The Energy to Network to Provoke Change - A Relational Workshop Dinner

The Energy to Network to Provoke Change: What Does Meaningful Connectivity Mean to Me? A Relational Workshop Dinner

• Date and time: Friday, 23 October, 18:00–21:00

• Venue: Ecological Justice Hub (Jesuit Social Centre) in Brunswick, 3 Saxon Street (right next to Brunswick Library in a laneway leading to Howler Bar)

• Please RSVP for this in-person and catered event; places are limited.

• The workshop starts with an artist presentation by Jenny Fraser at 6pm.

As part of RMIT’s Regenerative Futures Institute (RFI) event season on energy futures, this workshop invites participants to explore what meaningful connectivity means to them in the context of a changing climate and climate emergency. 

Featuring Jenny Faser, a Migunburri artist and curator; Susie Moloney, who works on community-led climate change adaptation at RMIT; Jade Ambrose of Merri-bek Tech; and Helen Addison, a retired chef and relational artist, the workshop approaches meaningful connectivity through First Nations cultural practice, community-led climate adaptation, neighbourhood software, and local food production. 

Organised in a house-party style around the preparation of a shared dinner, the workshop invites participants to cook and eat a collaborative, hyper-local, open-source soup. 

Through the cooking process, participants will collectively reflect on what meaningful connectivity means to them. They will join in the action, contemplate bushfood fusion, use paper cards to explore alternative modes of networking, and consider the personal and social energies required to relate and connect. 

The workshop follows the Community Network Spotlight event, Indigenous Rights & Digital Sovereignty, taking place on 22 October. That event explores questions of self-determination within existing telecommunications infrastructures and regulatory systems. 

This workshop dinner continues the conversation in a different register, asking what meaningful connectivity might mean socially, culturally, and ecologically as global warming moves beyond 1.5°C. 

The Alliance for Affordable Internet defines meaningful connectivity in terms of access to and use of public utilities such as the internet. This workshop takes the concept further by shifting from utility to relationship, from individual access to collective resilience, and from a technical to a cultural and ecological register. 

The relational workshop dinner format is a deliberate methodological choice. These questions are best explored through shared conversation in an extended, organic, and communal setting. 

The workshop starts with an artist presentation by Jenny Fraser at 6pm.