My local library delivers a beautiful incentive called 'seed swap'. Find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/MundijongPublicLibrary/
They inspire me. It is activism through sharing genetically unmodified seeds .
'From little things big things grow'. Simple yet effective concept.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerrilla_gardener_in_south_central_la?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

This is inspiring.

As I develop sociological ways of looking at local problems, I find 'think global, act local' to be an important mantra. The implementation of the 'grow free' model was aimed at creating connection in my disparate community. A year later and the grow free continues to connect my local community in a self sustaining manner in Jarrahdale. The share shed, previously discussed in this blog, acts as the 'heart' where people continue to contribute produce in this 'shared economy' where waste becomes a socially connective tool. The result is happy people who are proud of their town and community.

These were the original trolleys. They were unsustainable due to our town lacking in a central business who could look after them. The solution was to construct the 'share shed' which was more secure and permanent. Now the shed is always open. Local people manage the shed on a volunteer basis.

Here are the images from the Jarrahdale Repair cafe. This was an incentive proposed by me to the people of Jarrahdale as a means to foster community  engagement. The Jarrahdale people are skilled 'repairers' and this event was designed to tie them together in this disparate little town. At least 50 items were fixed preventing waste going to landfill. but further to this, people came together for a positive purpose. It was a great feeling.

Images: Jarrahdale Community Collective

 I proposed a repair cafe to the local community group as a means of creating community connection. Here's the interview.
https://www.yourlocalexaminer.com.au/drop-in-for-a-coffee-and-repair-job/
The community loved the idea and many people have already been involved.

In the heart of my local community, I have designed a permanent solution for a grow free trolley to service the community's need for a food share facility.
It is currently being constructed.

Another 'making' workshop for Festival Center. Shadow puppets. It was a delight to see 300 people all making and working together with their children. Creativity rocks!

What a cracking event! 150 community members and dignitaries helped us to launch the 'Our Journeys' project on Saturday. A beautiful artwork created with the Ridley Grove community.
Thanks to Helen Bock (program coordinator), Gerry Mcmahon (steel sculpture Artist) and all of the community members who all had a go!
 

Another great day doing workshops with young people as part of State Theatre Company of South Australia's work experience week . This workshop is about how playing in simple materials and being uncensored can open us up to having original ideas with greater depth. Its all about reconnecting with our inner child! Great fun and it gets varied responses with lots of strong concepts.Lovely seeing young artists work.Good for the soul!

I love this investigation into smashing apart reality. I feel it speaks volumes about what an artist is and does.

These are some of the images of the latest Something on Saturday workshop at the Adelaide Festival Center. Again, an amazing opportunity for me to send out the 'word' about how fantastic it can be to make art together with your little people with very simple resources.  We focused on making pirate hats, seagull wings and mermaid tails out of newspaper. Its so joyful to see mums and dads and kids all working together and making magic!

What a great six months its been so far. After a family visit to Europe at Christmas this year, it was straight into work.
Firstly, with Riverland Youth Theatre Company with a creative development for 'Your Place or Mine'.
Straight into workshops with the Ridley Grove Community Center (Community Arts Network and Uniting Communities) to develop a new public art work for the area.
Designing the educational touring show for State Theatre Company 'This is where we live' and touring the set to Albury (Hot House Theatre company co pro).
Teaching directing students at Flinders University how to think like a designer.
Developing and facilitating a community engagement event called 'Found,out' as a part of the public art strategy for Unley City Council .
And now developing and facilitating some of the workshops for 'Something on Saturday' program.

The gorgeous crew at RYT. After 4 days of creative development, they were great and even made the set!

The Amazing Design work of the Directing Students at Flinders University

these are some of the beautiful Marquettes  made by community at the Ridley Grove Meeting Place. Ive been collaborating with the prolific and respected sculptural artist Gerry McMahon as facilitated by Helen Bock at Community Arts Network.

Here's the set bumping in for 'This is Where we Live'. Its designed to fit in a truck with a three hour bump in.

So Ive been a busy girl with 400 friends in the Dunstan Playhouse foyer! This was a workshop run recently as part of the Something on Saturday program. This workshop related to the show by Circa in the Festival Center program. I designed the  workshop to encourage families to work together to create animal habitats in small boxes out of colored paper.
Amazing chance to get 400 people of varying ages to create together!

Come Out Festival ( and therefore the Future Garden Exhibition) opens today. I have been a very busy chook lately! Heres a video of an installation of the Airport Exhibit. 

The notion of audience engagement excites me.
 
How can you involve audience in the process of the making of the work and the thinking that goes into the work?

It’s an opportunity to show community that what we do is not magic. To a certain extent, It’s a process of investigation and problem solving.
 
Creativity is as much a response to our community and the ‘problems’ involved in  creation as it is about ‘reason-less’, meaningless dreaming and art making. Creative thought is never random.
 
As an artist working in theatre, events and community, I love to have a relationship with our audiences that make this notion possible. I find ‘Art’ that disengages its audience rather than engages does immeasurable damage to the artist’s relationship with its viewing community. It intimidates and jeopardizes future experiences for the viewer.
 
Art should engage on so many levels. Not just in the space when you experience it but out side in your community. How do we as artists support this process of sharing between the community and artist, lessening the divide and mistrust? We have so many forms of technology with which we can create these relationships across vast distances (as in Australia) and people are becoming very quickly ‘tech’ educated (thanks to smart phones and tablets).
 
I see this a personal challenge. One that I am currently investigating with Patch Theatre Company and with the online design workshops I’m running for Come Out Festival.
 
Patch is driving the notion of Audience Engagement with their young audiences to a level where the material produced online maybe used in the performance. Come Out Opening Event is an exhibition of work that the children and schools have created with in the framework of a blog and instructional videos I have generated.
 
Its all new, but wonderfully exciting and filled with possibilities.

This is our FIRST blog on our EduBlogs site.  Its our educational, online community sharing blog space. We have 50 schools enrolled with us already to make a garden from disused 'Junk' in a place in school that needs livening up. Come Out Festival will then display approximately 25 schools' gardens to the Festival Centre for display over the life of the 10 day event. Its early days yet.

 
At the 'Come Out Festival' we are in the process of creating a Come Out Festival Future Gardens Blog.
This year’s brief is for participants to create 'garden plots' from junk, then collectively present them as an exhibition at theFestival Centre during the Come Out Festival 2013.
In order for this to be successful, we would like content from the participants as they move through their creative process and in-keeping with my interest in audience engagement, we have created a 'blog'. This way I  can keep in touch with the 1500 young people who will be contributing to the Future Gardens exhibition.
I’m very excited about the possibilities for this media’s contribution to the  production of content and the active engagement it offers with Come Out Festival's participants.
I’ve been using Imovie to create online 'Workshop's and am looking forward to the beautiful  'Gardens' we hope they inspire for the Festival.
 

It's not very often that designers get to work on the floor with a company while they are producing new pieces.
Such close proximity means the design process can be more 'useful' in helping work find its 'truth' rather than design being an afterthought and applied.
This week I have had the privilege of being invited to assist Stone/Castro in it’s creative development. The work is produced by Jason Cross with Insite Arts and is part of the State Theatre Company of South Australia's new State Resident program.
I’m now very much looking forward to working again on the piece in June 2013.

Patch is investigating the idea of audience participation and it's importance in our contemporary community.
There is a wonderful new dialogue taking place about the benefits and techniques for audience engagement.
Patch is in the fore-front of new processes for engagement and Dave Brown at Patch Theatre Company's helm has instigated an investigation into possible pathways.
One technique involves activities in the foyer that have been started at home or in the educational environment. 
Internet allows so much possibility for audience involvement even before the  theatre event.
The wonderful sculptor Gus Clutterbuck and I were employed for a week to create a foyer exhibition.
We ended up with a series of hanging sculptures called the 'everyone things'.
These will be made by the young audiences placing their thumbprint on a piece of paper and posting it into a balloon. The balloons are then offered to the 'Every One Thing' which grows through-out the life of the season. Effectively creating a 'thing' made from everyone's DNA.
 

Playing with Patch at the moment has opened up a whole new quest for understanding of some of the technologies available for more expansive audience engagement. We are playing with the notion of the creation of content in easy and cheap forms from various participation sources. How easy is it to contribute animations you build your self as a young person into the actual performance and where, conceptually, we make it fit into the work. 

The work, with its simple elemental object such as a white balloon and a black space, has generated a whole universe of responses. The Balloon acts as an instigator, initiator, prime mover, motivator,architect, designer, planner, inventor, mastermind, originator,author, creator, agent; founder, pioneer, founding father; agitator,fomenter, troublemaker, ringleader, rabble-rouser.

So it generates in me the need to play with apps on my ipad to create animations. I would love to find an app that has very simple use and elemental tools that everyone could use... including a 4 yr old to make their own stories. 
Ive included my little animations here and some other peoples' work that I love.

This work on the Come Out Festival has made me investigate the different areas of Recycle Art. This is a notion that I carry very close to my heart. I embrace 'responsible' art making where we create very little waste. It excites our imaginations and forces us to be more creative. Designers have a great opportunity to minimise waste and create a big impact for little cost. Here are some inspirational images.

This is the latest blog on the Come Out Festival site. The participation form has gone out to the schools and already the schools are expressing their interest in making their gardens. Its so exciting to get to a point where a community is forming around an idea or an event to happen in the future.
We will then take all of the gardens made at the schools and install them at the Festival Centre along the walkways. The Participants will experience this as a big garden gallery on the massive opening day when they all converge on the centre in May next year. 
Lots of planning, meetings and presentations still to do.
I am currently working with DECD (Department for Education and Child Development) to create a blog for all of the schools participating to share their stories and let me keep in the loop about what they are preparing for the event. I love the idea of creating a community online which will meet and share the experience of seeing their work in a different context.
The Future Garden is being born!

Calling all growing Artists:
Let’s make dormant places beautiful.
Let’s make ‘junk’ special again.
And most importantly, let’s grow the future into something magical that we love.

My name is Morag Cook, I am an artist and am also the designer for Come Out Festival. I think artists have the best job in the world. Artists bring communities together, helping people grow and learn, sometimes using sculpture or paintings, but sometimes with a public event or even a garden.

Come Out Festival has given me the challenge of Dreaming the Future.

 When I think of the future, I consider the environment and what kind of place I want to live in and enjoy. I then begin to think about what will happen to everything we have today. 

What will be replaced? What will be thrown away? What will I grow out of? What will I grow tired of? What will I do with all my rubbish? What did my parents and teachers do with all their old and unwanted things and where are they now? Are they all in landfill polluting the environment? How can I reduce my effect on the environment by reusing and recycling my unwanted items? How can I turn them into something else that will make where I live and learn more beautiful places to grow and enjoy? 

 A Special Challenge for Schools - get involved!

My challenge for you is to Dream the Future with me. Imagine if your school was more colourful and beautiful with a place for art that grows thanks to your imagination. Can you think of a place in your school where no one expects a garden to grow made from objects that seem curious, funny or with a secret special meaning to you?

Rather than throwing out old unwanted things, imagine using your incredible imagination and skill with your hands to make something else and give those objects a new life. Something useful that can help us in the future.

What do we need more of in the future? Clean air, fresh water, trees, plants, food, fruit and vegetables? We definitely need less rubbish!

Think about what you might throw away because it no longer works, or is not as good as something new. It might me an old bike? Maybe a TV or computer? Maybe one of your old toys that you don’t play with anymore? Have you ever seen people’s old belongings thrown out on the streets? Maybe that old cupboard or chair could be turned into something new. Maybe rubbish isn’t always what it seems, a pile of junk has the potential to be something creative and beautiful that will grow.

Now it's you turn to imagine and make it come ‘alive’ for your school.

We will be showing you how very soon. Registrations are now open, download and submit your Future Gardens registration form and return it to receive all the information over the coming months including the online Future Gardens workshop in January.

So get dreaming about ‘rubbish’ growing into a Future Garden of your own!

This is me experimenting with popular household items which have already become unloved. There is something so happy about a basil kettle or a growing keyboard....

“Gardens, scholars say, are the first sign of commitment to a community. When people plant corn they are saying, let's stay here. And by their connection to the land, they are connected to one another.”

Anne Raver quotes