Utopias Bach

revolution in miniature

• a call for participation

Utopias Bach has received arts council wales funding and now has its own website!

These pages are an archive of the beginning of the project.

NEWYDDION! NEWS!

Utopias Bach Penrhyndeudraeth a’r Cylch: Ein prosiect cyntaf! Our first Utopias Bach project.

Metamorffosis: Call for proposals for a festival in June 2021

Succession: Call for participants in a new project inspired by lockdown

The latest from our ‘collabatory’ - our action-learning network

Create a community project!

Lots of ideas and resources for creating your own Utopia Bach, including Time travel to the future!

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing” - Arundhati Roy

Introduction

Prosiect amlgyfryngol fydd yn mynd i’r afael ag ansicrwydd ein byd wedi’r cyfnod clo. Bydd yn archwilio sut y byddwn yn wynebu difrifoldeb llethol ein sefyllfa wedi COVID, gan gynnwys materion newid hinsawdd a chwymp ein ecosystem. Mi fydda i’n cydweithio ag artistiaid, ysgolion a chymunedau a’u gwahodd i greu eu ‘Utopias Bach - revolution in miniature’ eu hunain i adlewyrchu ac i sbarduno newid cadarnhaol yn ein cymdeithas.

Bydd Utopias Bach yn digwydd mewn cyd-destun bygythiadau i ddynoliaeth a’r byd mwy-na-dynol: Rydan ni mewn amseroedd ‘troi mawr’ ar raddfa a sylwedd fel rydan ni’n ond y teimlo “bod pethau’n drech na ni, yn heb wybod sut i ymateb” (Bruno Latour)

Mae ‘Utopias Bach’ yn ein gwahodd i gofio bod y mawr ond yn estyniad o’r bach. Beth ydy’r gweithgaredd bach, sy’n cael eu creu gyda dychymig radicalaidd, sydd yn ein helpu ni i ddarganfod ac ail-feddwl ein perthynas gyda’r dyfodol ar raddfa rydan ni’n teimlo gollen ni ei ddylanwadu arno? Sut gallen ni danseilio’r mawrion a ffiniau amser a lle, creu dolennau efo pobol eraill o agos a bell sydd yn arbrofi gyda – ac yn pwyntio i – ffyrdd newydd o fod yn y dyfodol.

"Pan feddwn dalent plentyn
I weld llais a chlywed llun,
Maint fy myd oedd hyd y ddôl,
Ac o'i glaswellt gogleisiol
Y rhwyfwn donnau'r hafwynt
Yn fy nghread gwastad gynt."
(dechrau awdl 'Afon' gan Gerallt Lloyd Owen)

Utopias Bach is a project engaging artists and people in diverse communities in exploring possible futures at a scale that they feel they can influence. Thinking through ideas and how to express them creatively, and using this as the starting point for discussion and possible ‘real world’ experiments based on what was learnt and connections made.

Utopias Bach is taking place in the context of existential threats to the human and more-than-human world: We are in the times of a ‘great turning’ of such depth and scale ‘how can we not feel inwardly undone by the anxiety of not knowing how to respond’ (Bruno Latour)

Utopias Bach 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?

“I think the work of transformation is thinking of what are the smallest things we can do - not the biggest technological fixes, but the smallest gestures that we can begin to make, that would fundamentally reconfigure our relationship with the future”
- Dr Natasha Myers

Ymuno â ni! get involved!

Those taking part in Utopias Bach would be invited and supported individually and in community to create:

• arbrawf sy’n archwilio
  /experiments that explore

• syniadau i’r dyfodol
  /ideas for the future (that may already be present)

• wedi’u creu/meddwl/cyflwyno/fframio ar raddfa fach (yn llythrennol, neu fel microcosm)
  /constructed/presented/framed in a small scale (physically, or as a microcosm)

• gall, mewn ffordd, ein helpu i ddychmygu'r byd fel lle gwell i bobol a mwy-na-phobol o bob math, yn arbennig y rhai sydd wedi’u heffeithio’n ddrwg gan stad bresennol y byd
  / that in some way might help us imagine the world a better place for humans and more-than-humans of all kinds, especially those who are most badly affected by the current state of the world.

“We need to redistribute the power to imagine beyond the now, to speculate our futures in line with climate justice, to re-centre experiences that have been marginalised by the uneven developments of socio-political, economic and cultural powers that sustain the crisis” - Angela Chan

The resulting Utopias Bach might range from gardens on a plate or bonsai forests (thinking Sitopias!) to tiny poems and books, texts; from micro conversations to online games; from puppetry and lego buildings and towns to technological innovation; from mini-monuments and Minecraft worlds to photographs, animations, films, songs, performances and events or simply observing as experimental microcosms of places, relationships, systems of the future.

Os fasech chi’n licio ymuno â ni i ddatblygu’r prosiect, tybed creu Utopia Bach eich hunan/ mewn cymuned, neu unrhyw ffordd arall, cliciwch ar ddelwedd isod, neu ymunwch â'r rhestr bostio

If you’d like to join us in developing the project, perhaps creating your own Utopia bach project in a community/combination of communities (of place, interest or characteristic), or in any other way, please click on one of the images below to find out more or get in touch/join the mailing list

“We need to move from competitive ideation, trying to push our individual ideas, to collective ideation, collaborative ideation. It isn’t about having the number one best idea, but having ideas that come from and work for more people” - Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown

background

“Within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.”
-Margaret Atwood

This project is in development! Please click on an image below for some background, including thoughts about utopias (heterotopias), miniatures, revolution and how bach comes to the rescue to the legacy of utopias and miniatures…