Living Lab for Pluriversal Future Imaginaries
How do we want to live tomorrow? And what can we start doing today to make it possible?
We live in a time when the world can feel increasingly harsh. Ecological crises, inequalities, conflicts and the loss of connections with the people and places around us can leave us feeling angry, sad, powerless or overwhelmed.
Faced with all of this, it is easy to feel that there is little we can do, to look the other way, or to end up confronting these challenges on our own.
But we should not have to face them alone. Nor can we afford to retreat into indifference.
We need spaces where we can pause, share what concerns us and imagine together how we want to live. Spaces where the big questions about the world can be connected to the places we inhabit, the relationships we build and the things we do every day.
The Living Lab grows out of this desire: to create a shared space for artistic research, encounter and experimentation, where we can explore other ways of living, relating to one another and caring for the world.
Making space for other possibilities
How can we imagine alternatives when the ways we live, work and organise our societies often seem difficult to change? What does it mean to live well? What makes a fulfilling and dignified life possible? How can we care for one another and for the places we live in? What forms of community, cooperation and coexistence do we want to make possible?
These are not questions with simple or universal answers.
We are interested in the many ways people understand a good life, the different forms of knowledge they hold and the possibilities that emerge when these perspectives meet.
Artistic practices and collective imagination can help us approach these questions differently. Through making, observing, listening, storytelling and experimentation, we can explore ideas that might remain abstract in a conventional discussion.
The aim is not only to imagine different futures, but to discover how some of their possibilities might already be practised in the present.
Connecting the global and the local
The challenges we face are interconnected, but they are also experienced in particular places and through everyday relationships.
We explore how large-scale questions about ecological limits, food sovereignty social inequalities, work, care and collective life connect to the territories we inhabit and the choices we make.
What might different ways of living look like here, in our own surroundings? What can we learn from local knowledge, ecological processes and the people who care for a place? What relationships would we need to strengthen, change or restore?
We are interested in practices grounded in care, generosity, cooperation and kindness — not as abstract ideals, but as ways of relating that can be explored and experienced together.
Research as a collective experiment
The Living Lab is not a conventional course with a fixed curriculum, nor is it a process designed to produce one definitive answer.
It is an evolving space for collective inquiry. Through conversations, walks, readings, observations and creative practices, participants can bring their own experiences and questions into a shared process of exploration.
We might work with texts, images, drawings, maps, objects, stories or other forms of artistic expression. We might investigate a particular place, examine an everyday practice or experiment with alternative ways of organising an activity together.
The process will develop through the questions, encounters and discoveries that emerge along the way. We will document our explorations in a growing collection of materials, ideas and reflections.
You do not need to be an artist or have previous research experience. Curiosity, openness and a willingness to explore without knowing all the answers are enough to begin.
Why create this space?
The Living Lab forms part of the practical component of a Master’s final project. It takes an alternative approach to research, starting from the idea that the question of how we want to live cannot be answered individually or through theory alone. Instead, it invites collective exploration through shared experiences, conversations and creative practices.
It is a collective question, shaped by the places we inhabit, the relationships we build and the realities we experience. I want to explore how artistic research, shared experience and situated experimentation can help us approach it differently.
Rather than searching for a definitive answer, I want to create the conditions for us to investigate this question together, to make room for feelings and ideas that are often left aside, and to discover what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to imagine and practise alternatives.
This is not about having all the answers or imagining a perfect future. It is about continuing to imagine alternatives, refusing to face these challenges in isolation, and beginning to practise, here and now, the ways of living we want to make possible tomorrow.
How to take part
- Join the research process. Bring your questions, experiences, interests and perspectives into a shared space of exploration.
- Contribute a practice. If you work with art, ecology, education, culture, community organising or another field, you might bring a method, a question or a way of looking at the world that opens up new possibilities.
- Participate in gatherings. Take part in conversations, creative sessions, walks and experiments as they develop.
- Collaborate with us. We welcome connections with people and organisations interested in artistic research, ecological relationships, collective imagination and alternative ways of living.
- Help shape what comes next. The project is designed to evolve through the people who take part. Your questions and ideas can become part of its direction.
You do not need to arrive with a finished idea. Sometimes the most interesting place to begin is with a question we have not yet found a way to ask.