Rhythms of Sustainability & Cross-Cultural Collaboration

Creative Fellow: Stewart Geddes
Co-Investigator: Dr Edwar Calderón

Challenge

This fellowship addressed the challenge of working with unfamiliar materials collected on Rathlin Island, adapting an instrument-making workshop to their characteristics. The aim was to create a meaningful cultural exchange that used music, play, and creativity to foster environmental reflection, community pride, and cross-cultural connection despite linguistic and cultural differences.

Approach

Stewart collaborated with the Innovaser Collective from Colombia, known for repurposing waste into instruments, to lead a participatory workshop on Rathlin. The methodology blended reused materials, body percussion, songwriting, and analogue/digital sound exploration. This immersive, cross-cultural collaboration created a shared space to connect art, environment, and community.

Outcomes

The fellowship revealed how methodology evolves through community participation and storytelling. Local materials became both creative media and prompts for environmental dialogue, in this case producing a song. It demonstrated that place-based, collaborative arts practice, especially with international artists, can inspire shared reflection and context-rooted sustainable strategies.

Learnings

The fellowship demonstrated that methodologies often evolve with context, shaped by participants’ stories, knowledge, and lived experience. Local resources became creative tools for artistic expression and environmental reflection. The process showed how collaboration, adaptability, and place-based materials can inspire collective strategies for community care and sustainable practice.

Impact

This project drives cultural, educational, and economic impact by embedding immersive climate futures into public life. Through speculative design and participatory storytelling, it equips communities with the tools to understand and shape responses to climate risk. By fostering creative retention and informing design policy, it strengthens local capacity for just and imaginative adaptation.