Resilients

In June 2009, we start a new collaboration, with long-time collaborators. The Resilients project has a long term goal to establish a support structure for resilient creative practices – the Resilients Guild. Resilients is the first step towards this structure, drawing on the traditions of early European guilds – associations of crafts practitioners & merchants, designed to develop their practice, educate its members, circulate works & knowledge.

For humans to thrive in uncertain, turbulent times, resilience is an essential tactic. A resilient system is both fexible & robust. It is continuously engaged in the delicate balancing act of growing & evolving, adapting to change & discarding unsustainable elements. Change is a never-ending process, growing less predictable as our habitats, societies, economic & technological systems increase complexity & become more interdependent. To respond to unpredictability, we can look at improving human ability to face & embrace change, whether perceived as positive, negative or neutral (e.g. birth of a child, environmental crisis, or moving house). By integrating different approaches to developing resilience, we can strengthen the 'immune system' of a culture as a whole. We can never be certain about the kind of cultures that could materialise in the future, but we can speculate about how could they look. This project experiments with possible futures by applying whole systems thinking to the integration of cultural traditions with emerging arts, sciences, design & technology. Through unexpected alliances between these fields, speculation becomes rooted in the real world. For a resilient culture to arise, a stable support infrastructure is required – open systems, cultural laboratories & knowledge pools. RT is committed to building this infrastructure through transnational collaboration of partners sharing common values. RT is designed as a pilot project for long term collaboration – the formation of a Guild of Resilients.