Over the last few months Connected Communities Projects up and down the country have been taking part in the Community Futures and Utopias Festival. Events have ranged from performances to seances to community mural design, gathering together at Somerset House for the Utopia Fair. Below is a taster of the reflections, photographs, films even recipes from these events that we have been gathering on our Utopia 500 blog
The Nottingham Black History Mural
In 2016, the Centre for Research in Race and Rights (part of the Rights and Justice Research Priority Area), and the New Art Exchange joined together to create Nottingham’s first black history mural. The four-month project transformed an old wall in the heart of Hyson Green into a vibrant and inspiring piece of public art. It depicts the diverse histories and potential futures of Nottingham’s Global Quarter, and explores utopia and community activism.
The Utopia Séance
A comic created by Jim Medway, based on our Ghost Lab with young people from Hackney Voices of Youth at the AHRC Utopia Festival.
You can download a copy from https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3504962.v1
When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday
When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday’ examines how songwriting might help us to imagine the future in light of climate change concerns. It brings together musicians, climate change adaptation researchers, and civic movements such as Manchester a Certain Future, to explore how music can affect a wider cultural transition towards a more sustainable society.
The film was made by WakeUpAdvice
When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday
‘The Reasons’ in the Bevills Leam Catchment
As part of the Utopia 500 Festival Professor Mike Wilson, Dr Antonia Liguori and Dr Lyndsey Bakewell (DRY Project team members from Loughborough University) have created a new, performative methodology, based on traditional practices, to support communities in collective problem-solving and imagining their own secure futures.
