Depot ARTSPACE: REFRAMING THE FUTURE
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Covid 19 has catapulted us into the unknown. We are trying to make sense of the future and the political, economic and social landscape provides no clear or recognisable signposts. The horizon is so far indistinct and generates insecurity and trepidation. For many of us certainty is more important than possibility, even though it’s littered with the casualties of a flawed system.
Before our need for the known totally takes hold, we should ask how we could reframe the future so that it actually works for this planet and its inhabitants. The world we want began to reveal itself during Lockdown as we celebrated a reduction in pollution, clean air and oceans, less human detritus in the form of cars, waste, less unchecked knee-jerk consumerism, and increasingly more social conscious-ness which includes consideration for others and the environment.
These Covid 19 conditions may be the common denominators of a new world order. To experience peace, goodwill, wellbeing and environmental recovery requires a new vision with creative thinking at its core.
In reframing the future, Depot Artspace, and creative centres like ours may have the edge on other sectors of society. We are acclimatised to the constancy of change, including the unreliability of income and are consequently adaptive, innovative and resilient. We are influenced less by the structured status quo and more by the impetus and inclination of people to find meaning apart from this, for this has been our kaupapa from inception.
In 2002, we wrote in LOUD that ‘wealth is externalised in ownership. Quality of life has become a measurable phenomenon and the human values by which we live are dictated by external imperatives.’
We recognised then that creativity formed the foundation of a new world, and Post-Covid in particular this has increasingly become the view of others.
“Creativity will save the world. People will look to our poets, our artists, our musicians, our dancers, our inventors, our architects, our engineers, our writers and designers to redefine humanity’s purpose post-Covid-19.
Because, at the end of 2020, it will not be business as usual. It will be something completely different. We will have no choice but to adapt to and redefine the changes coming our way, big and small.
But adapt and redefine we must. There will never be a greater opportunity to lead the world forward, and not from a political front but a creative front. It’s not just our job, it’s our existential duty.” The Role of Creativity post-Covid-19, Rohan Reddy
At Depot Artspace, community and sense of place, inclusiveness and accessibility, attributes intrinsic to the environment of support for creatives, are increasingly valued. When other changes may be required because of circumstances beyond our control, they will remain non-negotiably, as the framework of wellbeing in an otherwise fragile world. Under these conditions, creativity will always find form here.
Article by Depot Artspace Creative Director Linda Blincko
