Just putting this out there… The date of the event is confirmed. The venue booked. The full call will be announced soon. Time to imagine.
More to follow.
CERG Present: Wild Essex Imaginarium Symposium 1
VENUE: The University of Essex, Essex Business School (EBS.1.1, EBS.2.1 and EBS.2.63), Colchester Campus
DATE: Saturday Sept 27th 2025
TIMES: tbc
GUEST SPEAKERS: tbc
Call for Papers, Performances, Creative Interventions, and More
“Reenchanting the Essex Landscape in Times of Climate Crises“
The first Wild Essex Imaginarium (WEI) invites participants, including – but not limited to – academics, arts practitioners, environmentalists, heritage workers, and activists, to contribute to a symposium on reenchanting the Wild Essex landscape. We welcome proposals comprising of speculative fictions, new fairytales, reimagined folk customs, local legends, and other creative methods of re-enchantment. The aim is to ensure that each re-enchantment helps us all celebrate the wild, untamed place of Essex in a way that provides an equitable and sustainable temporality for nature.
Rationale
The relationships established between the Wild Essex landscape and the communities living within and beyond its boundaries is nuanced and highly charged. Its rivers, coasts, forests, wildlife, and parks are places of emotional connection, resilience, beauty, and natural heritage. Wild Essex is a place people feel proud and passionate about, care for, and often romanticise. For many, it represents an intense affective association to nature and place. Our intimate bond with this emotional geography provides a sense of belonging, and a source of endless creative inspiration. However, Wild Essex is also a fragile landscape, facing profound challenges in a contemporary era defined by climate vulnerability, crisis, and adaptation. As its coasts erode, rivers run dry, or overflow with rainfall and sewage, Wild Essex forces us to reimagine it as a brutally disrupted ecosystem with a declining biodiversity. Since this dramatically changing landscape poses a risk to community infrastructures, we are all compelled to re-examine what these places mean to us now and reimagine what they will be like for future generations.
We need to start by asking some fundamental questions like why do we care about these landscapes? What do they signify for our communities. What will they be like in the future, and how can we ensure their survival? These questions are not just academic – they are deeply personal, and communal, and creative. Ultimately, they are speculative questions which provide a light we must steer by as we move into an uncertain future.
Wild Essex is more than an actual physical space. Its re-enchantment needs to be made beyond mere description of the past and present. The landscape is a temporal repository of contested memories, myths, folktales, fairytales, fictions, ideologies, abundant cultural identities, and desired and envisioned futures. We contend that the arts offer a powerful toolkit that can open up and tap into these often-underexploited sources of contestable creativity. Through the conceptions of new music, theatre, literature, and visual arts, for example, we can produce new spaces for unimagined or re-imagine dialogues that might stir future collective action. These spaces are inclusive of local community arts, such as local choirs, amateur dramatics groups, watercolour societies, and writing circles. They can include community centres, care homes, schools, colleges, and universities.
Crucially, while re-enchantment must engage local communities on an emotional level, it must not resort to sedate contemplations or exhibit a nostalgic melancholy for place. Re-enchantments need to be fierce, unapologetically passionate articulations that mirror the ‘red in tooth and claw’ power of wildlife itself. The re-enchantment of the Wild Essex landscape is not just about preserving the past; it is about wildly reimagining the future.
This is where initiatives like the Imaginarium come into play. The Imaginarium is a shared space for action, intersectional and ‘ecosectional’ in form, where new speculative research, creativity, and community engagement converge. It is a place for diverse perspectives, fantastical visions, and wild advocacy. It is open, inclusive, and permissive, welcoming everyone to contribute their own unique creative talents and insights. Through excursions into making and doing – writing new fictions, running events, and leveraging the expertise of academics, artists, heritage workers, and activists—the Imaginarium seeks to refresh the locus of research and inspire fresh thinking.
The Imaginarium is not just about creating art; it is about building new structures of feeling. It is about capturing and cultivating a sense of collective responsibility and joy in the face of political adversity. It is about celebrating the wild Essex we care about, not as a distant memory, or preservation order, but as a living, breathing experience that demands attention and action. By sharing our imaginations, listening to one another, and collaborating across communities, we can also build a common light and pour it towards an inclusive future in which genuinely caring for wildlife, natural heritage, and one another, come together. The arts give us the most versatile set of languages for sharing and growing this light.
Suggested Themes
How can we reenchant the Wild Essex landscape in the contemporary era of climate vulnerability, crisis, and adaptation?
What novel narratives, speculative fictions, fairytales, folk customs, and reimagined local legends can we weave together that navigate and celebrate the wild, untamed spirit of Essex, providing an equitable future for nature?
What subversive stories, surrealist interventions, polemics, and manifestos challenge the status quo and inspire collective action.
How can local community arts (local choirs, amateur dramatics groups, watercolour societies, and writing circles) become hubs of creative resistance, fighting for an equitable future for nature.
How can policy documents and environmental strategies be turned into speculative theatres of imaginative cultural activity, transforming abstract issues into tangible, meaningful experiences.
How can arts audiences become participants, actively negotiating the future heritage of this landscape and making its evolving story more broadly meaningful.
Submission Guidelines:
We invite proposals for papers, workshops, performances, and creative interventions. Submissions should include:
- A title and abstract (250–300 words)
- A brief biography (100 words)
- Indication of format (paper, workshop, performance, etc.)
Please send submissions to [tbc – not quite yet, but if you’re interested see contact details below]
Key Dates:
- Submission Deadline: [TBC]
- Notification of Acceptance: [TBC]
- Conference Date: Sat 27th Sept
Contact Information:
For inquiries, please contact: Tony Sampson – tsamps@essex.ac.uk
Key Terms of Reference
Landscape and Environment
- Wild Essex landscape
- Climate crises
- Rivers, coasts, forests, wildlife, parks
- Natural heritage
- Vulnerability and adaptation
- Future heritage
- Regional environmental strategies
- Conservation strategies
Enchantment and Speculative Storytelling
- Re-enchantment
- Fairytales
- Speculative fictions
- Folk customs
- Local legends
- Subversive stories
- Surrealist interventions
- Polemics
- Manifestos
Community and Collaboration
- Community
- Neighbours
- Inclusive future
- Listening
- Sharing
- Intersectional
- Ecosectional
- Public discussion
- Diverse creative responses
Arts and Creativity
- Arts
- Local choirs
- Amateur dramatics
- Watercolour groups
- Writing groups
- Imaginative cultural activity
- Creative responses
- New fictions
- Theatres of imagination
Action and Impact
- Actionable
- Scale to reach
- Fresh thinking
- Urgent policy issues
- Inviting spaces
- Making and doing
- Things that work
- Excursions
- Leveraging talent
- Refreshing research
- Knowledge and impact
Emotional Geographies
- No sedate concerns
- No nostalgic melancholy
- New structures of feeling
- Celebration
- ‘Red in tooth and claw’
- Light to steer by
- Fantastical
- Fierce
- Wild
- Fun
- Futures
Research and Academia
- Academics
- Arts practitioners
- Heritage workers
- Activists
- Locus of research
- Qualitative
- Spatial
- Temporal
- Permissive
