Parallel Presents

Parallel Presents is a participatory and creative methodology for creating positive visions of sustainable worlds that can be used in diverse settings to generate fresh ideas and a shared sense of hope and possibility.

Parallel Presents was created by Professor Amy Twigger Holroyd at Nottingham School of Art & Design.

Stage 3: enacting

Description:

This activity invites you to enact a practice or event from a fictional world as a way of experiencing an alternative system in which people live more sustainably. It should focus on a particular system/sector such as clothing, housing or food.

The activity described here is designed to speculate on a large-scale system, but it can be adapted to focus on a particular locality or organisation.

The activity works well in a group, but can also be carried out individually.

Activity:

Before you start, note the rules of Parallel Presents. All activities should explore:

  • a contemporary reality in a parallel world, not the future in our world
  • a positive and enticing system, in terms of individual satisfaction, social justice and sustainability
  • a system that is physically possible but pushes beyond what feels plausible in our world.

Step 1

Choose a representation of a positive fictional culture or system to use as a starting point. This could be a 100-word outline of a parallel world created in Stage 1, a visual or material prototype created at Stage 2, or another source.

Step 2

Consider life in the fictional world and identify everyday practices and/or events that take place there. 

The practices/events may be present in the representation selected in Step 1 or they may emerge from your thinking as you interpret and discuss the fictional world. Feel free to take the fiction in an unexpected direction to create an engaging vision.

Step 3

Generate ideas for possible ways that you could enact the practices/events in the real world.

Enactments could take many forms, such as a one-day live event or a commitment to perform the world’s practices one day per week for a period of time.

Select the idea that will offer the most immersive and compelling experience of an alternative culture or system.

Plan your enactment. Brief participants fully on the fictional culture/system they will be performing. 

Step 4

Conduct your enactment, aiming for a playful and informal ethos.

Encourage participants to alternate between:

  • immersion, where they perform as versions of themselves that live in the fictional world
  • commentary, where they discuss the action that is unfolding in the enactment

Step 5

Reflect on your experiences of the enactment and consider which aspects of the fictional world could be adopted in real life.

Want more guidance?

Further guidance for this process is provided on the Fashion Fictions site. It is designed to address the fashion system, but can easily be adapted for other areas of interest.