Sensing, thinking, and making

Local Alternatives explores urban histories and futures under conditions of climate change, global migration, and ubiquitous technologies. It offers a collaborative platform for co-production and co-design across international locations, bringing together children, young people, artists, designers, educators, curators, policymakers, and urban citizens from many walks of life. Our creative research projects are ongoing, open-ended, and led by children and young people's sensory investigations, concerns, and imaginings of their local environments and communities. We are invested in developing more pluralistic urban histories and futures through community-led responses to social and environmental challenges. We co-develop and co-produce this work to feed into public exhibitions, curriculum development, publications, heritage projects, policy reports, public programs, and international networks.

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creative research projects

sensing change
Naarm (Melbourne)

What is the role of art and design in channelling the forces of change toward more just and sustainable futures?

sensing forests
Naarm (Melbourne)

How can we learn to sense the complex relations of care between trees and mycelium in our urban forests?

sensing memory
Manchester-> Berlin-> Stockholm

How can mobile cinematic technologies help us generate more open and pluralistic memories of the city, perhaps even memories of the future?

sensing carbon
Naarm (Melbourne)

How can we map the 'carbonscape' of a city, and envision low carbon dwelling places for human and non-human citizens alike?

sensing futures
Naarm (Melbourne) -> Saigon

How can generative AI empower young people to navigate climate-responsive futures in education and work?

sensing rivers
Naarm (Melbourne)

How do we connect and learn with urban river ecologies on sovereign and unceded Aboriginal lands?

sensing touch
Montreal-> Edinburgh

What is the role of touch in sensing our connection with more-than-human urban environments and socialities?

sensing suspension
London-> Manchester

How can techniques of improvisation work to suspend and disrupt the institutionally gridded spacetimes of the city?

sensing atmospheres
Manchester

How do atmospheric art and media practices shift the learning potentials of gallery and museum environments?

sensing inheritance

Manchester

How is our sense of natural and cultural inheritance changing in times of climate change, extinction, and ubiquitous technology?

sensing strata

Manchester

How can creative experiments with strata help us sense the effects of climate change in our everyday lives?

sensing climate

Manchester

How do creative and scientific visualisations of climate data shift our images and imaginings of the Earth?

sensing time

Manchester

How do we sense local environments through different scales, speeds, and durations of time?

sensing place

Manchester

How do creative practices open up new possibilities for sensing and belonging in urban parklands?

exhibitions

We are developing an ongoing series of public exhibitions based on work emerging from the Local Alternatives platform.

Our first exhibition, Superpositions, was held at Birley Art Gallery in Manchester in July, 2018.

Remixing Thick Time opened at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester in May, 2019.

Inheriting the Anthropocene opened July 18th, 2019 and ran through March 2020 at the Manchester Museum.

The Sensing Change exhibition opened on May 15th, 2022 at RMIT's Art in Public Gallery

Wild Hope: Conversations for a planetary commons ran from August 15-Sept 30 2023 at RMIT Design Hub Gallery

collaborators

David Rousell (Lead, Creative Agency Lab, RMIT)

Liz de Freitas (Manifold Lab, MMU; Adelphi University, NY)

Michael Gallagher (Manifold Lab, MMU)

Mark Peter Wright (resident artist, MMU)

Laura Trafi-Prats (Manifold Lab, MMU)

Riikka Hohti (University of Helsinki)

Maggie MacLure (Manifold Lab, MMU)

Dan Harris (Creative Agency Lab, RMIT)

Kelly Hussey-Smith (Creative Agency Lab, RMIT)

Kelly Chan (Creative Agency Lab, RMIT) Museums Victoria, Melbourne Museum

Anna Hickey-Moody (Creative Agency Lab, RMIT) MPavilion, M_Curators (Melbourne)

Jett Janetzki (M_Curators, Melbourne) CERES Community Environment Park

Mycelium Studios (Melbourne) Andrew Goodman (La Trobe University)

National Gallery of Victoria Michele Stockley (National Gallery of Victoria)

Catharine Cary (RCA, London) Andreia Penaloza Caicedo (Creative Agency, RMIT)

Aviva Endean (independent artist, ArtPlay) Justin Marshall (independent artist, ArtPlay)

Vanessa Chapple (Creative Agency, RMIT) Seth Brown (School of Education, RMIT)

Barking Spider Visual Theatre Company Robyn Cox (School of Education, RMIT)

Collingwood College (K-12 public school) Inner North Learning and Employment Network

Jessica Tran (Creative Agency Lab, RMIT) UNEVOC (UNESCO)

Local Alternatives has been funded through the Creative Agency Lab (RMIT), Design and Creative Practice Enabling Impact Platform (RMIT), the Victorian State Government, the Climate Change Research Network (RMIT), the Manifold Lab (MMU Strategic Opportunities Fund), a Research Accelerator Grant (Research and Knowledge Exchange, MMU), a Researcher Development Fellowship (MMU), Leverhulme Artist in Residence Grant, Säätiöiden Post Doc Pool (Finnish Foundation), and in-kind contributions from Z-arts, the Whitworth Art Gallery, City of Melbourne, ArtPlay, MPavilion, National Gallery of Victoria, Manchester Museum, and Museums Victoria.

We are also connecting the project internationally through partnerships and exchanges with ITU Copenhagen, Roskilde University, Andromeda Gallery, University of Barcelona, University of British Columbia, the Tapies Centre Barcelona, Cambridge University, UC Santa Cruz, and the SenseLab/3 Ecologies Institute at Concordia University.

Suzanne Smith (Z-arts)

Z-artists (age 5-15)

Whitworth Young Contemporaries (age 15-25)

Hannah-Lee Chalk (Manchester Museum)

Sally Thelwell (Whitworth Gallery)

Rabia Begum (Whitworth Young Contemporaries)

Jonas Fritsch (ITU, Copenhagen)

Kristine Samson (Roskilde University, Copenhagen)

Signal and ArtPlay (City of Melbourne)