WonderLab

"For neurodivergent learners, educational environments can reproduce negative mindsets about their abilities. The good news is...it doesn't have to be this way!" WonderLab is just a little bit proud to share that our very own Alisdair Gurling has won the Monash University-wide Visualise Your Thesis competition with his 1-minute video on digital prosthetics for neurodivergent leaners (video linked below). Its a great project, visualised and produced so clearly by Alisdair. This is just one example of the research emerging from our diverse, vibrant and socially impact-focused practice community - congratulations Alisdair 😎 🤠 🤓 😀 Monash Art, Design and Architecture https://lnkd.in/gRmCifc8

In the last eight days WonderLab has had not one, not two, not three, but...FOUR people doing PhDs move through a formal 'milestone' to the next stage. These projects show such a breadth of creativity in practice. Karissa Taylor and Paris Balla both think with performance, creative writing and theatre-making in projects on working through trauma (Kaz) and queercrip worlding (Paris). They are now both only a few months off finishing their PhDs. Meanwhile, David Robertson is bridging education, sustainability and design in his trans-disciplinary practice and Linda Tan is spanning cultures in co-designing in rural communities in China. David and Linda have both just been confirmed as PhD candidates, and are already doing great things (the image below is of a small gift for guests to take away from his presentation). Although these moments can feel nerve wracking, in WonderLab they are important to share and learn from each other, and build that crucial netting and knotting of relationality: the support, playful engagement and critical extension of our work that can only happen with other people. People we trust and respect, and people we learn alongside. People whose ideas might unsettle us. People who make us laugh and people who take the desire lines of our own practices to new places. Across these four projects, as a chairperson, panellist and supervisor, I came away with something new to think about, something that challenged me, and a relationship newly traced or thickened. Thank you to the other panellists, chairpeople and supervisors, and well done everyone! 🤠 Stacy Holman Jones Lisa Grocott

Last week, WonderLab was lucky to visit artist Liss Fenwick's Melbourne exhibition ‘the Colony cares for everyone'. This is practice-based PhD show 'imagines a future unravelling of Euro- and anthropocentric knowledge systems, rooted in narratives of resistance and interspecies care.' It is a thoughtful and haunting approach to the vital project of decolonisation - told through sound and video works via the implacable efforts of termites, lithium mining and settler colonialist texts. Liss shares the work through their Instagram account, linked below. WonderLab's reimagined 'reading group' is called Stitch Club - it centres practice, so 'text' can range far and wide. 🐜 Our own Myfanwy Doughty gave us these prompts to think with: 🐜 What flows, forces and energies do you feel in this work? Where are they coming from? How do they touch you? Your work? Your practice? 🐜 What will you take away from this experience in terms of your research practice? Why? Stitch Club shows what we are intrigued by and how we come together to experience, reflect on and develop creative practice - and our practice community. If you're in Melbourne and want to connect, please do! And thanks to Yoko Akama and RMIT PhD student Andreas for joining us 🐜 and Allison Edwards Lisa Grocott Robert Lundberg Linghao Wu Penni Russon Nic Hearn 🐜 https://lnkd.in/g24TFAMh

PhD opportunity posted below - on policy for robots in public space! 🤖 It is based in public policy in the Monash University Faculty of Arts, and WonderLabbers Shanti and Lisa are on the wider research team. Michael Mintrom and Shanti will supervise the PhD, so please reach out to them if you want to find out more...

'Stitch Club' is one way our WonderLab practice community gathers to reflect on and stitch together ideas from diverse and creative sources that inspire, challenge or confound us. Its a little bit like a reading group but with some important twists: - 'Text' is very broad! It could be exhibition, film, podcast, sensory experience, building, object, an excerpt from a book or journal article, or even a walk along a stretch of river. - Anyone can propose any 'text' for the group to reflect on together. - Rather than a standing calendar entry, we only meet when someone proposes something, and then choose a time and place to gather that suits as many people as possible. So far we have considered a Melbourne exhibition by MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST, and just yesterday, Rachelle Chadwick's piece on feminist critique. We talked about how our practice might meet her propositions on generosity, critique, masculinist modes of academic discourse and more. We'd love to know, how are you thinking with your practice community? https://lnkd.in/euYweX-f https://lnkd.in/gnGGUdqU Lisa Grocott Ilya Fridman Giorgia Pisano Alisdair Gurling Myfanwy Doughty Karissa Taylor Monash Art, Design and Architecture

Reflecting on how our six-month project with Wellcome Trust Policy Lab has generated so much for us at WonderLab. What a gift! Not least, it has enabled a close and co-creative way of working, where we purposefully hold space for prototyping, testing, experimenting and generally trying things out. This is how ideas can build collaboratively and generously. It is where we can work out what we are most committed to and how to enact those commitments. We haven't quite named this generative, generous and vulnerable place yet, but it is very much a part of our practice community. Thanks again to Martin Smith, Tom Harrison and Chloe Watson who supported us and the other Policy Lab projects. 🤠

Allison Edwards, thank you for an extremely generous and insightful post! At WonderLab we have been thinking with the concept of 'mauri in the system' over the past months - with gratitude to Auckland Co-Design Lab. Our team of Lisa Grocott, Myfanwy Doughty and Alisdair Gurling shared some of this work at Melbourne Design Week. Our extended practice community of co-thinkers and inspirational practitioners includes Allison and many others, in Melbourne and further afield. We are thinking about how to meet this group regularly, in a meaningful way that feels genuinely reciprocal and without demanding too much of ourselves or others! ⭐How do you find this balance in your research and practice?⭐

🌟 How do you develop practice in your community? 🌟 In a format designed by our director Lisa Grocott, one of the mainstays of our practice community is the 'playtest' - where we prototype workshops before we facilitate them with stakeholders or the public. We also 'playdate' - taking an idea that might be useful for many peoples' practice and playing it out together. This is a regular entry in our shared calendar, and anyone can grab a spot. Our Melbourne Design Week workshops for this week have all been through this process, helping to refine their flow and share practice on facilitation and co-design (woot-woot 🎉 to workshop leaders Anna Conrick, Myfanwy Doughty, Lisa Grocott, Leander Kreltszheim and Allison Edwards). This process knits us together as a community, building generative vulnerability in how we present, and generosity in how we respond to others' work (with thanks to Rachelle Chadwick's 2023 great paper on feminist critique). We all get to learn from these gatherings, and the community gets stitched together across multiple projects and ideas. How do you approach this community building work in your context? (pssst - link to the Monash Art, Design and Architecture workshops in link!) https://lnkd.in/d7hDexC2

The value of a diverse and dispersed practice community - moving across practices, modes and borders 😍 Who is in yours?

WonderLab (and friends!) will be at Melbourne Design Week. Come join us at the Victorian Pride Centre, hosted by Monash Art, Design and Architecture 😎 ⭐ And we'd love to know - how do you share your co-design practice? ⭐ Wednesday, 29 May 2-4:30pm If you are up for some restorative making, then Dion Tuckwell's Terrarium building workshop, from the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University , offers a creative way to think with how the future might feel in Net Zero transitions: https://lnkd.in/gaQmzCSR Thursday 30 May, 10am-1.30pm Anna Conrick's PSIKEA workshop will be a study in attuning to relationships, specifically the reciprocal relationships between people and space. You'll be invited to create playful installation by way of IKEA hacking. Register here: https://lnkd.in/gF7Z4yBW Friday 31 May, 10am-1pm Lisa Grocott and Myfanwy Doughty will host a morning workshop with a focus on Shiftwork, specifically the Maori concept of mauri (life force, energy) in the system. It's a suitable workshop for reflecting on how you want to shift systems. Register here: Register here: https://lnkd.in/gsYszaNB. Friday 31 May, 2-5pm Leander Kreltszheim and Allison Edwards session It's About Time will be a space for rethinking our relationship with time in a co-design context. Register here: https://lnkd.in/g_e-T6cs And while you're at the Victorian Pride Centre, check out Wendy Ellerton's exhibition of stunning undergraduate work, Transhuman: Crafting Futures with Nature's Wisdom: https://lnkd.in/giDCEEUy