EXETER

Exeter celebrated Earth Day with a Systems Thinking weekend centred around the endangered Blue Ground Beetle whose Dartmoor habitats were debated in parliament the very same week. Saturday kicked off with a multi-sensory exploration of the Blue Ground Beetle’s ecosystem building a mycelium bridge between science and art with Exeter science Centre bringing microscopes and VR headsets and Melissa Fayad from Schumacher College developing terrarium-building and sculpting with locally grown moss as they went on a dive into the world of this exquisite beetle across Dartmoor and beyond. Links were made with the Kampala activation as the Ugandan workshops were displayed as well as The Great Imagining Newspaper, an ideas wall and a group mural. Sunday drew upon the activities of the previous day and explored the wider science around ecology, habitats and the environment with the weekend drawing to a close with a deep ecology walk led by ecologist Stephen Harding from Schumacher College, exploring Exeter’s urban and green environment through a holistic Systems Thinking approach. This was a weekend of investigation, provocation, imagination where new spaces of experience as well as partnerships emerged for an audience of all ages.