This project addresses the ecological imperative to change current unsustainable behaviours through forums containing dialogue, activity, co-creative design, and knowledge mobilization. It acknowledges the climate crisis and seeks new strategies for working with bio based materials as alternatives to petroleum, in particular, biomass(cellulose fibres) from the forest, especially forest residuals. Three reciprocal interdisciplinary workshops brought together stakeholders who engage, from different perspectives, with forest biomass: designers and artists who create and make products for reflection and discussion and use in everyday life; Indigenous knowledge keepers with highly significant relational and local perspectives on the local ecospheres and biomass in the BC Lower Mainland and near Dawson City, Yukon; scientists from UBC’s Bio Products institute with deep knowledge at the molecular level.

The Workshops:

1) RELATIONS: The Trees We Know (our ways of knowing this local biomass);

2) MATERIAL: Current and Past Wisdom (use + approaches to biomass from trees);

3) NEW: Future Possibilities.

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Comprised of making/thinking/discussion activities, these gatherings convened a broad range of expertise and the lived experiences of individuals with connection to tree biomass. The aim, to stimulate and capture expansive, iterative local collective sharing and envisaging related to our relationship with and use of biomass. More work to come!

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