoted in the original Future Narratives tweet:
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I here to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”
Right now we Aussies are currently being inundated with all of the usual palaver that goes with an election campaign. The French just went through it; everyone knows what I am talking about. We face the usual challenge of sorting the vacuous nonsense from important information. Honestly, I find myself tuning out and paying more attention to how the media is covering the campaign than the campaign itself. And I think this relates to these prompts: in the mainstream media and also on social media, what narratives about the future of our country are being made and shared? As individuals, what part do we play in this? What are we here to do with this?
It's the same with our recent memorialising of war-dead on ANZAC Day – what do our collective rituals and stories around this day say about us collectively? How do our choices around collective grief – what and who gets grieved over and why and how? – reveal things about our collective narrative making? And, as individuals, what are we here to do with that?
What other narratives predominate your community right now? How are you a part of them? And what creative response can you make to them?
Resource of the month:
I first came across Creative Catalyst Paulina Larocca when I participated in a workshop she ran about creativity last year, which I absolutely loved because she talked about how the creative mind works with such clarity and deep insight (plus she has a wicked sense of humour). You should check out her blog and books on her website here.
Upcoming events:
Monthly: “an open space to talk about the intersections of disability, art and technology” convened by Leonardo. See here.
Monthly: See here for information about CreARTures events about transformational creative practice.
7 May: NEW INC is an incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology. They are having an online open day.
17 May: The Transition Together: Together We Can Summit is holding an event to talk about harnessing the power of creativity for activism and community.
18-19 May: The Industrial Designers Society of America is convening a Sustainable Leaders Deep Dive 2022.
Upcoming opportunities:
Due 5 May: Climate fiction is the future. Write it. Submit your story to Fix’s contest, Imagine 2200.
Due 13 May: The Dark Mountain Project is “making art that doesn’t take the centrality of humans for granted.” They are calling for submissions from writers and artists.
Due 15 May: The South-South Arts Fellowships 2022 aim to nurture wider and deeper connections among cultural workers within the Global South. More information here.
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See you next month.