An exploratory trip to El Hierro island
A week of material-driven experiments and deep reflection sessions to connect to a unique landscape and ecosystem. A parenthesis in the MDEF masters’ program.
Every year, the Master in Design for Emergent Futures (MDEF) offers students the opportunity to connect to a unique landscape and ecosystem. This year, the chosen space was in the context of El Hierro, part of the Canary Islands, where they were able to reflect and put into practice some of the ideas, topics and techniques shared during the first year of the educational program.
MDEF students are given the yearly opportunity to take a trip around the month of March to a surprise location, chosen based on the learning opportunities it offers. During previous years some of the visited places included Mallorca in the Balearic islands and Shenzhen in China. The goal of these getaways is to offer students the chance to disconnect from their daily life and current projects in the classroom, while allowing them to immerse in an unknown environment with an experiential learning process. In addition to that, they are presented with the opportunity to go through a collective experience resulting in the creation of new connections and fostering of the already established relations between them.
Along with the change of scenery for each yearly trip, the topic is also different. This year it was all about inclusive and regenerative innovation for distributed, resilient futures. Traveling to El Hierro, the second-smallest of the eight main islands of the Canary island in the Atlantic Ocean, students had a week full of research activities dedicated to the topic. They were presented with a diversity of opportunities to experiment, learn and reflect about ecosystemic regeneration and striving for resilience through interdependent practices of knowing, intuition, material-driven experimentation, situational awareness and embodied research. What’s more, students explored ecosystemic thinking, increasing personal presence, conscience and consciousness, and how to nurture these connections with nature as co-client.
The goal of these getaways is to offer students the chance to disconnect from their daily life and current projects in the classroom, while allowing them to immerse in an unknown environment with an experiential learning process.
Through exploratory visits, material experiments and reflection sessions, participants were given the opportunity to learn profound techniques of working in-between living ecosystems in a unique island context where striving for resilience and respect for the environment has become paramount in the last couple of decades.
The representative from the local government Javier Morales led the participants through the island’s technological advancements resulting in its energy self-sufficiency. MDEF students got to know slow and ancient wisdom alongside technological developments. The topics covered during the trip included ways to bring happiness to communities, building of sustainable co-operatives, empowerment, water, mobility, data, tourism, organic farming, carbon sequestration and housing. All of these topics were accompanied by examples of projects creating a more resilient economy centered on happiness and resilience.
What better way to fully grasp all covered concepts than through visits around the island? Students explored local projects dealing with energy production, sustainable agriculture, food production, ecological co-habitation and local architecture – all of which helping el Hierro to maintain and develop new models of sustainability.
One of the highlights of the trip was a cultural tour in Taibique with Octavio Barrera, founder of the Lava Circular at El Hierro. This event, which does not want to be categorized as a festival, has a focus on sustainability presenting projects and initiatives around the traditional and contemporary culture of the Canary Islands. Different creatives revitalize unique locations around el Hierro exchanging knowledge between participants, attendees and local inhabitants. The photographer and artist Alexis W., author of the collective Ferro, a project that enhances the identity of the island through the processes of making paints with sulfate iron, joined the cultural tour as well to show some of the interventions related with the project.
Another highlight was the visit to Gorona del Viento, a wind-pumped hydro power station whose objective is to supply the Island of El Hierro with electricity from clean and renewable sources such as water and wind. The installation presented the MDEF visitors with a unique example of energy self-sufficiency.
Students explored ecosystemic thinking, increasing personal presence, conscience and consciousness, and how to nurture these connections with nature as co-client.
Being exposed to many diverse topics and projects, students naturally needed a moment to give shape to their collective learnings which they were able to do through a dedicated time and space for reflective sessions. The UK artist Thomas Duggan, founder of a collaborative and multidisciplinary research studio whose practice seeks to give voice to the more-than-human world, provided them with different tools that helped them register their individual experiences.
The end results of the action-packed week will take the form of 5 minute documentaries created by each of the participating students where they will share their personal experiences. The videos will be used to make a collective one showing how a week in a different context results in a plethora of approaches giving shape to the collective, yet individual experience.
Sounds appealing? Learn about the entire MDEF master program here