Over the past few months, I've been spending time developing research and thinking around my new project Hot Contents, a 2-year project taking place in Darlington exploring the relationships between industry, the circular economy and the climate emergency.

I wanted to begin this project with a research residency, spending a period of time researching the changing shape of industry in Darlington, getting to know the people and projects taking place locally and understanding how these make an impact on the environment. A period of meeting, listening and reading. Rather than taking place over a solid block of time, this has been a much slower process - sometimes taking place online and sometimes in person where this could happen safely.

Through this process of looking at narratives of growth, sites of transition and spaces of resistance, I’ve spent some of this time getting to know and getting involved with the work of local climate action groups over evening Zoom gatherings. With Darlington Climate Action, I recently supported a pop-up performance in the town centre to raise awareness of the impact of proposed executive housing developments written into Darlington's new local plan. The performance was led by local writer and actor Paul Harman, and I worked with the group to prepare and capture imagery from the event. I am supporting Friends of the Earth Darlington's calls for a local Citizen's Assembly for climate change. Throughout this engagement, I have been thinking about what it means to be an artist in an activist space - which brings together people with different interests, motivations and expertise in environmental action - and how this process can be equitable. Some of this time has been spent mapping and photographing sites of transition, including Tornado Way - which runs along the site of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway, and where funding has just been awarded to the Darlington Forest Project to plant 6800 trees - thinking about how industrial heritage sits alongside the landscape, and how sites of industrial heritage are re-used and re-purposed for sustainable practices. Some of this time has been spent reading about the history and future plans for Darlington, thinking about trajectories of growth tied to the region's industrial heritage, where value is placed and how these can be re-thought.

When I first thought about this project - almost a year ago - I imagined the idea of the circular economy might feed into the work at the micro scale - looking at the creative re-use of materials and design practices. As it has developed, this idea has shifted towards a focus on ecology, circular systems and social value. I've learned a lot in this time - about the process and politics of town planning, and the shifting footprint of industry moving across the urban landscape; about the town's history of iron forging and engineering, and the region's future plans for carbon capture; about locally native trees, and some things entirely unexpected (such as a protest in 1800 over the rising price of butter) - and I've had a chance to get to know about and get involved in really interesting initiatives happening locally to tackle the climate emergency.

Moving into the autumn, I'm experimenting with some new digitally-generated videos, whilst working on a script for a video installation that responds to the things I've been thinking about during this residency. Sat at my desk under a local lockdown in Newcastle, I'm looking forward to spending some time in the studio translating these ideas, sketches and thoughts into finished work, and to being able to share them.

Hot Contents is kindly supported by:

November marks the start of Overmorrow, an ongoing festival that I have co-developed and produced with Andrew Wilson, Calum Bayne, Ciara Lenihan, Evelyn Cromwell, gobscure, Jessica Bennett, Jenny Mc Namara and Lydia Bailey as part of The NewBridge Project's Programme Committee. Taking place between November 2020 – April 2021 the festival will include a series of commissions, talks, screenings and events which explore our collective futures with audiences, members and communities.

In an attempt to unlock the future, we need to throw open the window of our minds. Now is the time for alternative horizons that spark the imagination, the time to forge resources for resistance and pursue new possibilities, the time for building our own utopias.

The global pandemic has deeply affected our everyday lives and the way we perceive the world. It has increased precarity and uncertainty for communities and exposed a lack of equality and fairness in our societies. But history shows us that pandemics can precipitate radical change. They open up moments of societal, political and cultural flux as citizens seek to redress the deep-seated problems of their times. For many, there can be no going back to ‘normal’ when normal is deeply unsettling, unjust and unsustainable.

The pre-Covid-19 world had become accustomed to the status quo, consenting to iniquitous and exploitative hierarchies through the foreclosure of alternative possibilities. We watched as voracious capitalists plundered the earth and our experiences to feed their insatiable lust for exponential growth and shareholder profits. As neoliberal economics colonised every aspect of society and hyper-normalised its covetous and individualistic rational. As this amoral life-order sacrificed the natural world in its idolisation of materialism and consumerism. Many protested, but the world acquiesced. We had buried utopia, out of ignorance that prevented us from imagining a new world.

Overmorrow will aid us in our quest to reimagine our futures and how we might chart a new path from the present. Exploring science-fiction as a tool for fictioning new possibilities, it will consider the futures we have lost and those we can still pursue. It will contemplate the public spaces of tomorrow and think about how the Pandemic has highlighted the problems in society that stand between us and utopia. We’ll be using this within our programme to challenge the competitive structures of the art world and consider the future of art and arts organisations.

‘It’s not a finished utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and
active’ - Bertrand Russell.

Throughout this programme we would like to foster practical conversation that acknowledges discomfort, embodies varied agendas and recognises privilege, breaks down silos and, ultimately, creates a space for a new kind of growth. Through collective dialogues, together we can proactively and collectively shape the future we want.

Find out more here.