Category: art

OECD, Hidden Spire, QUT Futures Unlocked

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I recently presented at the launch of the new OECD report on an ecosystems approach to curriculum change, drawing on recent foresight work at the University of Oslo and the University of Queensland exploring the future of education. You can read more on that work here, in a blog post from the OECD’s Josh Polchar: “How seaworthy is your curriculum reform?”

I also ran a workshop with Oxford colleague Halina Suwalowska for the Old Fire Station in Oxford. This is an arts centre in the heart of the city “which takes a risk and entertains”, with the motto, “Art is for everyone. Art has potential.”

The Old Fire Station’s tower is Oxford’s “Hidden Spire”, almost concealed by the collegiate skyline, and this has lent its name to an artmaking collective.

The Hidden Spire project brings together people from different walks of life; many have experience of homelessness, having initially come to the Old Fire Station through the homeless charity Crisis.

The Collective work together to make publicly shared artworks, always deciding collaboratively what they make through a process of co-creation.

Halina and I worked with the artists to look at the future of Oxford, beyond hopes, fears, and expectations – exploring the city of 2041 as a contribution to this year’s forthcoming public artwork.

Soon, I’ll be contributing to the Futures Unlocked series at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), with a presentation to their foresight community on 28th July.

Paris 2026: Changing the stories we tell ourselves about AI

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I’m just back from the Paris Conference on AI and Digital Ethics, an excellent and lively event.

Nataliya Kosmyna, Maria Melchior, and Sylvie Delacroix on a panel discussion about interacting with LLMs

The best bits were the difficult ones – the little moments of tension and conflict which poked through the collegiality and cordiality and even the impeccable Parisian hospitality.

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Exhibition: Ecotones: States of Proximity

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I’m pleased to have written the accompanying notes for the upcoming exhibition Ecotones: States of Proximity, by the glass artist María Renée Morales Lam.

María Renée Morales Lam’s work has long concerned itself with unseen forces and past dynamics that make themselves visible and palpable in moments of encounter and contact. The concept of the ecotone, which lends its name to this exhibition, describes regions of transition between ecological communities – including tidal areas, estuaries, and the riparian zones which mark the edges of rivers, streams, and lakes against the land. In each of these places, materials – and life itself – may flow and exchange in valuable ways.

Here, we are invited to the meeting point of the everyday world and an artspace in which Morales Lam’s principal medium, glass, toys with our perceptions of materiality and our understanding of the properties of light.

See more at Lisbon’s Duplex Gallery from 24 April.

Mega Robo Bros: The End / Interview with Neill Cameron

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Earlier this year, I spoke with the great Neill Cameron about ending the ten-year journey of his comic Mega Robo Bros.

Our conversation covers everything from the first glimpse of the Bros in his mind’s eye to the final pen stroke on the final frame, and many wonderful adventures in between; it’s a proper deep dive from one of the most thoughtful comics creators around. You can read the transcript of our complete conversation as a PDF download here.

Neill Cameron Mega Robo Bros Finale Interview January 2025Download

Time, Space, and Unbelonging: An Online Conversation with Kay Sohini, 27th October

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“They say that time heals. But in my experience, grief slows down time. It interrupts the directional, linear way we perceive time.”

What special relationship does the comics medium have to time? How do comics-making and comics-reading affect our own experience of time? And what might the future hold for comics?

On 27th October, I’ll be joining researcher and comics creator Kay Sohini for “Time, Space, and Unbelonging”, a one-hour conversation which forms part of the 2024 Thinking Through Drawing event.

This year, the theme of Thinking Through Drawing is “Marking Time”: find out more about my session with Kay, and the wider event, which includes online and in-person gatherings, here: https://www.thinkingthroughdrawing.org/ttd-24-marking-time.html

“Portraits of queer futurity” at National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

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Where do we find the limits of identity and desire? What secret possibilities of thinking the world anew exist in quiet suburbs, remote farmsteads, Olympic pools, and the farthest reaches of time and space?

Join me next month for a special online virtual tour of Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, exploring portraits that offer different gateways to worlds beyond, blending past, present and future.

‘The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness … allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.’ – José Esteban Muñoz

By Wikimedia user Thennicke – CC BY-SA 4.0

Scripturient: To Dream Like A Human

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The world could always be otherwise than it is. Sometimes fate is only a failure of imagination. The trajectory of automation is not only uncertain, it is unwritten. The fundamental question is less about technical capacity than ethics, authority, and accountability: Who will create the future – and with what ends in mind?

In the latest instalment of ‘Scripturient’, my quarterly column for Information Professional magazine, I draw together comments from a few different thinkers on automation and art.

You can read ‘To Dream Like A Human’ here.

BMJ Medical Humanities Podcast: Scenario Planning, Healthcare, and the Humanities with Professor Matthew Molineux

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Years ago, casting around for a way to explore “applied medical humanities”, I read Matthew Molineux’s essay “A Labour in Vain”, a kind of intellectual history of occupational therapy which spoke directly to the fraught, pragmatic question of what good we really do, when we strive to help others. It’s one of my all-time favourite pieces of scholarly writing and you can find it as a free PDF download from publishers Wiley here.

Working with Matthew in a collaboration between Griffith University and State Library of Queensland, I got to know him not just as a great writer, but a colleague and a friend. Combining a creative hands-on approach to occuaptional therapy education with foresight and psychodynamic work, we took Griffith students to distant futures — all in the service of exploring occupational therapists’ role in a changing world.

Toys, cake, and cardboard were just some of the materials which were brought into the work, which included a challenge to produce an edible presentation. The students were resourceful, empathetic, creative, good-humoured – exemplfying the best characteristics of their profession.

Now for The BMJ’s Medical Humanities podcast, Matthew and I join hosts Cristina Hanganu-Bresch and Brandy Schillace to explore scenario planning, healthcare, art, foresight, and the humanities.

“How I use the dream”: 5 reflections on strategy + reperception

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What do I do? I help people think through big decisions, individually or collectively, when situations are uncertain.

It’s strategy, not therapy, but there’s kinship between the two.

Learning about “what goes on within and between us”, the psychology of individuals and groups, nourishes the work – and you can find that nourishment in unexpected places.

Sometimes it’s pretty conventional: a journal article, a course at the Tavistock, formal professional gatherings such as a group relations conference.

Sometimes learning seems to find its way to you: a challenging event in your personal life yields a nugget of wisdom, a conversation with a musician provides an unexpected metaphor, or maybe you get an unexpectedly helpful book recommendation from a chatty shop assistant. (That’s how I first encountered the work of Irvin Yalom).

Sometimes you can learn a lot just from getting stuck in a transit strike.

Dreaming by Jozef Israëls

As Ellen Ramvi puts it, “learning is getting involved in what one doesn’t know” — and there’s plenty of ways to get there.

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Recording: Climate, Justice, and the Strategic Sublime

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My one-hour lecture for the Romancing the Gothic online lecture series on “Climate, Justice, and the Strategic Sublime” is now available on YouTube.

You can also read more about this topic in my recent piece for Vector, co-written with the University of Galway’s Marie Mahon.