An exhibit in Claire Marshall’s Museum of Futures predicting a form of mushroom that consumes plastics. Image supplied.
“I'm going to say the C word,” says Claire unexpectedly. “We’re a capitalist society that extracts from the natural world, other people and other systems,” she explains with a laugh.
20 years ago, Claire studied economics at university. It was followed by an illustrious career in TV, two kids and growing anxiety about the world’s climate crisis.
“I’d walk into a supermarket and see aisles of plastic, knowing only a small percentage would ever be recycled. I would just feel sick in my stomach. What kind of world would my kids inherit?” she asks.
Claire decided to take action to ease her eco-anxiety by embarking on a PhD imaging beautiful futures where nature and humans live in harmony.
Overturning the world’s dominant narrative
At first, Claire thought people needed help imagining these futures, but she was wrong. They didn’t need help, there was just something in the way: capitalism.
That’s how Claire’s research led her to explore alternatives to the world’s dominant narrative: that humans are separate from nature, and that the only system that society runs on is capitalism.
At the heart of Claire’s research is the idea of regenerative futures, where people and planet thrive together.
“I started my university life studying economics 20 years ago. I had no idea that I would end up doing a PhD that basically sought to question what I was taught back then," she says.
“I didn't think that I'd go on this journey to completely change myself, my views and how I understand the world. I’ve found in my research that we have to make a lot of assumptions about how the world works just to get by.
“Doing a PhD gives you time and space to explore alternate ways of thinking, and knowing, and ultimately being in the world. It’s an absolute privilege. Now, it's my job to try to help people to come on that journey too.”
Extractive vs regenerative
In her research, Claire looks at how we can go from an extractive worldview generated by a capitalist mindset to a regenerative worldview, where we understand that we are part of nature.
“Regeneration is when our actions are both kind to the environment and kind to ourselves,” Claire explains.
“Every element takes something from the system and puts something else in. Trees take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put in oxygen, while humans do the opposite. All people, all nature, everything in the community has a role to play.
“It’s quite different to our current way of ‘doing good’ through sustainability, which is where our actions have consequences in the natural world and we must balance out our bad actions with good actions, or we need to reduce our actions so that they're not bad.
“Regeneration is vital in taking action on climate change. It is a new way of being in symbiosis with the natural world, but we can’t do it with a capitalist mindset.”
Helping people imagine a better future
Even though Claire’s still in the midst of her research, she’s already helping businesses, teaching UTS students and talking to politicians about our futures.
Claire also engages the wider community through the Museum of Futures exhibitions, which she runs with a team of collaborators, including futurists and artists.
Its 2023 exhibition, Pandemic Pivots, is based at NSW Parliament where the new NSW Government will have the opportunity to connect with artworks created during the pandemic in collaboration with distinct Sydney communities. It will also premiere a new artwork entitled Everywhen by First Nations poet Nicole Smede and artefact creator Michael Robinson.
Past exhibitions of Museum of Futures have included Food for Thought, presented in Arizona, USA in November, and the Future of Work presented around Australia.
The future is transdisciplinary
Sitting between multiple disciplines, Claire’s PhD didn’t have a natural home until she came across UTS’s Transdisciplinary School that focuses on bringing together vast perspectives, disciplines and techniques to tackle problems.
“I wouldn’t fit anywhere else. I knew I wanted to do a PhD that's on stories, futures, systems change, economics, experiential learning and education.”
“What we're going to need in the future is people who've got transdisciplinary knowledge and who can speak multiple disciplined languages, because that's how we'll solve these really wicked problems.”
→ Examine your assumptions about the world with a graduate research degree at UTS
