The Festival of Wood (Envisioning Better Futures)

Abstract

Lilydale is a rural community in northern Tasmania that is experiencing a significant shift in its economy. The timber industry was one of the major employers in the region, but the community is transitioning out of a reliance on old growth logging. The Festival of Wood celebrates the region’s connections to the forests that have been central to Lilydale’s history. For the Lilydale District School, an invitation to participate in the festival became the focus for an inquiry about envisioning better futures. Led by the school’s visual arts teacher, Kim Schneiders, the students partnered with artists and local community members to visually map their community, create public art on the town’s lampposts, and collaborate on an installation that repurposed old books and paper as a gesture to their community’s changing resource base. In this chapter, we first consider the visionary capacities of arts–sustainability pedagogy in addressing the principle of envisioning better futures before discussing the Festival of Wood in greater detail (Fig. 6.1).

…this became an opportunity for the students to connect with others in the community in an image-based conversation about what was significant to them about the past, present, and future of Lilydale.

Kim Schneiders, Artist and Teacher