TNOC Festival 2024

Bridging the space between what currently exists and what "could be", theatre is a powerful tool of collective imagination and action. This discussion and workshop will draw on practices of interactive, community-based theatre to explore how the incorporation of simple theatre activities can engage communities in visioning and enacting change, re-defining our relationship to climate issues, and support us in taking concrete actions. This session will draw from the work of Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed) and a history of community-based theatre practice over a range of disciplines (education, social and economic justice, healthcare, and more). Participants will be invited to explore and embody how this practice can help us re-imagine cities and our relationships to climate change.

Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) for the making of inclusive and green cities requires better understandings of the challenges and opportunities on the way. This starts with consolidating knowledge on what works and what does not. NATURA’s “Global Roadmap for urban NBS” initiative brings together experts who have been synthesizing existing evidence of successes and barriers of NBS from both research and practice, for each of the 7 world regions (North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, The Middle East and North Africa, Africa, Asia and Oceania).

This interactive session invites participants to discuss successful strategies for expediting the translation of resilience research into on-site projects in urban coastal environments. We aim to harness knowledge and insights from various regions and a diverse range of stakeholders to co-design approaches that can promote the advancement of coastal resilience while prioritizing social equity.

You’re invited to come solve a mystery! Join Applied Theater practitioner Ania Upstill for an engaging and mysterious environmental education experience. Based on their Masters thesis project with the Urban Field Station NYC, this session invites attendees to experience a sample session and then brainstorm how to build their own mystery to engage participants in a play-based approach to environmental education and advocacy.

Oika is a way of feeling, being, and participating with the world. It knows no county lines, no city limits. In this second of two Oika Skills Sessions, artist Rita Leduc will share her Oika Project, "Extending Ecology," an ongoing collaboration between an ecologist, an artist, and an experimental forest. She will describe how the team's curious, careful commitment to a forest in New Hampshire, USA, has provided them with meaning and direction in unprecedented times. She will then present how the team is now using the project as an entry point into Oika principles and practices, offering it outward toward broader systems change. After this presentation, the session opens into questions and conversation.

*This Skills Session is Part II of two Oika Skills Sessions.  Part I is not a prerequisite for attendance to Part II, but for those interested, it is viewable here (PW: OikaTNOC): https://vimeo.com/richblundell/oikaintrotnoc2024

***I was told this would be in Nightingale 2. It's not showing up as of Wed night but let's assume it's there and troubleshoot together otherwise.

Nuestra Herencia: Legacy Film Project brings together a series of short documentary films exploring histories, gardens, and legacies through the lives of 10 senior gardeners of El Paseo Community Garden in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. An On The Real Film original in collaboration with El Paseo Community Garden.

The ethical storytelling workshop/lecture will encourage nonprofits and organizations to take up the responsibility of influencing and inspiring through ethical storytelling. We will explore how building trust and collecting stories tied to a mission and vision while being accountable to the community or audience that is being impacted are core to ethical storytelling.

This interactive session invites participants to discuss global and international frameworks to monitor biodiversity and nature-based strategies. Local governments often don’t have the capacity to review the available frameworks and select the best one for their application. We aim to harness knowledge and discuss how to best support cities in connecting their local strategies to global frameworks and targets.

Urban rivers connect diverse local communities and serve as catalysts of urban change. Our workshop explores the transformative potential of river connectivity for nature-based sustainability in cities. We will use narrative and creative approaches to explore the importance of rivers in global GI planning contexts and pathways toward transformation.

Examining food apartheid thru systems thinking and resilient design. This workshop will explore the myth of food choice, the spectrum of system and our inherent resilience in responding to system failure thru image, color and texture making.

Transforming Car Culture
Artists have been asked to develop an Art Plan in Tacoma, USA in a district that is dominated by a Shopping Mall and parking lots. Join a solution based Workshop. The goal is clear, but what are the possible pathways that will be embraced by the community. Can art be the instrument of change?