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Laura Eldret is an artist, organiser and researcher undertaking a CATE funded PhD at University of West of England (2023–27). Her practice-based research sets out to establish modes of creative commoning that foster ecological allyship in a time of climate emergency. Her socio-ecological art practice is relational, cross-disciplinary and collaborative, and often manifests in social gatherings, installations, works on paper, fabrics and videos. The current research situates social practice in non-human majority places (rural and/or nature contexts) in order to develop contemporary values of collective and ecological engagement, imagination and reciprocity.

Laura is interested in the commonalities that bring diverse groups of people together and the productive tensions of social encounters. Drawing on methodologies of ethnography, sociology and ecology, she explores ways to affirm the value of conversation and social encounters across species. Her art and research explores how commoning can be a creative social collective practice that creates new forms of environmental care and sustainable exchanges between human and non-human ecosystems. She is concerned with establishing new values of engagement, collective imaginations and artistic exchange that foster wellbeing, resilience, and sustainable ways of being in a time of climate emergency.

Eldret has operated as an artist for many years, and exhibited at major galleries internationally. She has undertaken residencies and commissions including West Dean Gardens, Nottingham Contemporary (UK), URRA/Gasworks (Argentina), and undertaken British Council funded research in Oaxaca (Mexico). She is the founding director of More Than Ponies, an artist-led programme for and about the New Forest (2019–ongoing) and co-directed CollectingLiveArt (2007–10), and co-convened Digital Draw with Goldsmiths university (2016). Eldret also has extensive experience working in the museums and galleries sector, is a trained permaculturist, and has taught in many universities at BA and MA.

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