About

The realities of climate change, biodiversity loss and species extinction, and environmental decline are complex and systemic. It is therefore the urgent responsibility of every discipline to contribute to this malaise, necessitating engagements that are intersectional, transdisciplinary and relevant to diverse publics. However, the complexity of re-imagining and building towards sustaining futures can often appear insurmountable. When faced with problems so distributed and immense the public necessarily vacillates between states of anxiety, apathy and aspiration. Yet, aspiration is the only one of these three states that firmly foregrounds positive action. As ‘change agents’ our team will encourage aspiration through our work, by crafting dynamic opportunities for wider engagement that foster capacities for collective action. We achieve this by building focus around the problems and solutions of sustaining futures in innovative ways, which open up and retain these opportunities for diverse audiences. We draw upon the group’s capacities for critical analysis, deep investigation, lateral thinking, and nonlinear insight, working at the intersection of nature, science, justice, theory, design and art. Our creative and design interventions are grounded in critical theory, rigorous research and reflective practice, fusing an activist ethos with an effective and affective poetics. This allows us to shine a bright light on the cultural roots of our environmental crisis. The group’s focus is on innovative, transdisciplinary research projects, experimental artworks, designs, critiques, and socially engaged actions, deeply informed by the environmental humanities, ecological justice studies, Indigenous perspectives and decolonial theory. Our MTH scope includes animal, plant, fungal, symbiotic, collective, decentralised and silicone-based life, as we acknowledge anthropocentric bias in understanding life and relations in the world. Our research will question and ultimately seek to catalyse the urgent social changes required to mitigate and reverse collapsing ecological systems, and assure justice for all species.