This project addresses the ecological imperative to change current unsustainable behaviours through forums containing dialogue, activity, co-creative design, and knowledge mobilization. It acknowledges the climate crisis and seeks new strategies for working with bio based materials as alternatives to petroleum, in particular, biomass(cellulose fibres) from the forest, especially forest residuals. Three reciprocal interdisciplinary workshops will bring together stakeholders who engage, from different perspectives, with forest biomass: Designers and Artists who create and make products for reflection and discussion and use in everyday life; Indigenous Knowledge Keepers with highly significant relational and local perspectives on the local ecospheres and biomass in the BC Lower Mainland and near Dawson City, Yukon; Scientists fromUBC’s Bio Products institute with deep knowledge at the molecular level.

The Workshops:

1) RELATIONS: The Trees We Know (our ways of knowing this local biomass);
2) MATERIAL: Current and Past Wisdom (use + approaches to biomass from trees);
3) NEW: Future Possibilities.

Comprised of making/thinking/discussion activities, these gatherings will convene abroad range of expertise and lived experiences of individuals with connection to tree biomass. The aim is to stimulate and capture expansive, iterative local collective sharing and envisaging related to our relationship with and use of biomass. Reciprocal, generative interactions between local Scientists, Designers, Makers and Indigenous Knowledge Keepers will act as catalysts for new approaches toward this local resource. Beyond exploration, the proposed workshops are intended as a means to gather content and insight to be shared more broadly through a public discussion panel within Fashion Fictions, an upcoming exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Summer 2023.