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On March 20th at 12pm, join a conversation with Flooded Pine Press on countering despair and finding joy in the Anthropocene.
Wild speculation is a tool to open up livable futures, say the editors at Flooded Pine Press. Join Holden Turner and Brianna Cunliffe for an interactive session on reimagining land, starting from the routes and worlds that we traverse each day. With joy-centered storytelling as a balm against inflammatory political rhetoric, the session will use exercises to prompt reflections about what we want to hold on to, and what we want to lose, in each of our local Anthropocenes. The editors will also offer a brief overview of their ongoing series “Finding Joy and Solidarity in the New England Anthropocene” and their collaborations with the Ecological Design Collective. |
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Come to our next grounding on March 23rd! Join us at the Peale Museum in Baltimore for a workshop on reimagining the urban landscapes of the Jones Falls watershed.
No waterway has been more essential to the development of Baltimore than the Jones Falls. And yet this river has endured the effects of pollution and neglect for well over a century. The river was forced underground in the early twentieth century, a radical transformation in the name of public health and efficiency that has had lasting consequences for the environmental quality of the water and watershed. However forgotten the Jones Falls may be as a river entombed by urban infrastructure and even a major freeway, a fundamental ecological restoration of the river remains possible and necessary. What if we reimagined the future of this river instead as the center of a sustainable, equitable, and ecologically vibrant Baltimore?
The Peale’s exhibition on “The Future of Here: A Glimpse of a River Culture to Come” is anchored in a collective exploration of the Jones Falls watershed and an imagination of what collective life in this environment might one day become. The exhibition is an invitation to extend our senses into the landscape around us and the other futures it may promise, to turn our attention from the commotion of city streets to the vibrant yet unseen riverscape at our feet. Taking inspiration from the exhibition, this workshop will invite participants to engage in collaborative and speculative exercises to imagine and visualize alternative futures, a hands-on modeling activity, and a walk to the nearby mouth of the Jones Falls. The workshop will be led together by social designer Lee Davis, public artist Bruce Willen, and anthropologist Anand Pandian.
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Listen in on the EDC's latest conversation with Asad Raza.
In the second installment of the series, Kristine Roome, Andreas Bandak, Daniel M. Knight, and Asad Raza discussed the development of Raza’s public artwork, "Untitled Observatory River Ear," a project on the River Granta in Cambridgeshire. The installation, commissioned by Contemporary Art Consultancy, focuses on listening to the ecosystem. Raza shared updates on his collaboration with fabricators, highlighting the integration of natural materials like thatch, lime, and chalk. He emphasized his artistic approach, working with fabricators rather than architects, and discussed efforts to restore natural soundscapes by adding features like flow deflectors and brushwood ledges.
Professors Bandak and Knight introduced their book, Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres, and explored Serres’s philosophy on fluidity, noise, and porosity, relating it to Raza’s project. They discussed how rivers metaphorically represent time and knowledge, with Raza’s installation acting as a “prosthetic ear” to enhance engagement with the river’s sounds and ecology.
The conversation addressed energy, resonance, and human-nature interactions, focusing on how the built environment shapes sensory experiences. Raza also reflected on the political and ecological aspects of his work, noting how urban development isolates people from nature. Scholars Deborah Battaglia and Michael Degani contributed insights on perception, materiality, and ecological design, stressing that interventions in nature should restore rather than dominate. The next session is scheduled for April 2025. |
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Mark your Calendars! The EDC is holding a roundtable discussion on ecological design and activism in an age of reactionary politics
The Ecological Design Collective invites you to a critical roundtable discussion exploring the constraints and possibilities of ecological design, activism, and community-building in an era of resurgent reactionary politics. We are bringing together an esteemed group of scholars and practitioners to talk about this theme. At a time when exclusionary right-wing politics are gaining momentum globally, the imaginative, justice-oriented futures we strive to cultivate face mounting pressures. This conversation will examine how we can sustain and expand radical political and ecological imaginaries amid increasing constraints. What modes of resistance, refusal, and invention remain viable in the face of reactionary politics? How do we continue to build solidarities—across movements, geographies, and intellectual traditions—to sustain environmental justice work? This is a space for collaboration, critical reflection, and collective strategy. Your voice is essential as we navigate these pressing questions together. Come join us on April 3rd at 2pm, and help shape a future where ecological justice and political imagination thrive. |
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Check out our new bookmarks feature!
We are excited to introduce another enhancement to the platform—Bookmarks!
With the addition of a bookmark icon, you can now easily save and revisit key content. Whether it's an insightful post, an upcoming event, or a resource you want to return to later, this new functionality makes it simple to keep track of what matters most to you.
This update is part of our ongoing effort to make the platform more intuitive, helping you navigate and engage with content in a way that supports your work and interests. Try out the new bookmarking feature and stay tuned for more updates as we continue to refine and expand our shared space! |
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Find new events and opportunities on the EDC platform:
- Acclaimed Novelist Amitav Ghosh to speak at Loyola’s Humanities Symposium on March 13: Amitav Ghosh—the award-winning novelist named by Foreign Policy magazine as “one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade”—will deliver the keynote address at the Loyola University Maryland 2025 Humanities Symposium. Free and open to the general public, as well as the region’s academic communities, the lecture takes place Thursday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m., in McGuire Hall (Andrew White Student Center, 4501 North Charles St., Baltimore, Md. 21210).
- Feeling Streams: Welcoming Sorrow in a Time of (Climate) Chaos on March 14th: Attended a workshop with artist, somatic movement educator, and therapist Michele Minnick. Drawing on The Vital Body’s framework of somatic ecology, in which we understand body and self to be entangled with land, landscape, culture, history, and dynamics of economy and power, we will perform an inner archeology of right now, in order to orient to the past, the present, and the future of here.
- Sustainability Education Mixer on March 25th: The Johns Hopkins Sustainability Leadership Council K-12 Education Working Group will be hosting a Sustainability Education Mixer on March 25 from 5-7pm at The Peale Museum.
- Interdisciplinary Ecology Conference on March 27th: Join the Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference "Collaborations Afield" to discuss how ecological habitats have been increasingly understood in more complex and elusive ways.
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Ecological Design Collective
Nurturing radical ecological futures
A fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems Inc., 501(c)3
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