What is the BlackwoodTown Project?

The BlackwoodTown Project will be a re-imagining of Blackwood in South Australia.

The BlackwoodTown Project aims to use the arts to explore serious urban design in the 21^st century; using art to create a narrative about an imagined place: an act of imaginative placemaking.

Can we re-imagine Blackwood as a thriving, sustainable urban node for the next 200 years, a place for our children’s children who will live there?

To work towards this goal, this the project aims to be both an exuberant fantasy and a practical proposal.

The BlackwoodTown Project is independent, and needs your support to grow. 

Exuberant Fantasy

The BlackwoodTown Project hopes that by using fantasy, we can help people to bypass their natural conservative response to change, and give them the freedom to imagine something different.

We are now all thoroughly used to the imagery of exuberant fantasy, whether growing up with Narnia and Lord of the Rings, Star Wars in the seventies, last decade’s Game of Thrones and recently the marvellous Marvel universe.

In a fantasy, we all share in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s  ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. We can accept that a fantasy has its own reality outside of our day to day lives, and importantly, we have a shared understanding of that new world.

An act of fantasy is a way of letting go of our assumptions and expectations, to imagine the impossible. Without this letting go, it is too easy to be blocked by the perceived limitations of government, finance, infrastructure and town planning, trapped in disagreements about small things, or unable to envision any change.

And the exuberance ensures we are also having fun!

Pragmatic Proposal

Over the course of human history, the impossible becomes the possible through human ingenuity and perseverance.

So with BlackwoodTown, we will also work on a practical proposal that can co-exist with our fantasy in the real world. The BlackwoodTown project will explore the many difficulties and opportunities in the real world, working towards solutions. Along the way, we can draw in expertise as the need and funds allow.

However, because our pragmatic proposal has started from a fantastic place, it will be out of the ordinary, unexpected, fabulous, and maybe, just maybe, with your help, we can make it happen.

So subscribe today and imagine a future Blackwood!

What will you see at The BlackwoodTown Project?

The exuberant fantasy will be illustrated with commissioned stories, art, video or manga. (Go here to get involved)

These will describe a physical form and the lives lived within it. It may be a near future, a mythical past, or an alternative reality. Blackwood Town remains a bustling hilltop town throughout.

Informing the fantasy will be a progressive urban design for the form and massing of the township modelled in 3D.

Our practical proposal will explore urban development ideas through a regular blog, with guest pieces, or commissioned articles and reports when needed.

As the project matures, this side of it will get increasingly technical, detailed, and difficult.

The Project takes advantage of the intersection of changing communications and capital raising technologies, 3D modelling and information mapping, a Blackwood that has languished for decades, generational change and new sustainable urban living opportunities in the 21^st century.

The creative web can provide a platform for both continuous publication of the work of the Project, and crowd funding through subscriptions, so that contributors can earn a living.

The Project is ambitious and experimental, and needs your support.

Subscription to The Blackwood Town Project shows your support for this innovative project and does not mean you have to endorse the content. Of course, we hope the Project inspires you all.

To support us and keep up to date with the latest content, SUBSCRIBE NOW!