How can cities be designed with communities and our planet in mind?

Adapt Transform was an interdisciplinary exhibition exploring urban design and creativity, on display across two sites – Modern Art Oxford and The Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University from August to September 2022.

The exhibition looked at community experiences of urban design that impact the transformation of places over time. It brought together a range of lived experiences to explore how the planning and design of cities affects the way we live. 

The artworks in Adapt Transform featured creative works and ideas including maps, data and documentation, painting and performance, public sculpture, modelling and prototypes.

The exhibition was collaboratively curated by a group of volunteers from Modern Art Oxford, and the work on display is by artists and creatives who responded to a county-wide call out in Spring 2022.

Green Arts Oxfordshire Network were successful applicants, exhibiting 12 banners made by you, Oxfordshire’s creative community!

On 5th April 2022 Green Arts Oxfordshire Network hosted a day to kick off Marmalade at the Old Fire Station, bringing together Oxfordshire’s cultural organisations, artists and anybody wanting to respond creatively to the climate crisis. Participants collectively reimagined how we produce creative projects in response to the climate and ecological crisis. Together, we explored how to move from anxiety and denial to optimism and activism.

Activist, designer and artist Siân Klein hosted a banner making workshop during the session using recycled plastic bags that participants had been asked to bring with them beforehand. The banners displayed in Adapt Transform are a creative response to words and phrases from the conversations that took place, imagining the ways that art could save the world.

Below, a young activist shares her response to Adapt Transform:

“I like interactive artwork because you can make the decision in it. How you interact with the artwork changes the way you see the work.

I liked the house (artwork by Deborah Pill) I spent time looking at it – because the text was hard to read because the words were split between the panels. The sandbags looked like cushions and I wanted to climb inside it. If I was asked to name the chief benefits of the house, I would say the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to daydream in peace.

I am a daydreamer, I dream about a lot of things that I’ve done before and my plans on what I’m going to do. I sometimes dream about the planet – I want everyone to have a happy life.”

Selected creatives in Adapt Transform are: Alexander Stavrou, Ash Goller, Atkins Urban Nature Lab, David Gasca, Deborah Pill, Green Arts Oxfordshire Network, Jan-Hendrik Höhnk, Jimi Cullen, Katrin Wilhelm & Sterling Mackinnon, Makespace, Mark James, Muesli Collective, Nor Greenhalgh, and Thomas Nicolaou.

Adapt Transform is co-curated by: Alan Edgington, Antony Mikallou, Dominika Jankowska, Hamideh Rimaz, Helen Frankland,  Ignacia Heredia Contreras, Jason Wong, Karen Herring, Katya Mora, Lauren Waller, Lucy Jacobs, Neil Rendell, Roland Gallivo, Shamim Rehman, and Stu Allsopp with guests architect Wongani Mwanza (Transition by Design) and Georgia Watson, Professor of Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University.