From 2021 to 2023, the Creativity and Community Resilience (CCR) Studio was active across the Dookie and Southbank campuses of the University of Melbourne. Designed and managed by the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) and supported through grants from Melbourne Climate Futures and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the CCR project was co-designed as an experiment in bridging the gap between knowledges and conversations held on campus and those held by the community members surrounding the University of Melbourne’s regional campus at Dookie, on Yorta Yorta country.
With specific reference to imagining alternative expressions of resilience in the face of increasing conditions of climate change - particularly for regional and farming communities - this project also bridged subjects and methods across the arts and sciences by placing creative practice at the centre of discussions on climate, ecology, biodiversity and adaption. Through the activities of the CCR, imagination and play were centred as valuable strategies for:
- Imagining into more resilient futures;
- Encouraging participation across campus and community by creating welcoming and enjoyable spaces;
- Facilitating trust across disparate members of a working group and building a community of mutual investment.
Two creative-led works were supported through this project: ‘Dinner for the Future’ a semi-performative dinner/exhibition held in Dookie in September 2022; and ‘Living Art Village’ a public-facing exhibition held in Southbank in October 2023 and an accompanying publication Living Art (2023). Each of these phases of the CCR also strove to make space for dialogue, with each incorporating a series of workshops designed to promote learning, discussion and participation – and to destabilise preconceptions of knowledge hierarchy between campus and community, and between the arts and sciences.
Members of the CCR working group prioritised listening to and incorporating Traditional Owner knowledges at all stages, with participation from Yorta Yorta colleagues Neville Atkinson, Belinda Briggs and Stephanie Taylor grounding the discussions and public-facing activities in Indigenous ways of knowing and caring for Country.