From Saturday 27^th January to Sunday 28^th January 2024 I was lucky enough to be invited back to Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and Media to take part in the remarkable project ‘Speculative Library’ which had been developed and initiated by Barto Bartolomeous and his Team as a project that would invite local constituents to both re-imagine what YCAM (Yamaguchi Centrer for Arts and Media) could be whilst, at the same time, giving them the tools that would enable them to become active users of YCAM rather than passive spectators.

On Saturday 27^th I was able to deliver a talk, as part of the Speculative Library’s ‘Let’s Think Together’ series. I took Tŷ Pawb a key example of a multi-use arts and culture space, embedded within a close-knit community, that activated Useful Art as a means to rethink what sustainable constituent culture could become. This revolved around reframing ‘play’ as a way to approach the space – where play is no longer confined to an activity set aside for children, but a cradle to grave right for constituents and users to experiment and reimagine themselves and their communities via the resource of Tŷ Pawb.

This was followed on Sunday 28^th January when I was invited to participate in an Arte Útil Workshop at YCAM. This was part of a series of Arte Útil Workshops which allowed participants to use YCAM as a space in which to discuss social problems and generate ideas using examples for the Association of Arte Útil Archive.