One Million Counterextinctions, Stage 2: City Assembly

Come spend a lovely afternoon in Roper Park imagining designs for local species facing climate collapse — with clay, on April 11 from 3-6pm, for free. All ages welcome! Drop in and out as you like.

By 2045, rising heat, saltwater intrusion, habitat loss, and seasonal disruption will push dozens of local species past thresholds they can't come back from. Our lives depend on these species, and theirs on us. Carpenter bees will find it too hot to fly, alligators will be unable to find fresh water, and gopher tortoises will have nowhere left to burrow.

One Million Counterextinctions asks: what infrastructure do we owe the species that live alongside us?

Join us at one of our four outdoor tables, where you'll be introduced to a local species and a climate scenario it will face. You'll then be invited to design a response using clay and drawing materials — a shelter, a system, a tool, anything you can imagine. Absolutely no expertise or experience needed, only your imagination and a willingness to play!

All community-generated designs will be credited to their makers, included in a permanent open-source public database (imagine a Google but for multispecies design ideas), and become available for anyone to build. What you design here will be built for real: several of the community designs from this project will become permanent installations across Gainesville.

Drop in anytime between 3 and 6 pm. Bring friends, bring kids, bring your neighbor. Registration helps us plan for materials, but you're welcome to just show up.

This is a project by Conrad Cheung, Assistant Professor in the UF School of Art + Art History, in partnership with Alachua County Commissioner Anna Prizzia and the Office of Resiliency and supported by many wonderful others.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Conrad Cheung & Anna Prizzia