+ LED BY Hilary Martin
Saturday, July 13, 2024
1 – 4 PM
InterAccess (950 Dupont St., Toronto ON M6H 1Z2)
Registration Available
‘Start Where You Are’ is a serious games workshop. It is a “game to build a game.” This collaborative, facilitated experience focuses on the complex, real-world problem of climate crisis adaptation in Toronto, specifically the neighbourhood around InterAccess.
In this experimental workshop, participants will build a potential game world based on the observable world right now, using smartphone photos, publicly available information on the City of Toronto website, and content generated through rapid timed writing and sketching exercises.
This three-hour world-building workshop has five parts:
Part 1 – The Model: Serious Games in Disaster Preparation
Part 2 – Deep Dive into the Present
Part 3 – Deep Dive into the Future
Part 4 – Backcasting Futures to the Present
Part 5 – Mapping Choices
The artist developed this creative method in order to counteract cognitive dissonance due to climate grief that she experienced at a global energy conference during COP21 in Paris 2015. Workshop participants will be led through a similar brief experience, which will be no more stressful than real life.
Applying the method together, participants follow a deliberate route that repurposes their experience and generates potential adaptation strategies for tangible action in the game world.
The workshop activities focus on environments, from city infrastructure to systemic patterns of oppression. The facilitation will focus on participant’s lived experience and collaboration in real time during the workshop.
Please note: The causes or reality of climate crisis will not be debated during this workshop.
This workshop is presented as part of the Vector Festival 2024.
WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS
- Smartphone (optional). The workshop includes a 5-minute sidewalk excursion to collect photos of the streetscape. Participants are invited to use their own device or share with their group. iPads will be available for anyone without access to a device.
- An acceptance that climate crisis is real is required for the duration of the workshop.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Hilary Martin
Hilary Martin is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, sound, geography, and serious games. Her current work addresses cognitive dissonance in climate grief and aims to bring the functional, expressive, and aesthetic realities of climate crisis adaptation closer to her current locations and the lived experience of her audiences. This workshop is part of the artist’s larger ongoing project, Microlocal.
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
The InterAccess gallery has five steps from the sidewalk up to the main entrance with automatic doors. Once inside all facilities are on the same level with an accessible single-user washroom inside.
Reach out to education @ interaccess.org with any questions or requests leading up to the event.