ABSTRACT
Through this studio we rethink the relationship between people and place as mediated by waste materials and processes of physical and philosophical meaning making. We consider the social value of materials (that would otherwise be waste) in our different neighbourhoods and contemplate their role as arbiters between, and signifiers of, different cultural value systems. Using material as evidence, we document a form of anthropological archaeology, a process that reveals, re-forms, and re-presents the social, the sub-cultural and the material behaviours of people in their place. It (sometimes literally) casts new material narratives through the physical and metaphysical social fabric that surrounds us by engaging with waste as culturally loaded matter. We map the environments in which our social-design ‘actors’ and participants live and the waste(d) opportunities that provide latent potential for social stories and opportunities that are afforded through more circular modes and methods of meaningful making. We chart a course through our places using the prism of waste material and waste(d) opportunities identifying potential ‘spin-out’ benefits for social and cultural value and renewed potential for more ‘virtuous-circular-economies’ and enhanced ‘material literacy’. The result is (more) meaningful-matter, material products that embody something of their place, in relation to its people.
