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utopias bach Collabatory

what is the Utopias BAch collabatory?

An informal group of about 20 people, who are developing the Utopias Bach project as a whole, and/or who are interested in developing/leading a ‘community’ Utopias Bach project or doing your own individual Utopias Bach. The Collabatory has become a learning community, sharing ideas and experiences, working through things, and helping to ‘capture’ some of our process, eg through exchanging postcards of insights.

If you are interested, you are welcome to join us, even just as a one off. We are keeping it all as gentle and inclusive as possible, no deadlines or requirements or anything!

We are working mostly through zoom meetings for the moment (hoping one day to meet in the real world), but also people are working on their own ‘bit’ or in clusters.

what we are working on

1. Try out making your own Utopia Bach, in whatever form, as a way of building examples and learning about the potential of Utopias Bach. We will feature these on our website and perhaps (situation allowing!) working towards an exhibition somewhere in 2021 (eg Metamorffosis, June 2021)

2. We are sharing ideas for and progress of ‘community based’ projects, each one going at its own pace, and some just remaining as ideas…. See below. Have a look at what the Penrhyndeudraeth group is up to here

3. We are developing the project as a whole. This includes things like website, learning, resourcing, documenting, exhibiting… See below for ideas and offers so far

who has taken part so far

Lindsey Colbourne, Samina Ali, Lisa Hudson, Wanda Zyborska, Seran Arianwen, Roger Hughes, Perminder Dhillon, Catrin Ellis, Julie Upmeyer, Frances Williams, Steph Shipley, Maggie Doherty, Mark Gahan, Iain Biggs, Audrey West, Debbie Braden, Andrew de Salis, Llinos Griffin, Wendy Dawson, Lynsey Smith.

The next round of zoom dates

We are holding our meetings with ‘pairs’ of dates: You are welcome to come to as many/few as you wish!, each about an hour or so:

Weds 31st March and Saturday 3rd April, 11am

We will also (with thanks to Samina for raising this) make sure we review how the meetings are going - at the start, middle and end of each meeting, and we will be sharing the facilitation of the meetings. Here’s a rough outline of structure

- start with clear purpose

- build learning about the process of the meetings into the meeting - e.g. at the start, ask what we need to remember from last meeting; in the middle review how it’s going (e.g. in smaller groups); at the end review how it has been

- introduce some suggestions for how to take part effectively (e.g. notice how much talking you are doing; build in space to think; take time out; think where your contribution is coming from - an observation, information, serious point etc)

- if/how to take notes

zoom link (same for ALL meetings!): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85409719450?pwd=d1VaRktoY1QveTZWSDdaUDVKQWRkQT09

To see results of previous meetings, mini-minutes and how thinking is developing, please see the Padlet here: You are welcome to add anything to the Padlet! It’s a pretty handy way of sharing images, links, documents etc. See what you think.

COMMUNITY Projects underway

• In Penrhyndeudraeth, Llinos is working with artists Siân and Fiorella to create a six-week programme of online/offline activities, supporting people of all ages in the area to develop their own Utopias Bach, perhaps working towards some kind of exhibition in 2021. See their project page here. In their zoom week 1, people came with a ‘little object of hope’ to use during introductions, and a ‘homework’ task was set to ‘make a little placard of hope’ and a mini-sketch book. One of the participants suggested trying to find a way to express/visualise feelings. Week 2 was about sharing mini placards/feelings and setting the task of making a revolutionary garden on a plate. Week 3 we shared our revolutionary gardens on a plate - some were ideas, some made, some imaginary

• Succession inviting individuals to engage in a process, not an artwork, that is to last a long time, connecting to naturally occurring processes around us and to connect to each other. By Julie Upmeyer/Plas Bodfa

• An artist-led collective is including a Utopias Bach strand, with the theme within their ‘Metamorffosis’ festival in Bangor/Menai Bridge in June 2021: The call out for artists in December “invites us to remember the macro is nothing but a slight extension of the micro. What are the smallest gestures, created with radical imagination, that will help us explore and reconfigure our relationship with the future at a scale we feel we can influence? How can we subvert scales and temporal and spatial frontiers, creating entanglements with others near and far that experiment with – and point to - new ways of being for the future?”

project ideas/in progress

Note: we are particularly looking for projects that work with people/cultures/communities’ that don’t often have a voice/who are most affected by the state of the world/who could bring new perspectives including Cymraeg, young people, older people, people of colour, those with disabilities, low income etc etc. The reason for this is summarised well by this quote:

“Our sense of what is possible and what is imaginable, is shaped by our privilege, our experience of exploitation and how we are intersected by vectors of oppression like racism, sexism, class, ableism, or citizenship status. The imagination is corporeal and embodied. Our imagination is not seated in the mind but involves our senses, feeling and the way we move our bodies in the world. Bodies that are marked, exploited or circumscribed, will imagine the world and their personal and political potentialities very differently than those that “pass” without notice, fear or exploitation in the world. This means that the politics of the imagination can’t just be about imagining universal, one-size-fits- all alternatives to the current order. It must be about working “transversally” to bridge our imaginations and create common imaginaries of the way the world might be. The radical imagination is an ever-unfinished process of solidarity.” Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish referring to the work of Stoeztler and Yuval-Davis

In addition, projects that are able to engage in this way we have applied to the Arts Council for funding, and we’ll know whether we have succeeded by June.

Sorry if I’ve misrepresented what you are thinking of!!

• Lisa is designing 6 workshop sessions for 2 groups based in Wrexham. One group is made up of people who access services at Advanced Brighter Futures and the other is a group from the homeless community who have been working on a project with National Theatre Wales.  These sessions will not necessarily become part of any larger project through exhibiting or producing, although they might if they feel inclined to.  The experiences and learning gained from the sessions will be fed back to the Collaboratory for inclusion in the research, and we are also in contact with Arts Homeless International.

• Women and land working with welsh speaking women and women of colour to explore new ways to understand, create and enact our relationship with land (and food, and identity)

• Utopias Bach in Gwalchmai (led by Lindsey, Seran and Mark), starting with young people so that the process is child led, with a view to sharing those creations with the wider community when possible, circa Summer/ Autumn 2021. With Rural Futures. This project is pairing with a similar project in Malawi, led by Wanda

• Wanda is thinking of engaging her local community, and young people involved in schools strikes, to create interactive online mini-maps of all the mini-utopia things people are doing or would like to do to in their gardens to support the flourishing of wildlife, including hedgehog passes between gardens, bug hotels, ponds, bits of scrubland…

• Wanda is also developing In Touch: Making haptic art connections for old women living on their own and self-isolating, using performance, snail mail or digital platforms. The idea is that the project team is made up of the same demographic so that there is no division between artist and community. This utopia is miniature in that it includes only a small section of society; socially isolated old women living alone and suffering particularly during the pandemic. This artwork is defined by its audience, if that is the right term for them, a target group (who are not in a group). The work here would be finding a way to bring tactile art to the group to form an entertainment and a feeling connection with others. This mini-utopia is a network, a map of specific places of isolation, joined together by whatever network of physical and social experience that we could devise in partnership with professional practitioners who work in this area.

• Samina is thinking of working with an organisation housing vulnerable young adults in Gwynedd.

• Perminder is developing a ‘gratitude woodland’ on 15 acres of woodland in Camarthenshire, bringing communities together and making ecological sustainable living acceptable to all communities, creating a common-sharehold of the gratitude woodland

• Roger is thinking of how to make arts experiences still available despite restrictions of pandemics, promenade and labyrynthyne installations of Utopias Bach in town centres

• Julie is developing an idea around working with long term processes, engaging artists to work in radical alliance with non-human forces, engaging in intimate processes of observation and non-intervention

• Mark is thinking of creating Utopias Bach boxes to distribute to families with children of primary school age, to generate ideas for the future of their village, with emphasis on tackling poverty

• Debbie is wondering about using film to interview people about their ideas for the future in the Conwy area, building on some of the changes that have happened during lockdown

• Maggie is thinking of working in her own community (Rachub), and with the Arts Society at Bangor Uni

• In Cwm Du Catrin and Gruff are thinking how they might use the idea to engage with young people and with a predominantly English-speaking community to engage with futures and the Welsh language. They ran a mini-Eisteddfod over whatsapp in November, with the theme ‘2100’, a sort of informal ‘Utopias Bach trial!’

• Lindsey is thinking of a Utopias Bach project in Dyffryn Peris, possibly a ‘distributed orchard’ linked to historical research and poetry.

• What about a project to create cross-cultural Utopia Bach samplers: eg connecting welsh-language sewing group with sewing Syrian women in Bangor, perhaps exchanging and adding to each other’s samplers, perhaps also (if restrictions allow) a shared supper to celebrate the results

• A project connecting primary school children in a school in N Wales, Spain and Malawi?? Andrew is thinking within his school context (in Madrid!) of how to support children in futures that are more than just surviving. This may be part of the Gwalchmai project

• Doing another Mini-Monument Lab, this time in Dinbich, running alongside the debate about the future of the Stanley memorial.
  

timeline - what has happened

Summer 2020: Lindsey met Samina, and Samina asked Lindsey if she could help her make some ‘miniature scenes’ (mostly what would stick things down?) and an ‘accidental’ 8.5 hour walk with teenage godson Gruff lead to discussions of bonsai gardens as something that brings a bit of positivity in an increasingly disasterous-looking future for humans and more-than-humans, especially those on the edge. We found a derelict building in a wood, and imagined an installation of lots of miniature utopias, made by different people…

October 2020: Lindsey got seed funding of £500 to develop the idea of Utopias Bach - revolution in miniature. The name changed from Miniature Utopias to Utopias Bach, thanks to Huw Jones. Lisa Hudson and Wanda Zyborska agreed to help develop the idea, and Llinos Griffin took the idea and runs with it to set up a Utopias Bach project in Penrhyndeudraeth. Julie Upmeyer offered Plas Bodfa as a possible venue. Gruff made a ‘floating farm’ miniature. Chris. Dugrenier recommended reading Susan Stewart’s book ‘On Longing - narratives on the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection’). Lindsey worked on framing the project in ways that might help avoid - or be aware of - nostalgia, imperialism, isolationism. This forms the basis of Utopias Bach project pages on her website.

November 2020: Arts Council Wales published their ‘Connect and Flourish’ fund which seems a perfect fit - perhaps we can fund a ‘hub’ with community based projects? Lindsey, Lisa and Wanda meet with Maggie and Roger from Bangor Arts Initiative as possible hosts if we were to go for fundng. The Penrhyndeudraeth group (Llinos Griffin with artists Siân Elen and Fiorella Wyn) developed the idea (and get a community COVID-recovery grant) for a 6-week zoom based Utopias Bach process. The group (of around 20 people ranging from 14 to 74 years old) held its first meeting (yn y gymraeg) on 12th November. A development process is started to support others interested in developing project ideas - zoom meetings every other Monday and every other Saturday at 11am.

December 2020: The development group meetings continued on zoom, lots of interesting ideas and conversations sparking ideas for projects, individual works and how we might work together. The Penrhyndeudraeth group finishes its lively and creative 5 week zoom (and whatsapp)-based process, and decides to put on an exhibition in a shop window in Penrhyndeudraeth in January, and to continue in 2021. Mark Gahan, Rural Futures, and Lindsey develop an idea for a project in Gwalchmai, starting with working with the school (possibly with links to Madrid and Malawi). Mark secures funding.

January 2020: Samina, Lisa, Wanda and Lindsey develop ideas for how we might work together, and start thinking how to apply to the Arts Council.

MEETINGS HELD

Monday 9th Noember 11am
Saturday 14th November 11am
Monday 23rd November 11am
Saturday 28th November 11am
Monday 7th December 11am
Saturday 12th December 11am

20th January 11am (Weds) and 23rd January 11am (Saturday)
- to update on where we have got to and discuss ‘what question(s) do we want to explore in Utopias Bach as a whole/in your project/through the Collabatory?’. Please bring with you any musings!

3rd February 11am (Weds) and 6th February 11am (Saturday)
- to share results of the questions and principles from last time
- to discuss ‘what does this mean in terms of what we might do/who we might engage/how we go about things/what we need to support what we want to do?’
- any offers of inkind support etc?

The results of these first two rounds of discussions will feed into a bid to the Arts Council’s Connect and Flourish fund [opens 17th Feb].

17th February 11am (Weds) and 20th February 11am (Saturday)
- to discuss and support any ‘live’ projects including Metamorffosis festival in June - what might we do?
- maybe a ‘time travel’ experience, to try out guided visualisation as a way into Utopias Bach?

Weds 3rd and Saturday 6th March

As well as a catch up on how we are, and individual projects and ideas, the meetings this week will look some possible projects and different roles we might put into our Arts Council bid.. If you are interested in being involved (at least in theory) in any of these, and/or have any organisations that we could name in the ‘bid’, that’d be brilliant! For example our possible list includes:

- Welsh language community project: Gwalchmai (starting with young people) linked to Malawi and perhaps Madrid

- Welsh language community project: Penrhyndeudraeth a’r cylch

- Working with homeless people in Wrexham

- Women and land/growing, particularly women of colour and welsh speaking women

- Isolated older women

- People with mental health issues

- Arts Society at Bangor Uni

Weds 17th and Saturday 20th March, 11am

As well as a catch up on how we are, and individual projects and ideas, the agenda for meetings this week will be made ‘in the moment’, may include Utopias Bach opportunities at the Metamorffosis festival in June, or another chance to try out the guided visualisations

Weds 14th and Saturday 17th April, 11am

Weds 5th and Saturday 8th May, 11am

Weds 26th and Saturday 29th May, 11am

Weds 18th and Saturday 21st August, 11am

Weds 15th September and Saturday 18th September - Kar’s noticing collaboratory

Weds 20th and Saturday 23 October

Saturday 20th November - Ynys Faelog

Wednesday 15 December

Wednesday 16th February 2022 and Saturday 19th February 2022

Wednesday 23rd March Frances Beyond Evaluation and Saturday 26 March - Rhys Femtopoems