This section has further information and links to our work.
In 2016, Melissa and Dan both took part in an online reading group facilitated by Brave New Alps, exploring Take Back the Economy… by J.K. Gibson-Graham, Stephen Healy and Jenny Cameron. This was the seed bed for the Starter Culture project.
Melissa Thompson was a founding member of Phytology where she planted a field of medicinal weeds for the public to harvest as part of an artist-led project. She co-designed and built a sustainable studio using timber reclaimed from an exhibition at the Barbican (repurposing art to make art).
As one half of Institute of Use she explored sustainability, use and value by putting two small buildings and a field centre back into use in rural Mid-Wales. Inspired by the history of radical learning and informal education, the field centre hosted the first Exploding the University summer school for people interested in design’s critical, social and political potential.
Melissa is currently working with microbes to restore life to depleted soil and learning how to use a microscope so she can see her fellow non-human collaborators. Melissa is a founding member of The Roving Microscope — a community microscope club exploring human-soil ecologies through microscope gazing, food, discussion and making.
Dr. Dan Robinson has developed several art and learning projects with the outdoors and gardens. Teaching Land with Professor Vanalyne Green at Leeds University invited 1st year Fine Art students to use an allotment rather than a studio space. Student visits to the University estates greenhouses provided opportunities to learn hands-on about seeds, germination and gardening.
His project Thinking Space for the North with Grizedale Arts, explored the imaginative possibilities of a derelict offgrid National Trust farmhouse overlooking Lake Coniston in the Lake District. Cultural legacies of landscape, romanticism, (John Ruskin used to live at the sister farmhouse) were explored alongside practical work to rennovate the site as an arts project / residency space and eco b&b. [Link for bookings].
Dan Robinson's website has further info and archive of his art, writing, curating and learning projects. Dan's PhD (University of Leeds/AHRC, 2009) was in situated art practice, he is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is currently Program Leader Photography at Open College of the Arts, The Open University.
In 2019, Starterculture took part in Radmin, a festival in Bristol about art, exchange and radical new thinking and practice around 'business as usual' and we exhibited at Trade Show, curated Kathrin Böhm and Gavin Wade.
Between 2018-2023, Starterculture developed Arts & Environment, an open access learning program for Open College of the Arts. Through a series of place-based partnership projects between Open College of the Arts (OCA) and external UK venues, we nurtured engagement through situated learning to develop online learning resources accessed globally. This was an iterative co-design process in collaboration with students and staff at OCA, external partners and materials. The resource was initially developed to bring students together both in person and online for a series of place-based Arts & Environment study events, this then developed into a free open access resource available to any student at OCA. Ongoing student-led activity related to this theme at OCA can be browsed via this Arts & Environment tag on OCA's blog.
Dan Robinson
Melissa Thompson