RETREAT CORNWALL
RETREAT CORNWALL
A 4 day creative family residency discovering how to live when sea levels rise
In a world 70 years from now your coastal home has become uninhabitable. Sea levels have flooded harbours and eaten away the land, causing large parts of the coastline to collapse, with houses falling into the sea. You and your family have become climate refugees and are evacuated to higher ground.
The unthinkable has happened… what do we do now?
With rising sea levels numerous communities along the British coast are in danger of flooding and erosion. Policy-makers and scientists are planning the future defence of the coast, which will mean that many coastal communities will have to fend for themselves when sea level rise takes its toll.
With this in mind we are designing RETREAT a 4 day 'collective residency' that conceives its participants as climate refugees, that are relocated from their coastal community to a holding camp on higher ground.
We've been overwhelmed by interest to participate and recruited 7 families. 22 adults and 16 children (children of all ages between 5 and 12 years and two toddlers) will engage in a hands-on creative residency to discover, imagine and design how to live when sea levels rise.
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​The adults bring in knowledge of carpentry, climate science, policy making, refugee counselling, coastal management, vegetable growing, art and music making, health promotion, environmental activism, off-the-grid-living, community engagement, art therapy, engineering and refugee resettlement...
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Families will explore and imagine the impact of climate change through a guided journey to 'resettle'. Questioning and playing with the ‘comforts’ we take for granted and assume as our birthrights, we will ask what it is we need and want when all we know is washed away.
All learnings, reflections and products from these activities will be exhibited in a collectively-curated exhibition back in the community. We will organise a ‘private view’ for the exhibition to which we invite locals, friends, family, policy makers, academics and art-enthousiasts.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Families that are looking for an active, creative and affordable 4-day activity for the start of their summer holiday.
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Anybody wanting to learn about or explore an environmental issue with a group of people.
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Academics, change and policy-makers, artists and others that need a retreat from their day-to-day and see their work/life in a fresh light.
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Anybody wanting to make and play, or learn new creative skills.
John Dewey
‘We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.’