RMIT Mapping Future Imaginaries enabling impact research network - Making Connection program

The Making Connection co-labs take place at RMIT Melbourne 11-15 December 2023. Produced by the Mapping Future Imaginaries network, Making Connection explores the importance of creative encounters for social connection. Come and co-explore with artists, researchers and industry specialists how creative encounters build our relationships with place, and help design frameworks for making connection.

Making Connection: Merri Creek sensewalk
Extend your senses and develop new appreciations of Merri Creek on an 'experience walk' that combines the arts and sciences. Using listening and embodiment exercises and field observations, we will gain more appreciation of how humans and nature interact. This sensewalk combines exploring the geological timescale, local histories, acoustic ecology, walking maps and current environmental issues to develop a holistic understanding of the creek ecosystem and its buffer zone. We will gather clues about how soils, atmospheres, waters, plants and animals interact. You will come away with an individual drawing recording your observations and insights -no artistic experience is required.

Bring: one litre of water, camera/smart phone, enclosed shoes, insect repellent, clothes to suit the weather: raincoat or hat and sun cream. This workshop will include walking and sitting on the ground. Please arrive 15 minutes prior to start time.

Perdita Phillips was born on unceded Whajuk Noongar land in Perth, Western Australia. Perdy works across installation, environmental projects, walking, sound, video, publishing and object making. Her ‘ecosystemic thinking’ engages material and conceptual networks as diverse as drains, minerals, termites and bowerbirds at the intersection of the human and non-human worlds.