NOVA NOVA Creative Lab AVON
[ A Laboratory of Co-Creation and Eco-Geo-Social Activations - making stuff happen in the in-between ]
"In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora..." "I have in mind shapes transformed to bodies strange..." Ovid, Metamorphosis
NOVA Creative Lab was established on the banks of the River Avon in Bristol, UK in 2005 by a group of artists seeking to work together on projects with ecological, heritage and landscape themes. The approach is experimental, research-based, collaborative and participatory.
Methods and tools range across design, sculpture, video, sound and music.
Core to NOVA is critical exploration of entanglements between people, places and local/global ecologies. In these times of collision of multiple planetary crises and 'wicked problems', our questions may include: 'How might we co-create better futures?', 'How can we harness imagination, communitas and consilience on a journey towards more ecological justice and wellbeing? towards resilience, sustenance & sustainability for all?'
Tuning-in, joining the dots, submerging in the geo-cultural flows, we go in search of new perspectives and unexpected combinations in the edge-lands. We aim to uncover essences and potentials inherent in peripheral places.
'Here Commons Everybody': each jewel of Indra’s Net reflects all the other jewels; from microcosm to macrocosm, every being (and every place) is both a manifestation of the whole and inseparable from the whole. Solidarity, 'the commons' and 'shared futures' become unifying principles and open up channels of inspiration rooted in our gleanings from diverse inspiring movements and other dreamers.
NOVA Creative Lab uses intuitive deep-mapping and fresh thinking to form connective tissue between:
personal + political | urban + rural | real + imaginary | insider + outsider | facts + imagination | simplicity + complexity
myth + history | pre-modern + contemporary | illumination + shadow | art + science | near + distant
The scope of co-created activities have included: creative consultancy and research, place/culture/community explorations, imaginative land-use strategies + landscape/ecological-designs, enduring public artworks and ephemeral interventions. An offshoot - NOVA Formula is mainly concerned with co-production of creative documentary video and sonic works in eco-social settings.
NOVA Creative Lab is a loose grouping of associates and collaborators (former & present).
Current associates and collaborators:
Antony Lyons (co-founder/lead producer), Bárbara Carvalho/Memory Archive (Portugal), Taz Mains (musician/music therapist), Liv Frantzén (digital creative, interfaces, maker tech), Isolde Lachlan (composer, singer, songwriter).
Other collaborators have included:
Jesse D Vernon (musician, composer), Jon Pigott (electro-acoustic artist), Scott Farlow (socially engaged art, landscape architecture), Pandora Vaughan (artist, NOVA co-founder), Alex Hogg (musician, composer), Kate Smith (participatory processes & artist), Lucy Izzard (animation artist, director), Michael Malay (ecological writer, academic) & Nick Hand/Letterpress Collective,
