By Kathy Holowko

Bio-diversity | Sustainability | Urban landscape | Design thinking 

Wild City is a collaborative sculpture workshop that considers wild animals as citizens in human landscapes. 

Students are invited to creatively explore their ideas and solutions for co-existence with animals by transforming a bare landscape into a green metropolis, where humans and wild animals can thrive together.  

Through building habitats and infrastructure, students consider how animals can live well, travel safely, and how their habitats could connect. Students work collaboratively to create a sculptural artwork, explore one another’s ideas and observe how individual efforts combine to completely change the entire landscape.  

Together students create a truly Wild City! 

Wild City is an accessible and fun way for students of all artistic abilities and ages to express creative ideas through design thinking and making. Wild City provides real-world evidence of solutions based thinking to environmental issues in order to inspire thinking, learning and creativity. It’s world building on a miniature scale, and we will all want to live there! 

By looking at inspiring examples of infrastructure adaption and community projects from around the world, students are able to creatively explore their own ideas and solutions for co-existence. By presenting visual imagery and conversation at the beginning of workshops artist Kathy Holowko provides a thorough framework to understand the concepts of urban ecology. Kathy has scoured the world for great narratives and real-life examples of positive change like forest bridges, bat tiles, swift bricks, and hedgehog highways, to spark imaginations. Students will re-think how we create our world. Wild City is a hopeful and positive work that provides real-world evidence of solutions to environmental issues in a creative, fun and constructive way to envision a positive future. 

Wild City explores themes such as history of country, evolution, human/animal architecture, specific species needs, ecology and designing cultural landscape which responds to real world environmental issues in a creative workshop. The work sets out to provide a positive future vision for ourselves and our native wildlife by exploring the science of urban ecology. Kathy is a rural Victorian artist that completed a Masters of Fine Art in the Netherlands where she was able to go on safari within a human-made, urban re-wilded nature reserve to explore the complexities of co-existence. Wild City is the outcome of searching for positive solutions to the Australian environmental issues of urban expansion, habitat loss and species extinction. With a deep love of nature, art and working with children, the infectious enthusiasm of Wild City hopes to leave participants with a sense of creative accomplishment, wonder and a new vision of the future. 

The language and content delivery of the presentation information will shift accordingly for upper and lower year levels. Year 3 and 4 is the perfect age range for this work. Upper year levels will receive deeper conversation opportunities with the artist and more student exchange. Year 6 have the option of being provided with access to hot glue guns during the practical workshop to enable more complex constructions.  

Please note: Councils, Venues and Community Presenters are welcome to book through the Creative Learning Program. Contact the team at [email protected] to confirm the program fee.