The imagination gap: unlocking change through creative disruption

05 Sep 2026
01:30pm - 03:30pm
FREE
Burrinja Cultural Centre Theatre, 351 Glenfern Rd, Upwey

How does donut economics need play to work? What does adaptive governance look like when designed through art? How do we communicate climate action in ways that energise? 

This event is part of the Burrinja Climate Change Biennale 2026.

Find out more information about this event on the BCCB#4 Talks website.

Speakers

Associate Professor Troy Innocent, RMIT School of Design, Regenerative Futures Fellow

Dr Innocent (he/they) is an urban play scholar, artist gamemaker and Director of the future play lab at RMIT University in Narrm Melbourne. The lab develops socially engaged and site responsive urban play connecting experimental game design, public space, posthuman methods, and creative technologies. Working with the city as a material, their approach to reworlding develops posthuman methods that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world. This involves transdisciplinary practices across design, sculpture, animation, sound, light and installation using methods of multiplatform storytelling that connect objects with their environment to build speculative worlds that playfully defamiliarise and disrupt urban life.

Mitch Jones

Mitch Jones is an award-winning performer, director, and cultural leader working at the intersection of experimental circus, physical theatre, and punk culture. He has toured and performed with major companies, including Snuff Puppets, La Fura Dels Baus (Spain), Circus Oz and Slava’s Snowshow (France/Russia), as well as enjoying a thrilling entertainment career as cartoonish daredevil Captain Ruin. In 2018 he founded alt-circus company Oozing Future to create innovative performances that use a hybrid physical vocabulary to deliver compelling experiences aimed at general audiences. Collaborating with a network of artists and designers, their shows AutoCannibal, Strange Chaos and Apocrypha have now been seen on major stages in Australia and internationally.

Phoebe Watson

Phoebe Watson is a proud Gunditjmara woman from South-West Victoria. Moving to Wurundjeri Country to study at RMIT University, Phoebe completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Design (Games) and has been working in the digital games industry both locally and internationally since 2020. Phoebe is Associate Producer at ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, bringing her knowledge from producing digital games to theatre. She is dedicated to bringing together the ideas of creatives, and working closely with Community and Elders to bring stories to life. Her passion and interest for the arts spans across multi-disciplines, always looking at new technology and acknowledging what came before.

Co-curated by Burrinja, Yarra Ranges Regional Museum and the RMIT Regenerative Futures Institute.

Upcoming events

Power in Partnership: Lessons from MREP and the Future of Renewable Energy PPAs

20 Oct 2026

Panel discussion on RMIT's Melbourne Renewable Energy Project Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) — lessons, the future of PPAs, and how they can embed social, ecological and First Nations value. Chaired by RMIT Sustainability Team.

Community Network Spotlight: Indigenous Rights, Digital Sovereignty and Community Networks

22 Oct 2026

Join the Internet Society's Community Network Infrastructures SIG for a hybrid gathering on Indigenous rights, digital sovereignty and community networks, featuring speakers from Australia, Indonesia, Mexico and North America.

Designing Regenerative Energy Futures: Design Collider

22 Oct 2026

Interactive design lab launching the Regenerative Futures Design Canvas. Keynote + lightning provocations, interdisciplinary team design sprint, gallery walk and vote, closing drinks. Led by the EARTH Research Group.

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

Learn more about our commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

The imagination gap: unlocking change through creative disruption