What if Dudley was a place which supported the flourishing of all life, for all time?

CoLab Dudley is creating conditions for collective imagination and cultural action towards flourishing futures.

Rehearsing the futures we want

We are testing out new structures, practices and approaches to support the transition from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

CoLab Dudley itself is an experimental form of social and imagination infrastructure. The people involved are practitioners. We’re not just coming up with ideas of what we need, we are building these propositions in the real world. We bring a tangibility to our work; creating demonstrators that show what alternatives could look and feel like. Our current demonstrators are around cultural strategy and climate action.

Reimagining participation in Dudley

  • Dudley People's School for Climate Justice

    Dudley People’s School for Climate Justice is an assemblage of community-led projects. The projects make it easier for people to learn from each other and connect with nature. Everyone is a teacher, and everyone is a learner. Using nature’s guidebook, place-based peer learning will lead to action for people, planet and the future.

    In Dudley our most vulnerable communities are at high risk from climate change. We also have natural habitats listed as high risk from climate change.

    A collaboration between CoLab Dudley, Workshop 24 and Ekho Collective CIC, Dudley People’s School for Climate Justice will generate opportunities for over 500 local people of all ages to take part in or host peer learning and climate action over the next 3 years.

  • Dudley Creates

    Dudley Creates is a 100 year cultural strategy in action. It is designed to nourish a flourishing local cultural ecosystem that cultivates curiosity and care for all life. Dudley Creates makes collective imagining, long-term thinking and cultural action by local people much more possible.

    Dudley Creates is a response to the cultural emergency and an associated absence of cultural democracy and uneven cultural engagement across Dudley borough. Dudley Creates is a living, evolving, navigation tool supporting people to take cultural action, encouraging adaptation and permission to experiment.

    Organising in a cultural emergency demands leadership from the most diverse array of lived experiences, perspectives and knowledges possible. We are working to achieve this through an open network of Cultural Collaborators embracing a plurality of culture making.

“Prefiguration is the ability to enact and manifest future realities as though they already exist now. This entails practicing living our desired futures in the present.”

Cultural Strategy, Art/Work, Practice