Environmental science has shown that the global use of concrete has led to significant challenges today and will seriously trouble future generations. Nevertheless, international building industries advertise concrete as a natural, regional, sustainable, and hence green material. In 2020, global human-made mass exceeded all living biomass, with concrete accounting for nearly half of it, making it a signal of the Capitalocene. A radical transformation of industrial building culture is asked for, otherwise anthropogenic mass will be three times biomass by 2040.

This exposition describes a creative collaboration in the self-governed Tłı̨chǫ region of Canada’s Northwest Territories. As part of this collaboration, Indigenous research methods and participatory experiences facilitated a process by which regional oral history was visualised and translated into animation. As a long-term project, this research was based on relationships through which a non-Indigenous researcher was able to learn and exchange knowledge with elders and youth from the region.

In this exposition, seven research practitioners investigate how creative practice can be applied as a form of knowledge production in order to disrupt or re-define the dynamics of power in a range of different contexts. These applications of creative practice take varied and complex forms, often transferring creativity from the practitioner-researcher to their participants, increasing participant agency or re-defining existing hierarchies, as they form, empower, and enlighten real and conceptual communities.