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SYSTEM CHANGE HIVE
︎ A VIRTUAL REALITY MUSEUM FOR FUTURES IN THE MAKING ︎

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photo credit 
I C I M A G E   







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︎INFO

Welcome to the Museum of Hidden Paths 

Everything that could have happened,
and many things that did,
are cast into shadow
as one path is chosen...


The Museum for Hidden Paths is a virtual and physical installation for experiencing alternative futures.

This Mixed Reality project emerged from the SYSTEMS CHANGE HIVE, a community art collective dedicated to sharing knowledge about futures based on wellbeing and Systems Change. The Hive collective created Hidden Paths with community activists as a space of solidarity and a way of experiencing the futures they worked for.


Activism and forms of world-changing creativity is most often precarious. Change is driven by the tireless work of characters who live on the edge, who may be ill-supported but who refuse to back down. Contemporary society has precious little room for supporting radical imagination and creative action. The Hive’s Museum for Hidden Paths experiments with creating a Virtual space for much needed solidarity, reflection and incubation of radical alternatives.

Together a group of artists created a spacious world of colour and poetry designed to share knowledge, protect the new and encourage transformative creativity to keep on growing out into the real world.


- Extract from collective statement, the HIVE collective
︎The Team 

︎Participate


Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License, 2019 (Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike) 

All individual artworks and recorded or written testimonies on this site are the sole property of the individual creators. The  distribution rights remain the sole property of the artist.




INSIDE THE MUSEUM



VISUAL WORLD OF THE EXPERIENCE


︎INFO




Welcome to the Museum of Hidden Paths



“We learned to look at things differently
to see objects not in isolation,
but as part of the systems that brought them to us,
and to glimpse how they were interrelated.
We learnt to find the people making new systems
and we listened to what they had to say.
Their voices, marginalised in culture at large,
are hidden in this experience.
We imagined their values accepted as wisdom

by a possible future.”


- The Museum of Hidden Paths



In 2019 Systems Change awareness entered the mainstream as public protest broke out in countries all across the planet declaring: 

SYSTEMS CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE


During months of creative development in Brighton UK researchers from the STEPS Centre at University of Sussex and Swarm Dynamics shared research with the Hive collective to critically explore specific pathways for change.  

We then created a Virtual Museum to explore the Hidden Paths to futures of greater wellbeing for all.

︎The Team

In our VR Museum some of the life-giving paths ahead are spoken by real people working for real changes.

Currently the VR Museum holds the spoken word of three community activists: Faumuina Felolini Tafunai, Otter Lieffe and Charlotte Pulver.

The Museum of Hidden Paths is potentially infinite. The project is designed to welcome more voices of activists and artists sharing their experience and real hopes for the future. 

We hold that both virtual and material objects can powerfully hold traces of what may come.

Material objects were presented in the physical space of the gallery exhibition to accompany the spoken word testimonies.

These exhibits are presented as precious seeds that can be nurtured and nourished for a more sustainable reality on this planet.

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HIDDEN PATH



Alternative Currencies and HEALTHY EXCHANGE SYSTEMS
with spoken word from Faumuina Felolini Tafunai







photo credit
Furtherarts






Future exhibit #1: WOVEN HARAKEKE (flax) STAR



This is a harakeke whetū - a woven flax star - a gift and decoration from the celebrations of Puanga, the Māori New Year celebration in Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand. 



Encoded in the weave is a practice of working with harakeke that stretches across the Pacific islands. Woven mats for example were forms of ancient currency in some Pacific communities: crafted alternatives to consumerist and profit-driven exchange systems. Woven mats are used as a way of exchanging value in some Pacific island communities. Mats are gifted on an occasions like a wedding or a death. Unique mats are woven by hand, passing on a history of craftsmanship and innovation. The weave expresses the craft and intention of the individual maker.

L I S T E N




The voice you hear in the Museum of Hidden Paths is Faumuina Felolini Tafunai. She speaks of her experience growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand with Samoan parents and the embodied understanding of the value of  honouring creative relations between peoples. Faumuina works for something she has lived all her life: exchange practices based on the understanding that true wealth is distribution, reciprocity and relationship.

I M A G I N E

Consider yourself in a future of healthy creative reciprocity. A future possible in which the policies of the Museums and Cultural Institutions, the local Councils and the Government Agencies of the world are guided by awareness and understanding of social justice issues, reparations and support for diverse communities.

How do we live a future in which mainstream public understanding recognises and works to heal the painful legacy of Empire and violence against Indigenous peoples? A future in which children are educated about the plurality of cultures, ways of knowing and craft practice on this one planet. A future in which continual concerted effort is made to face the injustices of history and grow a greater understanding of the healthy alternatives to extractive capitalism.

Let’s create strong futures of healthy creative reciprocity. What conditions are needed for this possibility to thrive?

For Faumuina healthy exchange systems are not new or speculative ideas, but lived realities in communities of practice.

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Faumuina is an award-winning journalist and a Fellow with the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. She is the Chairperson of Further Arts and involved in projects recording alternative money practices on the Pacific islands of Vanuatu. Her work in the world is a celebration of the power of creativity to transform, nurture and heal culture.

Faumuina leads workshops teaching her wayfinding model as a lens for design work. She created this model through guiding conversations with navigator Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr from Aotearoa New Zealand and by voyaging on the ocean aboard Haunui sail boats. She has applied her wayfinding practice to her work all over the world with organisations like Bretton Woods 75 and Further Arts.

Faumuina’s websites:

www.flyinggeesepro.nz

www.furtherarts.org

photo credit
chroma.space