Current Work

Current Work 2021/ 2022

The Far Orchard and Becoming Earthly

Robbie and Jo were delighted to be selected for the Becoming Earthly programme run by The Barn Arts, Banchory. This was an experimental learning space which aimed to create the conditions to open up new innovative forms of practice that responded imaginatively to the challenges we now face. They are now developing further collaborative work with The Barn that includes the initiation of The Far Orchard, a distributed apple orchard in Banchory and the development of a set of ‘Becoming Earthly’ cards to be used to open up explore creative practice in relation to ecology.

Combine to Create

Robbie and Jo are working with Findhorn Bay Arts on Combine to Create, part of the Culture Collective work in Scotland. They are acting as consultants to the programme, running development sessions for the artists and will be undertaking a residency that responds to the overall programme in 2023.

Combine to Create Creative Practitioners at the initial gathering facilitated by Robbie and Jo

Museums of the FutureNow

Robbie and Jo, together with Prof. Mike Bonaventura ran an online version of the Museums of the FutureNow on environmental justice for the Just Festival, Edinburgh’s social justice and human rights festival. This session was run in collaboration with Creative Carbon Scotland in August 2020 https://just-festival.org/eventbrite-event/the-museum-of-the-future/. Reflections on the event here: https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/green-tease-reflections-museums-of-the-futurenow-environmental-justice/

They also ran a series of sessions in 2021 for Museums Galleries Scotland on what Museums might look like in a future defined by climate challenges. They ran a session for Scotlands cultural sector in 2022 looking at how cultural organisations might respond to climate challenges.

Further ecological work

Jo, together with artist Kerry Morrison in collaboration with the AALERT network ran a session for Creative Carbon Scotland in February ’21 called ‘Beautiful Disruption; Radically reimagining approaches to contested landscapes’ . Robbie and Jo’s work A New EIA for Natural Scotland was aded to Creative Carbon Scotlands Library of Creative Sustainability.

Jo and Robbie continue to work with EcoArt SCIO as trustees, looking at ways to creatively engage people in responding to ecological challenges.

The Lost Property Office

Robbie and Jo are part of The Lost Property Office, an artist collective who developed a pilot live art event in 2021 funded by Creative Scotland. For images see HERE. The pilot is being followed up by a touring version of the work. Dates TBC.

The Lost Property Office is an interactive arts installation that takes place in an abandoned building in a town centre and explores the idea of ‘lost and found’ as a metaphor for this pivotal time in our global history. The office itself is ‘set’ in a liminal time, its shelves full of items that have been lost on countless mysterious journeys.  Visiting members of the public were each given an item of lost luggage to be opened and explored at their leisure. All the items were micro art installations which explored ideas of ‘lost and found’ in the context of social and environmental challenges. Some were suitcases that had been lost, revealing journeys that were never made, some were items that explored lost freedoms, dreams or livelihoods or more widely the loss of species and habitat. As a contrast, explorations of ‘found’ explored hope, joy, beauty and potential. A lot has been lost but what have we found?  What do we choose to let go of and what do we choose to keep?