Wild Isles Sustainability Show Case

During Sustainability Action Week (18th-22nd March 2024), Nottingham Royal Concert Hall hosted ‘Wild Isles in Concert’, a spectacular symphonic encounter with the wildlife of the British Isles as captured in Sir David Attenborough’s landmark new series. University of Nottingham were invited to participate in this event to showcase and highlight the highly acclaimed work of their researchers and collaborators which connect to themes of Sustainability.

'When the Future Comes' is an ambitious 30 year collaboration between artists, communities, schools and researchers at Horizon Digital Economy and the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, University of Derby, University of Bristol and University of Exeter. As part of the Wild Isles in Concert events 'When the Future Comes' was showcased as a national project involving an interactive artwork called 'Future Machine' that appears annually in five curious green places across England as part of a 30 year project, due to end in 2050. 'Future Machine' appears as a witness to the environmental and climate changes in each place - when winter turns to Spring in the parish of Rotherfield Peppard in Oxfordshire, when the cherry trees blossom in a memorial garden in inner city Nottingham, in mid-Summer in a village in Somerset, when summer ends by the Windermere-Leven waters in Cumbria, and when the autumn leaves fall in an urban park in London. The showcase of research on display at the event focused on themes of human-nature-technology interactions, identifying the ineffable in our localities, considering responsible digital futures in line with sustainability and ways to archive this longitudinal art/research project. The key takeaway was to tell the story of the project and the changes in connection to sustainability, experienced in each of the places across England over time. The event included visiting schools and public access during daytime opening hours as well as open access during the evening concert times.