The Poetry and Art of Impractical Repairs
4th December 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM GMT
What if the breakage of an object is significant emotionally as well as physically?
What then if a practical physical repair fails to account for this?
In this Utopia Lab we invite participants to consider impractical repairs of material objects. Sometimes the repair that we would like to achieve with a broken or damaged object is more related to emotion than the physical or utilitarian. Together we will explore how we might repair broken and damaged objects with poetry, creative writing and sculpture. We will use collaboration, creativity, poetry and embodied practices to investigate how these ideas and techniques can help us to imagine positive futures and affect change in the present, and through the course of the session you will construct your own Impractical Repair Kit, for all your future impractical repair needs.
Please bring with you a broken or damaged object that you would like to repair in this way, and a preparedness to discuss this with the group. After opening with meditation, movement and poetry, we will use creative writing exercises to express to each other what our objects represent and what kinds of repair we seek. We will then conceptualise ways in which we can use simple sculptural materials in our repairs, compose poems and craft sculptural elements to give expression to those repairs.
About the organisers
At Edinburgh Futures Institute, Utopia Labs curate interactions between academics, artists, entrepreneurs, students, and audiences in person and online globally. We are interested in that which is provocative and irreverent as well as that which is nurturing and joyful. Utopia questions are catalysts for inquiry, learning, and creativity. With an emphasis on innovative, embodied and experimental ways of communicating, we explore meditation, dialogue and co-creation.
At the Binks Hub we conduct arts-based participatory research by bringing communities, practitioners, artists and academics together as equal partners to share and develop knowledge. Using art, crafts and other creative methods and practices we investigate how to tackle the issues that matter most to people, and explore how we can co-create solutions.
Biographies
Jennifer Williams is a poet, Creative Projects Manager at Edinburgh Futures Institute, and founder of Utopia Lab, which she now co-curates with Matjaz Vidmar.
Josephine Balfour-Oatts is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She works as a Teaching Assistant on the Narrative Futures MSc at Edinburgh Futures Institute, and within the NHS, she supports the recovery of eating disorder patients using her lived experience expertise and creative writing background.
Jimmy Turner is a furniture maker, sculptor, curator and anthropologist who works as a researcher for the Binks Hub at the University of Edinburgh, concentrating on designing and developing projects with communities through which they can explore their curiosities and priorities through art and creativity.
Matjaz Vidmar is an academic, creator and entrepreneur. Though Lecturer in Engineering Management at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, his work spans facilitating collaboration in innovation, and futures design, across a number of disciplines and fields.
