Category: Jake Dunagan

#NewportHaiku

June 23, 2016

On Monday, June 20th visiting catalyst Jake Dunagan, PhD, delivered his lecture The Future as Cognitive Prosthetic to a full house at Rosecliff Mansion. During the lecture, Jake asked the audience to craft haikus at two different intervals as a means to creatively express our thoughts about the future twenty-years from now– the first prompt focused on the personal, the second prompt focused on the community. Posted below are the haikus that were generated from audience participants.

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Future Worlds Created at FabNewport will be on display

June 7, 2016

Providence-based poet Kate Schapira and artist Adeline Mitchell co-lead a workshop at FabNewport on Sunday, June 5th that combined reflective writing and terrarium making. Interwoven throughout the workshop were short expository writing exercises that asked the group to free style and reflect on what we want to honor and memorialize in the present for future generations. Prompts included asking participants what we may mourn the loss of in the future (due to life cycle, neglect, extinction, overuse, etc.) and how we keep things alive. Participants then went on a scavenger hunt to incorporate found or discarded items (in many cases trash/ litter) into their terrarium worlds that also included ants, seedlings, plants and other cherished objects.  At the end of the workshop, the group convened to share out about their creations. This workshop will be repeated with students and teachers at Rogers High School later in the week, and it has already inspired one of its participants to start a new creative writing group focused solely on future scenarios! The terraria created during the workshops will be on display at the installation of the future Mayor’s Office, 2061 at the former Coffey’s gas station, 48 Touro St., Newport, RI. The public launch of the installation is Saturday, June 18th from 6-8pm. The installation will also be viewable to the public on Sunday, June 19th from 2-6pm. Come by to contribute your ideas to the future city of Newport!

Microfutures: writing and terrarium making workshop

June 3, 2016

MICROFUTURES: WRITING AND TERRARIUM MAKING
FREE COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS & KIDS
SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 2 – 4:30 P.M.
FabNewport, 1 York St., Newport, RI
RSVP: SueEllen Kroll at sue@rihumanities.org

Rhode Island poet Kate Schapira and artist Adeline Mitchell will lead a workshop in terrarium-making and reflective writing to construct a futurist vision of what Newport, Rhode Island– and the world– will look like in the year 2061. The intentional construction of constrained ecologies will serve as a chance for our community to collectively study and practice how we construct, nurture, shape or incubate the future in the present. “Artifacts” created in the workshop will be on display in a public pop-up installation in Newport, RI, June 16-23 and returned to participants after the exhibition closes. In the exhibition space, the terrariums will act as a biological library of forms chosen to preserve in this possible future, and the writing will serve as description, context, future relic and user’s guide.

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Visiting Catalyst Jake Dunagan

May 23, 2016

Catalyzing Newport welcomes futurist Jake Dunagan to Newport for a visiting catalyst residency from June 16 – 21. Jake is managing director and global foresight lead for verynice.co and research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, a California-based think tank that helps organizations plan for the long-term future. Jake specializes in social invention and the redesign of systems in light of current tools and knowledge. In his work, Dunagan has focused on a wide range of topics including strategic foresight, governance design, comprehensive cognitive design, intellectual property, Internet law and politics, mobility and the future of learning and work.

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