Workshop: Mythmaking & Design for Environmental Futures (pre-reg. required)

Facilitated by Submergence Collective

Kaitlin Bryson, MFA, University of California, Los Angeles and University at Buffalo, New York.

Hollis Moore, MFA, MLA, Artist & Landscape Architect.

Rachel Zollinger, MFA, PhD Candidate, University of Arizona.

Mariko Thomas PhD, Skagit Valley College/Independent scholar.

This workshop is a guided practice in writing and rewriting environmental stories for the future of our planet, and creating prototypes of art, structures, urban planning, design, advocacy, activism, and educational outreach that reflect those narratives. In part one of the workshop members of the art and ecology group Submergence Collective will support participants in a deep exploration of environmental mythmaking, and create space to discuss the kinds of ideologies and archetypes found in the environmental mythologies of everything from fairy tales to urban design. We’ll explore the complexity of stories and the danger in reducing stories down to a single message. We also generate conversation on contested terms like sustainability, environment, and “nature,” and how the terms operate in stories and environmental practice.  The second part of this workshop applies storytelling to communication design. Participants will be supported in using the medium most related to their interests and field (drawing, building, designing, collaging, organizing, writing, etc.) to begin fleshing out ideas for using and making myth-related communication for environmental education, activism, structures, and design. The object will be to practice creative story-based thinking about environmental communication, advocacy, design, and education while creating a narrative that can contextualize it for humans presently and in the future.