The Regen Art Lab returns for 2024 and this year we’re looking to create a series of three portraits that celebrate individual changemakers within the energy transition. This opportunity is open to artists using any medium. The deadline is Sunday, 21 April.
About the Regen Art Lab
Regen is a mission-driven, not-for-profit centre of energy expertise. By examining the radical steps needed to deliver transformative change across the energy system, we work to drive the path to a net zero energy future.
This transition represents a profound societal transformation – one that brims with captivating narratives, emotions and complexities that are open for artistic exploration. However, the clean energy sector comprises an array of technical, commercial and legal specialisms, and has a tough time communicating outside of its bubble.
By giving artists access to our expert energy sector knowledge, the Art Lab aims to explore and increase the awareness of pivotal energy transition issues through interdisciplinary collaborations. A central ethos is that the final works should not serve as a mouthpiece for Regen’s views, nor the artists’, but provide a balanced view of a complex topic, holding a mirror to society and inviting the viewer to form their own opinions.
Previous residences have produced poetry, graphic design, illustration, animation, sculpture, theatre and sound design.
About this residency
Through storytelling of the adversities and successes of the energy transition so far, the Celebrating Changemakers portrait series will aim to increase awareness of the important work that is happening by putting the spotlight on some of the unsung heroes of the energy transition.
We work with a variety of groups who drive change across the energy industry, whose stories we would like to share with a wider audience. These include:
We are open to working with artists from a range of visual mediums, these could include painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and illustration.
Residency format
The portrait series will comprise three portraits of a consistent medium and cohesive style. The individuals to be featured will be selected by the artist and Regen, guided by Regen’s networks, internal expertise and the artists’ personal preferences.
The artist will meet the three changemakers in person to take reference images, sketches and conduct an interview. Reflections from these meetings will be published via three blogs alongside the finished portraits, to share the individual’s story and process of creating the portraits in more detail.
Regen will cover all organisational aspects of these sessions and support the artist to conduct the interviews and write the blogs, where needed.
There is some flexibility in timings; however, the 10-week residency will ideally start in early May.
We will share the final works at an event and on Regen’s website.
What we’re looking for
What we’ll provide
Additionally
We are open to applying to Arts Council funding, with the artist, in the first weeks of the residency, to match Regen’s contribution. If successful, we will be able to extend the residency to further develop the works.
We are open to working virtually with an artist from anywhere in the UK. However, Regen is proudly Devon-based, and so we are particularly keen to support artists in the South West of England.
How to apply
Send your application form to Sophie Whinney by the deadline of 9pm on Sunday 21 April 2024.
Next steps
We will let you know if you have been shortlisted after one week. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to have a chat with the Regen Art Lab team as a chance for both parties to ask further questions.
Exeter based playwright, Hattie Collins (Almanac Theatre), produced the short illustrated film using interviews with people from Devon & Cornwall, with the support of Regen Art Lab.
We loved the Hattie’s approach – based on speaking to people, gathering views, and amplifying voices. After talking and connecting with people on rural living, transport, and the energy transition, the 9+ hours of recorded material was whittled down into a beautiful 5 minute illustrated film. The illustrations are by Clare M. Cornish.
At the Regen Art Lab, we believe we need more collaborative and particapatory creative projects on the energy transition. This is why we proudly supported the Art Council Funded project, with inkind time, by sharing our energy transtion insight.
The interactive soundpiece was produced by sound artist, Cameron Naylor, while on residency at the Regen Art Lab in 2023.
Get all the info about the project, themes, and outcomes here.
The Heat Creatures are an arts project which teach us about the world of home heating and how it impacts the climate emergency – each Heat Creature is a personification of a heating technology from the green, the not so green to the big polluters. The Heat Creatures were designed and made by Karenza Sparks, during her Regen Art Lab residency in 2021/2022.
You can make your own Heat Creatures playing card deck by printing them at home. Download and print the cards here, then simply fold each page in half and stick together to make a double sided card. Finish off by trimming the edges.
We would love to hear any feedback about how the Heat Creatures are being used to start conversations about home heating and the climate emergency. Please get in touch with any thoughts via the feedback form below.
Click on a card to learn more via Karenza’s recommended recources.
Karenza Sparks is a multidisciplinary designer, maker, and animator from Cornwall. She has a particular interest in gamification, story telling, interactive experiences, and participatory artworks. Sparks graduated from Kingston school in 2020 and much of her work has been highly collaborative.
The Regen Art Lab is a new artist residency programme bridging the gap between experts and artists, to delve more deeply into energy transition issues. Through collaboration, the residency aims to showcase the pivotal stories needed to realise the transition, which are well informed, relevant and meaningful.
The theme for this residency was decarbonising heat. Decarbonising home heating is shaping up to be one of the greatest challenges of the climate emergency in the UK, because of lack of public awareness and political will power. You can read more about the challenge of decarbonising the UK’s heat in our ‘decarbonising of heat’ paper, and through the resources that Karenza compiled during her residency.
Find out more about the Regen Art Lab here. You can also read more about how this residency in the opening blog on Spark’s first impressions, and the closing blog by Regen’s energy experts and Sparks on their experience of collaborating.
Regen is developing Something Wonderful in My Back Yard – A sparkling new crowd-funded musical!
Think of a musical and you might imagine the romance of West Side Story or the razzle dazzle of Chicago. But this new musical [currently being written] has a different setting and tackles a very different subject: how do a motley group of ordinary, argumentative people persuade their make-do-and-mend, muddle-through market town to embrace community food and energy schemes and become more resilient?
Writer Matt Harvey and composer Thomas Hewitt Jones are well known in their fields – and their allotments – and have previously collaborated on The Same Flame (published by Boosey & Hawkes) and the musical Rumpelstiltskin.
Matt and Thomas have been talking to people involved in community energy groups and the Transition network about to develop this heartening new story for our times.
You can download a FREE e-copy of the SWIMBY Musical songbook right here! We’ve been working with lots of people to trial the songs and you can see all the songs being trialled here in the November 2015 Early Material Show.
May 2016
October 2014
