The Ginkgo Creative Residency
2018- Present
Biology is now a design space and biologists design
Faber Futures has partnered with Ginkgo Bioworks to develop and curate the Ginkgo Creative Residency, an ongoing collaborative project that was established in 2017. We co-founded the program after our founder Natsai Audrey Chieza spent time at Ginkgo developing new projects and experimenting with this innovative model. Recognising the mutual value of such an intervention, the program was formalised through an international open-call, taking in our first “official” resident in 2018.
During this three month residency, Ginkgo Bioworks and Faber Futures invite designers to develop a project at Ginkgo’s foundry in Boston, Massachusetts. Our role as curators is to devise the nature of the residency, externalise its activities and outcomes, and locate creative practitioners working at the forefront of their discipline so they can embed their practice and thinking in an industrial-biotechnology startup. As well as helping residents to create seminal work within this unique context, we work with Gingko to build the viable conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration that ensure that the programme nurtures the cross-pollination of ideas and methods, while considering the broader implications of biotechnology on society.
Learn more about the Ginkgo Creative Residency and how to apply in 2020.