Futures Past and Present is a mural by Hayley Garner (Aylo) and Jay Gilleard (Cbloxx) who form the Nomad Clan. It has b een supported by the Art of Protest Gallery and assisted by Natasha Clark and Street Art Atlas. The mural can be found opposite the train station on Trafford Way along the side of the Frenchgate centre. T he mural in Doncaster contains lots of references to the town. The name ‘Futures Past and Present’ also reflects this sense of history whilst also using it as a launch pad to see the future. “Our intention with this mural was to celebrate Doncaster’s remarkable historic past in industry whilst manifesting a future of creativity and diversity” says the Nomad Clan’s  Cbloxx . ​Both artists are proudly northern. Indeed their murals can be found across the north of England. “Many a Northern town contributed to the shape of the world as we know it” says Cbloxx. “Be it through coal, steel, steam, canals. These industries that were once a sturdy backbone to Britain are not crumbling columns of eras gone by”. ​ Mining History Much of Doncaster's development lays particularly within its coal mining past. Cbloxx’s own Grandfather was a miner. Working at the nearby Bentley Colliery, the Futures Past and Present mural pays a particular homage to him and his beloved pit pony ‘Winter’. Travelling down to work each day he would descend 1750ft into the pitch darkness of the pit. The pit ponies would spend their lives down there. Hauling coal in tubs from the coal face to the haulage road and then back again. It’s a relationship which is now immortalised on the giant wall. Windrush Other imagery Futures Past and Present pays tribute to is the Windrush Generation. A Caribbean nurse features prominently. A nod to the important role this generation played in building the NHS and supporting the development of the region after the Second World War. Between the miner and the nurse, galloping horses reference Doncaster’s equestrian history. The towns racecourse is of course one of the most famous in the UK. Flying Scotsman Representing the rail industry on the mural is the Flying Scotsman. Perhaps one of the most famous steam trains of all time it was built at the Doncaster Works in 1923. The train with it’s number 4472 became the standard bearer in terms of what modern day locomotion looked like at the time. Running mainly along the east coast line from London to Edinburgh it become a famous sight. Even now, albeit much restored it is still running and is part of the National Railway Museum in York. Doncaster’s history with rail was a key factor in the areas growth and in the powering of the industrial revolution. ​ ​Read more:  https://inspiringcity.com/2021/11/03/futures-past-and-present-mural-in-doncaster/

Viewable 24 hours a day until the 4th of July A controversial new estate agent has opened in South Yorkshire that appears to be offering properties for sale and rent in the West Bank and Gaza.  video capture courtesy Jon Robson On a Doncaster street already dominated by estate agent branches, Apartheid Apartments doesn’t immediately stand out as anything unusual. But on taking a closer look, potential customers will find half the shop dominated by barbed wire and CCTV cameras, with listings advertising a “striking, fully obliterated property” for Palestinians, or a “rare opportunity to participate in a crime against humanity” in an illegal settlement for Israeli citizens.  But the “estate agent” is in fact an art installation by artist Darren Cullen, (42, from Leeds) who goes under the name Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives . He says the exhibition is an attempt to draw attention to what he calls “Israel’s long-term policy of ethnic cleansing,” which has had material and diplomatic support from successive UK governments, “Israel’s genocide in Gaza is beyond horrifying,” he says, “but its important to place it in the context of an ongoing attempt by Israel to wipe Palestinians off the map. I put all these horrific crimes into the mundane form of an estate agent to try and show the banality of evil at work, how things as dull as planning permission and property rights are all part of an attempt to systematically eradicate an entire people.”  Cullen has previously worked with Banksy when another of his shop-based installations, Pocket Money Loans , was featured at Dismaland in 2015. But while Pocket Money Loans took aim at pay day loans and child-targeted advertising, this new work aims to show the injustice of Israel’s continued occupation and annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.  At the rear of the shop, on the Palestinian side, the wall has been dramatically broken through by a JCB digger arm, a reference to the arbitrary demolitions that Israeli military authorities regularly carry out against Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Architectural models show some of the property options for buyers, with a newly built Israeli apartment complex built on a foundation of human skulls, and a Palestinian tent pitched in a bomb crater, with yet another bomb just about to fall on it.  On the Israeli side a replica assault rifle is advertised as “free with every new home”, based on the AR-15 rifles that Israeli government ministers handed out to illegal settlers, and a Trustpilot sticker on the wall rates the business as zero stars and “genocidal” according to the UN. On the outside of the shop, a break in the barbed wire is replaced with anti-bird spikes above the Israeli side, which has violently impaled a white dove of peace. darren@spellingmistakescostlives.com

GSD [ General Social Development] was founded by Doncaster artists, Lewis Russell and David Walusimbi . Over the past year, they have been engaging new artists, planning events and growing their creative catalogue. GSD work with a network of rappers, producers, singers, DJ’s, instrumentalists, models, photographers, and videographers. Their aim is to use the expertise of the collective to grow Doncaster’s rap scene and curate a new generation of Doncaster artists by engaging youth through their work with various educational institutions. GSD have collaborated with ArtBomb and organised three music events so far, including a rap night, an acoustic session and a DJ Party night. Rap night hosted by GSD featuring Yorkshire's finest: LUCKY FONTANE  / HAKXX  / JXG  / JORDON THE EGO  / LAURENTE  / PEZ-1  / BALBY LOCAL  / D.FAULT / CHOZEN1NE  / MUSTAFA3RD  / CARTDOR  / LOWRY / KUN D  / JUNIOR  / SONER  AND MORE GSD presents GSD Acoustic at the Hallcross:​ ​ DJ Ibzzzz / DARCY / PHILIPPA ZAWE / DJ Craze / KID blue / Ari Mor Official / Sile Sibanda / Harrison C / Nathaniel Short / DJ April-Ness / Meduullaa / Rumbi Tauro GSD's third event of the festival is an all night session with regional DJ's coming to Doncaster to play for one night! Book your tickets through our events page or pay on the door! ​ Jackhno / DJ CRAZE / DJ CHIEF / Matty B2B Jordan / ASHLEY HOLMES DN10 / DJ April-NESS and more! https://gsdhub.org/

Chomko & Rosier is the collaborative studio of artists: Matthew Rosier and Jonathan Chomko, based in London and Montreal respectively. Their work explores technology and the built environment, resulting in installations and experiences for public space. The studio’s work has won multiple awards and been installed in the public spaces of Tokyo, Paris, Austin, Bristol, York and London. ​ Shadowing gives memory to streetlights; recording and replaying the shadows of those who pass underneath. In Doncaster Chomko & Rosier have created a new, semi-permanent version of this award winning public artwork, which will now be installed next to Waterdale Street for one year. This new version of Shadowing has been manufactured in partnership with UK based street lighting manufacturer Ark Lighting, supported by Doncaster Council and Doncaster Creates, and launches as part of Artbomb 2022.

Janine Harrington The Human Clock (big time, 2013) is a functioning clock maintained by an operator using only their own embodied sense of time passing, and a little feedback from audiences. It is an exploration of time and labour. ​ Janine Harrington is an artist whose work includes writing, dance & choreography, drawing, video, installation, costume and space design. She works mainly in gallery and non-stage spaces where her work prioritises explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales beyond the human, neuroqueer experiences of information processing and attention. ​ www.janineharrington.com

ArtBomb is more than a festival, and is deeper and wider than an artist presenting their work. It’s about process, development and a strong emphasis on collaboration and experimentation. I am the ArtBomb lab developer and I have been engaging with artists and environmental scientists and enabling them to explore new ideas together through the residencies, and development programmes that we, ArtBomb, are currently running. A lab is not traditionally associated with art and certainly not familiar in my home town of Doncaster. This is a more contemporary art space set up where boundaries between practices and media can be blurred, deconstructed, played with through experimentation forming new ideas and questions. I have been working with artist, lecturer and prolific space designer/maker, Micky Bunn to construct the ArtBomb lab with a focus on an easily adaptable and fluid use of the space for our resident artists/scientists to use including making the most of a double window frontage to showcase ongoing developments to the public. The space is an exciting formation of workbenches, tool kits and resources such as video projectors, raspberry pi’s, green screen, retort stands, audio recorders and art materials and mini library, courtesy of ArtBombs’ Creative Director Mike Stubbs. The library contains catalogues of contemporary artists, artworks and theories that inspire. Over the past few weeks I've been very lucky to hang out and work with some super interesting people already doing exciting work. David Bramwel, Carolin Sinders, Rebecca Smith, Angela Robson and Brigitte Perenyi are the artists in residence at the ArtBomb lab. The concoction of ideas and interests within this cohort of artists/scientists/activists is intoxicating at times. ArtBomb lab is currently hosting a 3 week residency with Wild Weed Kitchens ’ Monika Dutta and Jake Harries, who are working in collaboration with artist Janet Wallace and myself. This residency is a predominantly public facing and public engaging project bringing the idea and reality of wild food to the fore with drop in events and workshops. In terms of public interest and willingness to get involved and chat to Monika and Jake, the residency has been very successful, evidenced by the public being very curious of these goings on and particularly intrigued and even keen to try a dandelion burger and stir fried weeds. The last half of this residency crosses over with the first Re-Wilding the System lab-based residency scheme in which artists research experimental work alongside ecologists and environmental scientists. This is the first of 3 rounds of lab activity where the four artists and special guests have been undertaking a get together of various events and activities to assist them in developing their work. This has included a field trip out to Hatfield Moors which I took part in. Mick Oliver, our expert tour guide brimming with not just knowledge but immense wisdom and lots of humour took us on a journey through the peatlands that he is evidently, acutely familiar with. We looked and learned deeply through Mick’s relentless and meticulous work to ‘re wet’ and assist restoration of the species of plants and insects that have been lost through human ignorance and are so vitally important to that particular land and consequentially important to the whole health of the environment. This experience will inform the rewilding artists work they develop for the the upcoming ArtBomb festival. The works that come from this will be mixed, and range from written pieces, to films, projections and performance with the emphasis experimental, collaborative and deep thinking using new media, new ways of making art that connects to people and provokes inquiry from its viewers. This experience and gathering of artists sees the beginning of a development of work that will continue with more sharing and learning on the themes of environmental issues, hyper local and global. With input form scientist Simon Pickles and a number of amazing environmental organisations and individuals. The work has only just begun and the process is proving exciting and surprising.

What is it like to be in a work, to be part of a creative process? In this following writing the artist/facilitator and co founder of Artbomb, Sacha Gray gives voice to the feelings and emotions that she felt when working on The Bare Project . An authentic voice that charts the process of the project, her role in it, and the impact she witnessed. The Kitchen Is Always the Heart is the name of the project created and delivered by The Bare Project , a theatre and interactive arts company as part of The People’s Palace Of Possibility . I knew a little of The Bare Project before I started hanging around these guys as they brought their kitchen and collection of stories and ideas of a utopian future to life in the space at ArtBomb. I had signed up to be a palace citizen in The People’s Palace of Possibility during lockdown as their project had moved online and via the post. I was intrigued then by their unique way of engaging and quirky design of paraphernalia that arrived through the letterbox. It was fun and exciting and I shared the experience with the group of kids that I worked with at the time.It was really interesting to see that the kids had never really been asked the question “what is a fairer, kinder future and how could we make this happen?” Or maybe it's not that they hadn't been asked that question but more likely they hadn't been given the space to really explore and discuss or been sincerely listened to and heard? So when I learned there was another phase of this project at the Artbomb shop I was really excited to meet the team in person. They arrived, I hung around a little and watched as they built the install into the shop window. The team welcomed me and I listened to them as they worked things out and supported each other if needed. I was part of their check-ins each day as we sat with a cuppa and had space to voice any concerns about our own tasks, or just how we were feeling that day and I soon began to realise and experience what they were all about. They have a wonderful micro culture of care and kindness in the way they work together as well as the people they come into contact with and it was palpable. It was more than just being nice and getting things done, I felt a sense of the utopian ideals they were advocating for, human care before productivity and capital and a strong sense of value on individual creative processes. This worked. Shit got done and done well. My job was to create signage for the open day where people were invited in for a meal, conversation and to really think about what food justice means to them. This space to just create within the setting of the buzz of creativity around me was lovely and slowed my mind down. People moved around and through the space and I listened and joined in convos. I witnessed worlds opened up on peoples faces as they spoke about their memories and experiences and I thought how this is how people understand what is important to them and what they want to take into the future and what they want/need to leave behind if we are to co create an essential and new way of living. That reconnection to self in those moments felt like lots of small but deep stirrings of hope and energy for a better, a radically better, future. Job done! But job is not done, because we need that energy to keep burning and the hope to keep building strength. The Bare Project will continue to build the rooms of The People’s Palace of Possibility in various places and spaces, but for the next 4 weeks we have the window at the ArtBomb to keep us inspired, stirred up, asking the right questions about our future and provoking imaginings particularly around the future of food. I look forward to seeing the next space created for The Peoples Palace Of Possibility . It is both gentle and powerful work that they bring, but it must be said that the relational way they go about their practice is just as impactful to the people they come into contact with.

Due to The Portland Collective move, the "Open Studio Event" has been moved and we are HIJACKING Bentley Urban Farm , we are TAKING OVER! This only means ONE thing! A Bigger, larger, more extravagant event. Who is in? There will be LIVE music from the one and only SKIN TONES, lots and lots of art work up for you to admire and for sale, there will be stalls, demonstrations & even workshops. https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Portland-Collective

Full Circle Forum, 26th March 2022 at Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, Doncaster Yu-Chen Wang is a Taiwanese-British artist who lives and works in London. Her work asks fundamental questions about human identity at a key point in history, where eco-systems and techno-systems have become inextricably intertwined. At the same time, her Taiwanese origins, combined with a London-based career, have created a vision that is personal and autobiographical. She has exhibited internationally, including at Science Gallery London, Manchester Art Gallery, FACT (Liverpool), CCCB (Barcelona) and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and recently received the Honorary Mention Collide International Award, CERN (Geneva). ​ Creating an immersive cinematic video installation, Yu-Chen Wang took railwayana as a starting point for exploring Doncaster’s relationship to coal. With the support of local historians, geologists and environmentalists, this collaborative inquiry into regeneration and rewilding looks at the landscape surrounding South Yorkshire in the context of two major crises we are facing: inequality and environment. This poetic work dwells on our relationship to place, peat bogs, water, coal are dominant features within the local landscape formed through the layering of time and compression of matter. Pitheads, slag heaps, mining subsidence and flooding, the edgelands are still full of post-industrial scars and traces. All of which are revealed through evocative moving images and a soundscape, which portray and reflect on these problems within a global condition to re-imagine new routes into the future. The artist’s research focuses on how technologies enable movement of people, goods and information, as well as exploitation of natural resources and labour; how the land and ecologies, even our planet, have been altered and transformed through these activities. In this anthropogenic environment, a new version of nature is emerging—wildlife and modernity clash, human and non-human worlds entangle—a coevolution of human communities and their landscapes. Full Circle , although composed of images and places captured locally, asks us how Doncaster sits within a broader international landscape as we did once before.                  Yu-Chen Wang says: “My work is largely informed by the history of places, collective memories, individuals’ stories, and the relationships I have established with these places and people. Various methods, including undertaking artist in residencies, conducting field research, developing collaborations and site-responsive projects across the UK and internationally have served as important processes for connecting places and people, whilst exploring and reconfiguring my own evolving cultural identity.” ​Speakers included: Yu-Chen Wang, Mike Stubbs, Liz McIvor, Louise Hill, Simon Pickles, Michael Oliver and Damien Allen. Sound design: Kristian Craig Robinson aka Capitol K Cinematography: James Lockey, Tyrone Braithwaite Technical installation: Andrew Quinn Equipment: ArtAV ​Research support: Dave Rogerson, Chris Barron and Simon Ward of Doncaster Grammar School Rail Collection; Bob Gwynne and Thomas Spain of National Railway Museum, York; Warren Draper of Bentley Urban Farm/Doncopolitan; Sasha Gray; Simon Pickles of North & East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre; Michael Oliver of The Lindholme Old Moor Management Group; Paulette Benjamin of Gomde UK Buddhist Centre; Nicola Fox of Doncaster Museum. Curated by Mike Stubbs, specially commissioned by Doncaster Creates for DGLAM. With financial support from Doncaster Culture and Leisure Trust (DCLT).

A review of the Full Circle Forum: Arts and Ecology Lab WATCH HERE We convened at the newly-opened Doncaster Danum Gallery, Library & Museum on 26th March 2022 for a forum to discuss the future of South Yorkshire’s post-industrial landscapes, in response to a newly commissioned artwork, Full Circle by Yu-Chen Wang and curated by Mike Stubbs. In addition to Wang’s commissioned film installation, the forum also serves to highlight two new initiatives in Doncaster: an artist residency entitled “Re-wilding the System” which will support four artists to work alongside environment scientists; and “Symbiosis”, a series of ten bursaries offered to artists, environmentalists, designers, ecologists and imaginative thinkers to work together in interdisciplinary workshops, around themes of biodiversity, sustainability and local ecologies. These lab-based residency programs will feed into the ArtBomb Festival in August. Making our way beyond the two steam locomotives housed on the ground floor of the building, Wang’s film is installed in the art gallery at the top of the new building. It sits amongst the permanent collection which features 19th-century landscapes, portraits of majestic racehorses, portraits of gentleman and once-important local dignitaries, a painting of Doncaster’s bustling cattle market at the turn of the 20th century, and some more contemporary paintings depicting intimate domestic scenes of 20th-century industrial society. Full Circle begins with a long, slow circular pan across a lowland fen. An alien, lilac sky reflects in the surface of a vast body of water whose surface seems impossibly still. The surface of the water is broken by a lone twisted branch which extends out from the water, a petrified arm emerging from the pool like that of an Arthurian Lady of the Lake. Synth tones rise and descend eerily, above the burbling and colliding textures of a subaqueous soundscape, suggesting another world beneath the eerily dead surface. A narrative voice-over declares, “This picturesque scene hides histories of enclosure, and violent insurrection… the relationship between ecology, topography and human geography is rather confused and precariously entangled. Over time we got what we wanted, and we lost what we had”. This collision of nature, technology and memory in Doncaster’s post-industrial landscape sets the scene for today’s forum. Liz McIvor Writer, historian and TV presenter Liz McIvor kicks off the forum with the first presentation, taking us to Clifton Country Park, site of the former Wet Earth Colliery. Now a nature reserve, the industrial history of the land is largely hidden today. McIvor illustrates with an image showing part of a network of 19th-century tunnels which run under the park, echoing the opening scene of Full Circle with the notion of a world that lies obscured beneath the surface. She doesn’t explicitly mention the eerie, but she talks about the ghosts inhabiting the post-industrial landscape, sometimes literally, as in the reported sighting of ghosts on the site of the Hexthorpe Railway Disaster of 1887 in which 25 people were killed. Thus far we are thinking about how we deal with our industrial histories in the present, but of course it is also an historian’s work to understand how those histories were perceived by their contemporaries. McIvor presents us with examples of mid-nineteenth-century artworks to illustrate some of the attitudes held at the time towards, for example, the development of the railways. One slide shows John Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath , a painting which American artist Dan Graham recognised as: “the first shell-shocked reaction to the anguish of the new industrial age” Suggesting also that this artwork was perhaps an early work of science-fiction. McIvor tells that, whilst touring Britain’s northern cities in the 1850’s, this work was attacked by workers who felt the painting represented an assault on their livelihoods, which for the first time were based on a wage economy. Management of the ecologies of industry and landscape has always been political. Yu-Chen Wang Next Yu-Chen Wang gives some insight into her research process. Wang’s practice involves her working closely with local experts, in this case ecologists, conservationists and naturalists who study and work with the Hatfield Moors, several of whom feature in today’s presentations. Walking the terrain with her collaborators is important for Wang in order to navigate the multiple narratives of the landscape, and these interactions formulate themselves within Full Circle’s voiceover: “Let the terrain speak for itself, you and I walk the landscape. Landscape is something you look out from, not something to be looked at”. Wang’s work sits within a tradition of artists’ moving-image practice which synthesises ethnography with science-fiction, a strategy perhaps to be at ground level within the landscape, whilst simultaneously distanced from it through a process of estrangement. Within this tendency artists are often grappling with what lies hidden within the landscape, the layers of which include the ghosts of our colonial histories, in the work of Larissa Sansour, Jananne Al-Ani or Grace Ndritu, for example. Wang’s Full Circle allows colonial histories, collective memory and geological time to collide, whilst also infused by the auto-ethnographic voice: “you’re really intrigued to hear that I’m going to narrate the story myself this time” Seeking to understand the landscape as a web of connections beyond the surface. Louise Hill Ecologist Louise Hill and conservationist Michael Oliver, both of the Old Lindholme Moor Management Group, between them detail some of the challenges facing Lindholme Island, a peat mire located between Hatfield and Thorne moors. Both moors were decimated through a long history of peat extraction, but the parcel of land known as Old Lindholme Moor was privately owned and the owners didn’t allow peat cutting, as a result of which the peat is one of the deepest in the area. Water management is one of the key issues mentioned by both Hill and Oliver, and it’s critical to keep the peat in a saturated condition - not only to preserve and foster the carbon-sequestering mire habitat, but also to reduce the risk of wildfires. Hill describes how in 2020 a wildfire spread across the southern edge of the moor, the carbon dioxide emissions of which were estimated to be roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 30,000 people. Michael Oliver Oliver highlights that the objective is to protect the moors area, and its particular habit with extremely rare invertebrates (later during the panel discussion Oliver talks about how the nightjar which feeds off these invertebrates, was crucial to achieving designation under the EU Habitats Directive as a Special Protection Area, which ironically didn’t prevent the cutting of peat in the surrounding Hatfield and Thorne moors since permissions for rights to cut peat pre-dated European laws designed to protect such areas). It’s impossible to completely restore the moor, but the aim is to preserve it until such time as the fauna may have the opportunity to spread further afield. This critical endeavour, full of hope, reverberates through the Full Circle soundtrack: “You say it is almost impossible to return the moor to its original condition, but you try to do what you can, while you can”. Simon Pickles Simon Pickles, Director of the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre, begins his presentation with an image depicting the Saddleworth Moor ablaze at night. This photograph taken in 2021, echoes the slide of the John Martin painting shown earlier by Liz McIvor. Pickles recalls, “You could smell the peat… and standing there with the breeze coming towards me, you kept getting buffeted by the heat coming off the distant fire”. He recounts that whilst the newspapers spoke to the family whose fireworks accidentally sparked the fire, the mountain rescue team, and the National Trust who were out looking for livestock, he and his colleagues were studying maps and satellite images to try to understand what kinds of habitats had been lost, and what species associated with those habitats might be effected. Pickles asks, how can he push the narrative towards data-driven stories that contribute to a better popular understanding of our local ecologies, and influence the people who make the political decisions which can impact on them? Pickles understands that for his work as an ecologist to be successful, he also needs to be an effective story-teller, and this leads him to speak passionately in support of collaborating with artists to tell these stories. Following the presentations, we begin a roundtable discussion chaired by Mike Stubbs, Creative Director of ArtBomb. David Bramwell, one of the four resident artists selected for Artbomb’s Re-wilding the System , talks about how he grew up in Doncaster without much of a sense of connection with the Don—the river from which the town derives its name (and which itself gained its name from a mythical river goddess Danu), which was declared biologically dead until the 1990’s. Bramwell speaks about the importance of challenging the metaphors commonly used to depict nature and our relationships with it in terms of conflict (typically battles between species of plants or animals, or between humans and the environment), favouring a discourse which places emphasis on metaphors of symbiosis and collaboration. This seems to contrast with Mick Oliver’s experience of political “battles" during his period as Doncaster Borough Council’s Case Officer for Thorne and Hatfield moors, but perhaps this is the point: if we are to make meaningful advances in the ways our lives, economies and biological environments interact, we need to create narratives based around mutual benefit and collaboration rather than around conflict resolution. Many of the contributions from the floor echo the importance of becoming better story-tellers. Richard Scott, Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, suggests that “these steely terms like ‘environment infrastructure’ don’t really work”, and that it is the human stories about our environment which really connect with us. Paulette Benjamin, who works at Gomde UK Buddhist Centre (current owners of the parcel of land known as Old Lindholme Moor) says: “It’s not like we want to get people to be tourists, we don’t need people to enjoy the countryside, we need to really connect with the depth of nature, and the vastness of what it represents”. Visual artist Carolyn Thompson asks: “How do we make things happen on a grander scale, beyond the conversations in this room? How do we reach more people? How do we influence and have impact at a higher level?” Mike Stubbs Thompson suggests that artists are often operating as a kind of low-level annoyance in terms of provocation, but need to find ways of making sure their questions and ideas have an impact at a level of policy. Simon Pickles offers one solution, expressing that he is seriously drawn to the idea of a regional arts and ecology lab. Pickles admits that he is less interested in “artworks” but is interested in process and wants to work with artists, to see how they research, to engage with people who “think differently” and challenge the accepted norm of scientific thinking. This ambition for a regional arts and ecologies lab - the first steps of which are now in motion with Artbomb’s Re-wilding the System artist residencies and the “Symbiosis” bursaries - can plug directly into Doncaster’s efforts to rebuild its identity as a forward-thinking centre for arts and culture, and a wider ambition to establish a Yorkshire Great Fen. It takes both guts and vision to attempt something new, and from what I see at this forum Doncaster has that in abundance. What we need now is for other sectors from small businesses to larger-scale industry, to the Borough Council and beyond, to get on board with this urgent thinking.