Travelling through Tyne - what if we become good ancestors to those who come after us?
Dingy Butterflies CIC has been working with Tyne Derwent Way since January 2025. We were initially invited to develop nine weeks of creative participatory workshops facilitated by artists with the local community and inspired by the history, nature and communities of Dunston and Teams.
Recently we have been developing Travelling through Tyne, a series of resources that connects the communities and places along the route. Working with artist Chris Folwell and theatre-maker Liv Hunt we invited local residents who had attended previous workshops to co-create a new series of activities. Together we considered what else we would like to see happen in the local community. From this, a series of activities were created connecting to nature, heritage and community. These were then tested at a number of locations - Riverside Primary Academy, Kingsmeadow Community School, Land of Oak and Iron, Rosewood Care Home, youth group Dunston Drop In, and Art Diamonds, an arts and wellbeing project for retired people.
Throughout the project, the artists met regularly with Justine Boussard, the founder of the Amateur Ancestor Project, a heritage engagement project that helps people take a long view on the current issues that we face. We discussed concepts such as Long Time Thinking, Active Hope and Imagination Activism. If as Amitav Ghosh says, "the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination," then supporting more people to reflect on their culture and imagine how things could be better is a powerful act. By addressing the planetary emergency from a place of belonging, hope and nature connection, we can equip our communities to better face this moment.
From this we have created six activities and resources. These activities, whilst designed for the Tyne Derwent Way route, can be used by anyone across different communities as imaginative activities that explore the past, present and future. They are available as six printed leaflets that can be picked up from the Dunston Staiths space and along the Tyne Derwent Way as well as downloadable PDFs.
They have been designed for you to use as a starting point to explore your community. You are free to use your imagination and build on the activities and develop your own 'What if' questions and build your own personal Time Machine for your community. Travelling through Tyne is about looking closely, thinking deeply and imagining boldly with the people and places that make up where you live.
If you're interested in finding out more, we recommend that you have a read or listen to the following people.
- Justine Boussard's The Amateur Ancestor project for a deep dive into how heritage can help us think more long term
- Rob Hopkins' podcast: From What If to What Next and his book How to Fall in Love with The Future to stimulate your sense of possibility and discover a blue print to make your own time machine
- The Long Time Academy podcast to understand the origins of short-termism and how we can learn to think long term again and the Long Time Project founding article
- Roman Krznaric's books History for Tomorrow to see what past examples can teach us about some of today's most wicked problems
- Joycelyn Longdon's book Natural Connection: What we can learn from indigenous and marginalised peopleto understand the power of emotions to stir and steer action towards climate justice
- Xiye Bastida on the power of imagination
- Moral Imaginations to learn to care for the more-than-human too
- We also took inspiration from Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal on looking to the future with hope or with fear
