Solarpunk Art Collab 2025
Andrewism's
CC BY-SA Paweł 'alxd' Ngei
Life of Learning
alxd
glider.ink
solarpunk
prompts podcast
storyseed
library.org
Image CC-BY-SA Mitch Altman 2015
Image CC BY-SA Kimiooon 2016
Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers.
They're (...) simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.
Hieroglyphs
Neal Stephenson, "Innovation Starvation"
Visual
Symbol
Narrative
Plot
World
Logic
Make the world feel alive!
Which symbols convey meaning?
A floating village built on a scaffolding of an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the sea. Normally hostile, changed into a marine biology research station with its own glasshouses and wind turbines for power generation.
Lots of abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure cluttering the world.
CC BY-SA 4.0 Commando Jugendstil
A community center, library, or educational hub, initially set up to help people like coal miners re-specialize and find other jobs, has now became a place for unofficial “pilgrimages” of people striving to find their role in life and learn history from those who lived it.
Whole industries losing their jobs, replaced by sustainable solutions.
CC BY-SA 4.0 The Lemonaut
Symbols as palette
New Dreams of Labor
Noble / ignoble jobs?
Janitors
Mundane beauty
Solarpunk stained glass
Several janitors cleaning an events hall with a huge, colorful stained glass window.
The first rays of the sun are getting through, painting their faces and the entire room in an ethereal beauty.
This is not a shameful job to be done in darkness.
Life of Learning
LoL
Embracing Citizen Science, we introduced monitoring of local ecosystems into schools and learning group curricula at every level. Trips of schoolchildren, like the scouts of old, help measure the health of forests and rivers, learning more about the nature they want to protect.
We needed to monitor a lot of local ecosystems - more than we had rangers and biologists for. How to find time to teach on top of all that?
As a lot more technology became simpler and more repairable, we needed more skilled craftspeople. We rolled out extensive mentorship programs connecting them with experienced - often retired - mentors. Even if one could not physically be there at the job, they could still instruct their mentee through a video interface - or haptic gloves, gently nudging them in the right direction.
Some skills you cannot learn theoretically, only practically.
A lot of older people feel alone and useless.
To stay connected with communities at the other ends of the world, we started a new tradition: our libraries and community centers have virtual "walls" shared with each other like portals, with those close to them hearing each other. We run classes and discuss problems together.
Without cheap intercontinental travel it got harder to share knowledge globally.
VR only alienated people.
You can use your own OCs!
You can work on submissions together!
This is not a contest!
Solarpunk Art Collab 2025: Life of Learning
By Pawel Ngei
