AN EVER-EVOLVING WORK BY NORAH ZUNIGA SHAW AND HER CO-CREATORS, LIVABLE FUTURES TURNS TOWARD CLIMATE CHANGE AND PLANETARY CONDITIONS OF UNCERTAINTY AND INJUSTICE BY CREATING TRANSFORMATIVE SPACES FOR REFLECTION, CONNECTION, AND CHANGE. ZSHAW’S COLLABORATIVE SPIRIT AND GENRE-BENDING APPROACH IGNITE THE WORK THAT IS BOTH POEM AND PERFORMANCE, RITUAL AND DIALOG, HOSPICE AND HEALING.
“This is an offering, a living biome of ideas and practices that inspire and activate me even as I face the powerlessness, the apathy, the pain. It is a dance of arriving, turning toward, decentering and falling into motion. I hope you’ll read and move and make along with me and I can’t wait to see what emerges.”
– Norah Zuniga Shaw
Livablefutures.art draws on the extraordinary models, practices, solution stories, and wisdom already emerging from the expansive community of artists and scholars in the Livable Futures network co-founded by ZShaw in 2018. The LF Network includes many incredible people and practices. Folks working on artistic foraging and #plantnoticing and making natural ink, training each other in first aid and knitting feminist messages of love, leading somatic anti-racist workshops, inventing virtual reality worlds that imagine carbon-less living, and designing experiences to help us all face the future and see our own agency.
SYNTHESIZING LESSONS LEARNED AND SHAREABLE PRACTICES FROM THE LF NETWORK AND OTHER WORK UPWELLING HERE AND AROUND THE GLOBE.
“I use the materials I have at hand and I invite you to do the same. I use sound, movement, image, word, inclusive and liberatory methods for educating, parenting, mentoring, research, intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as new materials and skills. I am engaging with everyting from wilderness first aid to anti-racist facilitation, somatics, healing practices, birth and death doula work, trauma counseling, and political action. I sense that these all weave together in ways that might surprise both me and the community here and create pathways to wellbeing, hope, action, and many pleasurable, joyful, tender moments of connection.”
– Norah Zuniga Shaw
AN ACCESSIBLE SERIES OFFERED ONLINE, THE PROJECT INCLUDES THOUGHTS, IMAGES, GATHERINGS, AND IMPROVISATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR LIVE IMMERSION AND INTERACTION.
Institutions recognizing the importance of collective, creative action have come together to support and share the project with their audiences, starting with the Discovery Themes at the Ohio State University, Barnard College, DanceHouse Melbourne, and the Wexner Center for the Arts.