Make Good Symposium: Rethinking Material Futures

Victoria & Albert Museum

Sixto-Juan Zavala was invited to be one of a series of speakers at the Make Good Symposium at the Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington about the Queer Botany project he founded. Here you will find photos of the event, a sampling of slides, and a recording of the talk.

From the V&A (Co-written by Danilo Marques dos Reis and Maude Willaerts):

On 1 March 2023 Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures hosted its second symposium in the V&A Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre...
The symposium brought together a panel of speakers who invited us to consider questions around under-utilised home-grown timber, and to look at issues of land use and ownership, management of forests and questions of access and inclusion...
The final session of the day introduced us to projects that seek to engage a wide audience with some of the issues discussed during the symposium. Joe Bray, of the Sylva Foundation’s Wood School, talked about the mission of the school that he heads up and how through their annual Summer Schools they are diversifying woodwork. Sixto-Juan Zavala of Queer Botany talked about establishing connections between queer people and nature via interpretive displays, botanical drawing sessions, and guided walks. And concluding the session, Georgina Bowman of Common Practice talked about her experience with community engagement and how this has informed Common Practice, her most recent initiative.
The Make Good Symposium 2023 forms part of the V&A’s Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures programme, which aims to encourage the stewardship of natural resources and considers the responsibilities of designers and consumers towards the natural world in a time of climate crisis...