QUT Design Lab social designers coordinate this interactive workshop demonstrating the potential of arts and design for social change and advocacy.  Participants will select a key societal issue to focus on such as ageing or nature/climate change to create a poem reflecting their hopes, dreams, and fears.

During this 90-minute workshop, you will have hands-on experience translating data into emotive and captivating poems.  

In the first part of the workshop, participants will create short found/erasure poems and original lyric poems. You can choose to focus on either:  

(1) the importance of nature, and the personal impacts of climate change, both present and future, for young and old, on Bribie Island – reflecting on whether we will be contributors, causalities or change agents of climate change; OR  

(2) ageing and aged care, working with some of the 10,000 written submissions to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety to translate these into ‘found poems’. This is where poem like prose is created from existing text .

Requirements
Participants do not need any specific prior experience, just curiosity and eagerness to explore how arts and design might trigger social change and engagement with issues of ageing, aged care, nature, and climate change. You do not need to bring anything; just register and then turn up on the day.

Note that the workshop is appropriate for those aged ten years or older.