Hope: Lost & Found | A Community Experiment and Archive of What Persists
When people say "I've lost all hope," they are naming something real. Yet, everyday language mistakenly frames hope as a binary light switch—something external that we either have or eludes us entirely. During my three-week Maker-in-Residence with Compassion Revolution in Tarntanya-Adelaide, I launched Hope: Lost & Found to map where hope lives in a community amid uncertainty and overwhelm.
Part archive, part public installation, and part community experiment, this project gathered 78 comprehensive field notes to track hope stories. I set up analog hope collection pop-ups across the city—including the Adelaide Central Markets, the Botanical Gardens, and the South Australian Department of Health and Wellness- and created intake forms that were officially stamped, cataloged, and receipted.
Outcomes:
The Nuance Insight: The ultimate breakthrough of the project was proving that not a single human hope story is strictly binary. Hope is layered, non-linear, and deeply alive; despair can turn to renewed hope the moment a community takes small, collective actions together.
Mapping Hope Infrastructure: The archive mapped out the invisible, structural systems that foster hope across Adelaide—from physical places like public libraries acting as the "original hope dealers," to community-tended biodiversity spaces like Native Bee Hotels, to trust-based economies like neighborhood plant sales. The project created a blueprint showing that hope thrives when we prioritize deep connection and belonging over structures and monuments.
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