“In The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 we are catapulted several years into the future, where all the park species have risen up to demand equal rights with humans. After much unrest, it has been agreed that a treaty will be drawn up, designating these rights, but first humans must learn to better relate to and understand non-humans so they can cooperate better together. Thankfully a new invention - The Finsbury Park Sentience Dial - allows humans to tune into all the flora and fauna of the park.”
The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is a collaborative project that depicts the story of the dawning of interspecies democracy. It’s a new era of equal rights for all living beings, where all species come together to organise and shape the environments and cultures they inhabit - in Finsbury Park and urban green spaces across the UK, the world, and beyond! Like many urban parks, Finsbury Park is fraught with environmental issues: from noxious gases and traffic noises to governance struggles and financial sustainability.
If colonial systems of dominance and control over living beings continue, we all face an apocalypse.
Based around a set of Live Action Role Play games (LARPs), the Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is an immersive fiction played from more-than-human perspectives. Powered by the Sentience Dial, it encourages the blooming of a bountiful biodiversity, born of interspecies political action. Think like a dog, bee or even grass and help change the way we all see and participate in our local urban green spaces FOREVER.
Join In
There are 3 parts to the story of the Treaty of Finsbury Park
Part 1. 2021-2022 – The Interspecies Assemblies - In these online games people from around the world played as their mentor species to plan the Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park 2023 - the first event of its kind - to celebrate the drawing up of the treaty itself.
Part 2. 2023 – The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park - All the species of Finsbury Park were invited to join the festival in Summer 2023. Everyone discussed a set of proposed Treaty obligations and shared their priorities and feelings.
Part 3. 2023-25 – The Treaty of Finsbury Park - A treaty of interspecies cooperation is on display at Furtherfield Gallery, along with Festival highlights and an invitation to ALL park users to pledge their support to bountiful biodiversity in Finsbury Park.
By planning the Interspecies Festival together, human people from the locality and around the world have been engaged in building empathy pathways to other beings. They have been learning about what really matters to them and their habitats. They have been intensively exploring what it might mean to acknowledge the equal rights of more-than-human beings. They have drafted the Treaty and decided how to connect even more deeply with all the species of the park through a festival for all.
From October 2024 scannable hoardings will wrap Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park alongside an exhibition, featuring highlights from the festival, showing the new knowledge and relationships formed by assembly members for the benefit of biodiversity locally and worldwide. This also begins the period in which everyone is invited to make a pledge to play a part in advancing interspecies justice.
The Story So Far...
Part 1. 2021-22 – The Interspecies Assemblies
In the PUBLIC game of ‘Interspecies Assemblies’, human players were partnered with a mentor representing one of 7 species based in Finsbury Park. These included a tree, a bee, a goose, grass, a squirrel, a stag beetle and a dog. Players tuned into their mentor’s needs and experiences, and represented them at a series of online assemblies held to devise activities, events and choose locations in the park for the first ever Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park.
Part 2. 2023 – The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park
In Summer 2023 park lovers joined the Interspecies Festival: immersive role-play events across three biodiversity habitats - the old forest, the new forest and the wildflower meadow. Players were supported to inhabit the bodies of their new species, and explore the park with new eyes, ears and a totally new sense of what is important.
Based on everything learned and proposed through the Assemblies we embarked - in our new species bodies (in mask and costume) - on a voyage of discovery, marvels, sombre reflection, and broadened horizons.
⇨ In the Multisensory Mystery Tour we saw, heard and smelled the old forest through the sensory superpowers of squirrels, trees and dogs.
⇨ We enjoyed movement, mindfulness, respite and relaxation in the Interspecies Day Care and Spa at the new forest.
⇨ At the wildflower meadow we enjoyed a game of of Pass-the-Poop-Parcel - an innovative new game of waste-free interspecies gastronomy.
⇨ 'Songs' from the Multispecies Choir set the scene for lament, protest and celebration.
⇨ Events took place alongside the presentation of the draft Treaty for discussion by all the human and more-than-human people of the park.
⇨ Check out photos of our festival-goers and watch Tracy Kiryango’s film The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park 2023, celebrating the cultures and talents of all Finsbury Park’s species.
Part 3. 2023-25 – The Treaty of Finsbury Park
The Treaty has been generated through on-going research and creative projects, produced by Furtherfield, collaborators and partners, and has built on the above, as well as all our other local projects.
From October 2024 scannable hoardings wrap Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park and everyone - human or otherwise - is invited to attend, scan, and view Festival highlights. Tune into all flora and fauna, using the magical Finsbury Park Sentience Dial app. Scan the park and meet up to 7 local park species representatives, before pledging action to best serve the bountiful biodiversity of the park.
In 2025 the Final Treaty will be ratified (by all beings, not just the rats!) and celebrated, showcasing thousands of pledges made by local people to support biodiverse rights for all. Like the park itself, it will grow and flourish down the multi-species generations.
What Is A Live Action Role-Play?
The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 has developed through public participation in a series of Live Action Role-Play or LARP events. LARPs are games of collective make-believe, where participants play characters, who interact to pursue goals within a fictional setting.
We create a new reality by exploring our characters' lives together - our experiences, memories, needs.
There are 2 rules in this kind of game:
1. We act as we imagine our characters would and stay in character at all times.
2. We are kind, generous and supportive of each other (as players), as we create a new world together.
Play can be intense, funny, fascinating and sometimes a bit awkward. Characters can disagree with each other, but they don't question the reality of the character's existence. Sometimes the characters in our fictional worlds are delightful, sometimes unpleasant (as in the actual world). Unpleasant things may happen to them or between them. If any player becomes uncomfortable for any reason, they can take a break by stepping out. They are also free to leave, if they decide that it is not for them. Game hosts are always there to support players.
Concept and Support
The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is a major project led by Furtherfield, exploring new ways to build empathy pathways to non-human lifeforms through play.
It represents a major undertaking to do long-term work exploring how an arts organisation based in the heart of an urban green space can support a deeper understanding of that green space and ALL its inhabitants.
Beginning in 2020 and spanning 5 years, the work was originally developed in collaboration with The New Design Congress. The first 3 years were supported by CreaTures (Creative Practices for Transformational Futures). It has since grown with the expert and imaginative input of hundreds of participants, and with support and funds from Arts Council England and Haringey Council.
The CreaTures project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.