Many of the creative works in the CreaTures project challenge the human-centric ways that we live now and are designed to question the divide our worlds have made between non-human ‘nature’ and human ‘culture’. For example, Superflux staged a dinner party for other species, inviting people to imagine dining with a fox, rat, and wasp. Furtherfield developed a live-action role-play, asking people to put on a mask and act as a tree, goose or dog. These are concrete experiences of a different way of life, where we think about the world from another species’ point of view. What do wasps eat? How do dogs see, hear and smell differently? What would it be like to live the life of a stag beetle? These methods help people to imagine themselves as part of local and global ecologies.

A common theme here was the difficulty creative practitioners have had connecting with policy-makers involved in managing the natural environment. How can imaginative methods connect with the more technical world of policy-making? To explore the possibilities for collaboration, we ran two policy engagement events, bringing together creative practitioners and policy-makers from Northern and Eastern Europe. During the first event, we set out the different perspectives on the idea of ‘nature’. Is it ‘feral’ or out-of-control, or a resource to be managed? You can read the write-up here. The second event focused on collaborations between policy-makers and creative practitioners. How can these kinds of methods be translated into practice in order to foster fruitful collaboration? It is important to us that the questioning goes on, the divisions between nature and culture are healed - in theory and in practice - and we find ways to speak and act which do not reproduce the separations between types of life, when it is obvious that our lives and others' are all interdependent on the other.

As part of discussions around these topics, we set up an independent, CreaTurely discussion list called "Art Tech Nature Culture", which is running with a low-density of fascinating messages between people interested in these intersections. Do sign up here: https://atnc.persona.co/