The Quarry
The Quarry

2024 Quarry Pedagogies Summer Camps

Quarry Pedagogies brings together a community to explore alternative approaches to rehabilitation and collective ways of working and learning. This is supported by a program of talks and workshops, daily activities, group discussions, and time, space, materials and tools to initiate and develop projects that respond to the site and rehabilitation process.

Quarry Pedagogies is field-based, allowing for 1:1 experimentation embedded in the site and forming part of the larger rehabilitation process. It is designed to be open and generative with discussions, work and ideas emerging from the group. It is an experiment in culture building, group work and ecologies at the edge.

The Camp typology offers an ability to come together, get outside and test alternatives. As an ephemeral space, it allows us to live and work collectively for the week, bringing us in close contact with the world as we find it, and taking us far enough from the everyday to imagine and build something new. The region’s extraction infrastructures were put in place a century ago via camps. We are working with the same typology but in reverse, thus setting a new course for the site.

The Quarry

“So we are going to look at all of the organisms that exist on this site as equal players in the story of this quarry, and think about what their ecological purpose and their function is…..We’re going to be really carefully observing and looking at the microclimates and micro conditions, and the really interesting ecological variants and diversity that the creation of the quarry has created. So if you could walk with me, that’d be lovely.”

The camps aim to bring people together to investigate notions of pedagogy through place, land rehabilitation, ecology at the edge, and forms of regenerative culture.

Camp Dates

We are planning two Quarry Pedagogies Summer Camps to be held in January.

Camp One
Monday 15th – Saturday 20th January
Camp Two
Thursday 25th – Sunday 28th January

Registration closes: 12th December 2023
Places confirmed: 15th December
Bookings and payments: 19th December

The Quarry

“Creative practice has the role to try to bring closer the conditions in which we would like to live, and to try to dismantle the cultural apparatus that sustains the system, creating spaces of reclamation, re-appropriation and maybe eventual confrontation where tension and friction can play out in an interesting way, by serving as points of departure for new scenarios.”

Cost and inclusions

$650 which includes transport from Melbourne, all meals, and accommodation including tent (sleeps 2) and bedding.

What to expect: program and schedule

The camp program is essentially about rehabilitation: how we work with rehabilitation as a process and a program, and how we propose an alternative mode of rehabilitation that, instead of filling or flooding the quarry, considers other approaches and outcomes.

The Quarry, as a former extraction landscape and current rehabilitation project, raises a range of themes and questions about our relationship to land. We are interested in unpacking the idea of rehabilitation, and shifting from extraction to care.

Program activities during the camp will be informed by a series of prompts. These prompts will be in the form of tools, materials, questions, themes and readings that each in different ways relates to rehabilitation.

What to expect: Camp amenities

The spatial arrangements and infrastructure of the Camp have been developed to host the daily operations and support the projects and program of Quarry Pedagogies. All infrastructure is temporary and has been designed to test a range of ideas that will inform the more permanent infrastructure planned for 2026.

The setup has been designed to test a range of ideas for future facilities including for composting, fermentation, food processing, underground refrigeration, and water systems. Relationships with local food producers are also being established through this Camp which will inform future food and menu decisions.

Workspace: There is a large undercover workspace adjacent to the site workshop which is setup for groups to meet in and work from. This covered outdoor space comprises a series of tables, pin-up surfaces, and a collection of tools and materials for undertaking projects. Embedded in the site, this space intentionally blurs the traditional line between studio-based work and fieldwork.

Canteen and meals area: The Camp has a canteen which provides nutritious meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with collective involvement in meal preparation in the daily program. It includes a semi-outdoor kitchen where participants can get involved in making, cooking and washing up, and a dining area which includes a long table for sharing meals and connecting as a group during meals.

Camping: Comfortable canvas bell tents house two people per tent. They are provisioned with a long-single mattress, fitted sheet, woollen blanket and seats. There are two battery-powered LED lights in each tent but no electricity.

Bathhouse and Toilets: The bathhouse provides simple, private rooms around a common outdoor area with buckets for hot water. There are no conventional showers. Camp toilets are simple drop toilets with saw dust – collected during the building process – instead of water. Camp toilets are designed so waste is captured and processed as part of soil regeneration.

Quarry Pedagogies 2024 Registration of Interest

We respectfully acknowledge the Gadubanud people as original inhabitants of the area now known as the Otway plains and ranges. Through process, design and action we express gratitude for our shared connection through place, to the oldest continuing cultures on earth.