MFA Candidate Christina Foard was recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the Office of Sustainability at UGA for her work with Imagination Squared, a social experiment that asks diverse members of the Athens community to modify a five-inch wooden square to represent resilience. Foard’s proposal builds upon the existing project by incorporating a sound element. The new phase of the project will include the sound of resilience. Participants may record audio that will be playable by pressing a button on the square.

The grant offered by the Office of Sustainability encourages students to address grand challenges through local solutions. Drawn from the Student Green Fee, grants up to $5,000 are available to current UGA students who wish to initiate projects to advance sustainability through education, research, service, and campus operations. Successful projects such as Foard’s address priorities to actively conserve resources, educate the campus community, influence positive action for people and the environment, and provide useful research data to inform future campus sustainability efforts. Interdisciplinary projects designed to inspire, beautify and uplift—as well as to inform and conserve—were encouraged. Grants were awarded based on merit, positive impact, implementation feasibility, and available funding.

Imagination Squared is a social experiment connecting diverse people through stories and symbols of strength and resilience. It’s free for individuals, couples, teams, businesses to consider how they thrive in a rapidly changing world. There are no rules. Participants may glue a strange object from their garage on the square, wrap it in the fabric of their grandmother's sweater or use colorful clay to represent the fragile ecosystem of a coral reef.

 Four phases (between Feb 2018 - Nov 2019) offer wood squares around Athens, Georgia inciting contemplation and conversation about resilience. The project is also about overcoming the frustrations and limitations of modifying the square, and it's about the conversations and thoughts provoked in the process. After the squares have been dropped off at a designated location, the participants have the option of sending in a written explanation.

The current phase of the project asks participants to submit audio recordings that portray their idea of resilience, whether this is a poem, speech, or song. This new component connects the experiment to the vibrant music community in Athens.

The project is not complete until all of the squares come together in a vast collage of color, texture, and symbolism. In 2020, all returned squares will be exhibited together at The Lyndon House, then permanently given to the city of Athens for permanent installation.

Because the squares are meant to be viewed as a whole, the project also exists in a virtual platform on https://imaginationsquared.org/. This allows the project to be viewed as a whole, even if the work isn’t currently installed. The site also offers a space for contemplation. What is resilience? Whether considering personal resilience, the resilience of others, the resilience of materials, or the resilience of our community; participants can bring new understanding to the way they affect and might improve their community.

“The way people felt about seeing their square in and amongst the others was groundbreaking,” Foard said. “The visuals help us hold space and help us see that we are very different, yet tethered together."

See the Office of Sustainability's feature on Imagination Squared here.