Writing

Mission and message

At the heart of everything I write is my call for a shift towards more a more regenerative culture and ecological ways of knowing. How we learn is at the heart of this. I think that learning is accelerated when people collaborate to solve real problems in real contexts, seeking the means to thrive, fully powered by imaginative play and tapping into cultural knowledge. The real problems, on micro or macro scale, concrete or abstract in nature, are all rooted in the human relationship with the biosphere, the flaw in which has led to our actions breaching several planetary boundaries.

I’m especially interested in the role of cultural organisations and creative practitioners in articulating and solving these problems. I believe that ‘Cultural’ opportunities help people, places and planet thrive, and that in turn, a thriving world allows rich and diverse ‘cultures’ to grow. By ‘cultural opportunities’ I mean a very broad set of things – having freedom and resources to learn and enquire, to cherish our shared heritage, to express feelings, be imaginative, make things and innovate for the future. This contributes to wellbeing in the wider ‘culture’ – in all the ways we communicate, celebrate, critique and create as a society.

I also speak at many conferences and events, offer training workshops and toolkits about these topics, so please contact me on bridget.mckenzie@flowassociates.com if you are interested.

Research for clients

I have carried out over 100 research projects for clients independently, or through Flow Associates or Climate Museum UK. For example, research on Sustainable Food & museums, or the Listening Project on how cultural learning can respond to young people’s concerns about the Earth crisis.

Writing for myself

I use Medium as my priority place for blogging, including on the publications Stories of Extraction and Extreme Weather Stories. Some ‘go to’ recent pieces are: ‘We need powerful stories’ and ’70 years: have we learned from the Great Flood?’

List of publications

Current projects

Soon-to-be-published book chapters on:

  • ‘How can artful learning help young people in the context of the Earth crisis?’ (for Ecologies in Practice, Goldsmiths, Palgrave MacMillan, ed Miranda Matthews)
  • ‘Collecting as emergency response to the Earth crisis’ (in ‘Ethics of Contemporary Collecting’, edited by Ellie Miles)

Articles, chapters & selected research reports

All the below are published in books, journals or online platforms:

Three articles in the engage journal (National Association for Gallery Education):

  • ‘Cultural Education for a Changed Planet’, 2014, in ‘Art and Climate Change’ (check date)
  • ‘Quests Driven by Questions: creative research as a learning methodology’, 2006
  • ‘The difference money makes: the ethics of corporate funding of gallery education’, in the ‘25 years of gallery education’ special issue.

Four articles published on Dark Mountain website:

Blogposts (i.e. self-published)

Below is a small selection from 103 articles on Medium

I’ve also written 271 blogposts on The Learning Planet

Collecting projects & learning resources – selected

Published creative writing and art

122 poems & creative pieces published on Graftage https://graftage.wordpress.com/

Multiple photographs, poems, creative non-fiction pieces in Dark Mountain books, 2009 – 2020