Photos: Joe Burrows
If you missed our Creative Energy Exhibition, you don’t have to miss out. Come take a look …
Friday 13 September, 2024 saw a frenzy of activity at St Vincent’s Centre in Brixton. It was both the install and launch day for an exciting, inaugural art exhibition celebrating community energy in all its forms. Its aim: to offer a glimpse into the possibilities of thinking creatively about energy and sustainability.
For the past couple of years I, our Energy Advocacy Officer Fran Lobel and our Repowering London Communities team have been running Creative Energy Clubs. These are engaging and accessible community art workshops that bring people together to learn about community energy. From North Kensington to Aldgate, Club participants have created clay villages, solar-powered lanterns, colourful and powerful drawings and cyanotype prints.
We wanted to elevate these clubs into a full-scale, two-day participatory exhibition, which meant finding a great partner to help us pull it off. So Repowering London joined forces with social arts collective and experienced event creator Studio61.
Creating a third space
Our first Creative Energy Exhibition was influenced by the emerging field of ‘Energy Humanities’. It’s a discipline that aims to understand how energy shapes society through culture. Studio61 also brought in the concept of participatory experiences, following its motto: “design for collisions”. This created an exhibition that felt like a gathering of friends, an informal and inspiring space where creative thinking could flourish.
Social innovations like community energy are often born out of informal conversations in pubs, street parties or community centres. The exhibition provided inspiration on how to create such third spaces – a physical location other than work or home where people can convene, converse, and change the world.
The exhibition audience was encouraged to experience the space as a public dwelling, jointly envisioning a just and joyous energy transition
Exhibition snapshot
After weeks of planning, group brainstorming and hard graft, the content for the exhibition came together. It drew in part from the work created in those earlier Creative Energy Clubs, but also from a series of workshops held between June and September by Studio61 – held variously at the Repowering London office in Brixton, in community gardens, at a reggae party … We were lucky to be joined in the project also by Regen, which brought the stunning work of its Regen Art Lab resident artist, and by University of the Arts London undergraduate students who created an interactive ‘research wall’.
The exhibition audience was encouraged to experience the space as a public dwelling, jointly envisioning a just and joyous energy transition. They encountered punk ‘zines’ on energy rights, tissue-paper solar lanterns, a heat-themed den, an interactive research wall on creativity, ink portraits of energy sector workers, an illustrated art book on the British energy system created by children, a quilt showing the faces of volunteers of London energy co-ops, and so much more … All set to a meditation dub set by Streetlight Sound.
And it worked!
The opening night event drew a diverse (and big!) crowd from among Repowering London’s community energy sector friends, local authority collaborators, energy sector workers and Brixton organisers. It sparked countless moments of creative overspill, leading to outcomes that were beyond what we had initially envisioned. We were overwhelmed by the positive feedback from attendees.
We’re already thinking about next steps, excited to continue this work and collaboration. What would a bigger, longer Creative Energy Exhibition look like? How can we continue developing Creative Energy Clubs? More than ever, we’re convinced of the power of community art and creativity to transform our energy system. We have such a huge challenge ahead of us if we are to lead a just, fair energy transition, with warmer buildings, cheaper bills and stronger community ties. Let’s find the solutions using the power of our Creative Energy.
With thanks to all of the artists, supporters and collaborators who made our first Creative Energy Exhibition a joyous experience.
If you’d like to make sure you hear about our next Creative Energy Exhibition, sign up for our newsletter here. Or to find out about bringing a Creative Energy Club to a venue near you, email info@repowering.org.uk
