Part of The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025
⏳ Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 September 2024
🏡 Furtherfield Gallery, at the McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park, London N4
🐕🌳Exhibition and Treaty Signing activities 11 – 4pm
🎟️🐿️ Multi-species Meditation sessions – DAILY at 11am, 2pm and 3pm.
Join us for fun with family and friends in Finsbury Park to connect with park life in fantastical new ways.
Biodiversity is crucial in reducing the harmful effects of climate change, and city parks have a huge part to play. But it’s not all about us humans! Think like a dog, bee or even grass and help change the way we all see and participate in our local urban green spaces forever!
It’s time to spark new ways of being, feeling and acting together!
🎟️🐿️ Book your free place for a Multi-species Meditation session led by Scirius the cockney squirrel, played by Human artist Max Dovey. Use your imagination to transform into another species with a totally different sense of what is important. Sessions daily at 11am, 2pm and 3pm.
🌳Use the magical new Finsbury Park Sentience Dial app to tune into all flora and fauna! Scan the park and meet up to 7 local park species representatives, then make your pledge for bountiful biodiversity!
⇨ Watch Tracy Kiryango’s short docu-fiction film The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park 2023 celebrating the cultures and talents of ALL Finsbury Park’s species, and using camera, lighting and post-production effects to convey multi-species-perspectives of the festival events.
⇨ Join the Multisensory Mystery Tour to see, hear and smell the old forest through the sensory superpowers of squirrels, trees, and dogs…
⇨ Hear the squeaks, squawks, howls and honks of the Multispecies Choir and their “songs” of lament, celebration and protest…
⇨ Sample delicacies from Pass-The-Poop-Parcel, the multi-species gastronomy game…
Help shape the first-ever interspecies treaty of cooperation for bountiful biodiversity!
Don’t worry! From October 2024, you can scan the hoardings that wrap Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park to watch highlights from the 2023 Interspecies Festival. You can also access the the magical Finsbury Park Sentience Dial app to make a pledge that advances interspecies justice and blooming biodiversity!
The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 depicts the story of the dawning of interspecies democracy. It’s a new era of equal rights for all living beings, where all species come together to organise and shape the environments and cultures they inhabit – in Finsbury Park, and urban green spaces across the UK, the world, and beyond!
Based around a set of live action role play games – or LARPs – the Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is played from more-than-human perspectives to encourage the blooming of a bountiful biodiversity and interspecies political action.
Like many urban parks, Finsbury Park is fraught with environmental issues from noxious gases and traffic noises to governance struggles and financial sustainability. The pledges are based on research collaborations and prioritised with participants. Find out more about the story so far, the research, and the importance of biodiversity in urban green space by visiting our FAQs.
The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is a major collaborative project led by Furtherfield, exploring new ways to build empathy pathways to non-human lifeforms through play.
It represents a major undertaking to do long-term work exploring how an arts organisation based in the heart of an urban green space can support a deeper understanding of that green space and ALL its inhabitants. Beginning in 2020 and spanning a minimum of 5 years, the work was originally developed in collaboration with The New Design Congress. The first 3 years are being supported by CreaTures (Creative Practices for Transformational Futures). CreaTures project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.
View full credits
Welcome to This Coastal Town Reimagined: 200 Years Of Change!
For adults of all ages. If you are a resident, worker, regular visitor, or if you just love Felixstowe, this is for you! Join us for a fun morning or afternoon with your friends and neighbours, time-travelling into the future of this coastal town.
FREE – but booking is essential as places are limited
A chance to explore 200 years of change in Felixstowe!
🚢The port was founded in 1875. Looking back 150 years, we can see the changes it made in this town. In 50 years, how will we look back on this time with all the changes we know are coming, including new developments and shifts in climate?
🌞Felixstowe is a place that radiates healthful living and wellbeing. The land and sea support livelihoods, leisure and blooming biodiversity. The port, the largest in England, provides crucial national infrastructure and contributes to a healthy local economy. In the summer holidaymakers flock here.
🌬️But things are always changing here and in the wider world. In May, we invited local residents to chat about the futures we want. In July, we shared what we discovered with three creative practitioners from the region: Mimi Doncaster and Frazer Merrick, and Kirsty Tallent. Together we created an immersive future fiction. That is the basis of the event we are inviting you to here. Come and work on the future together! ⏳
⏰We start with a timeline of Felixstowe since the port was founded in 1875 and an invitation to add events of historic or personal significance.
Then we choose our time-travelling characters. Will you start as a young person, or an elder? What does your character care about? ✨
We will travel all the way to 2075, the year the Multispecies Port of Felixstowe opens.
This event is hosted by The Alex Brasserie, with views of the sea and a cafe bar where you can buy any refreshments around the event. Please tell us about any access needs you may have.
Participants need no prior knowledge or experience to join this event. However, if you are unsure about sustainable futures and are someone who likes to come prepared, we think these links offer a good starting point: What is climate change? A really simple guide, from the BBC, and Sustainable Development Goals from the UN.
Ruth Catlow is co-founder and director of Furtherfield and an artist and organiser interested in how different creative processes can unleash community imaginations to open up new more mutualistic futures in places.
Prof Ann Light is a researcher studying to what extent people can be transformed by encounters with the arts.
Please note that the event is being included in a research project on the effect of immersive experiences. A researcher will be there to observe the event. Although the researcher will not be observing individuals, there is an opportunity on the day for you to decide if you wish to be part of the research or not. If you would like to know more about the research project before the event, please email Professor Ann Light at the University of Sussex (ann.light@sussex.ac.uk) and she will send you an information sheet.
This event has been co-devised by Ruth Catlow, Mimi Doncaster, Ann Light, Frazer Merrick, and Kirsty Tallent. Thanks to Hamilton MAS for hosting the co-creation workshop and to Cuppa for hosting the community conversation that inspired and informed our work.
🙋Please contact Ruth by email ruth.catlow@furtherfield.org if you have any questions, or come early to talk to us.
Furtherfield content is published
