Research Drift: CHANGING TIDES (OPEN CALL BELOW)

In collaboration with C.R.A.F.T. / qʷicčiƛma (the sky opened up) is how we translate this concept to nuučaańuł.

C.R.A.F.T./qʷicčiƛma is located on Ahswinnis Reserve, Port Alberni, Canada, and explores and fosters contemporary arts practice with people of all stripes. C.R.A.F.T. is an indigenous-led organisation build by Rodney Sayers and Emily Luce with a locally-oriented printmaking studio, an outdoor garden/stage/gathering area, and a digital space with unlimited potential. www.nuniiqa.craftpeople.ca

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This March 28, C.R.A.F.T. and U.F.Ɵ arrive at the same shoreline, inviting a diverse group of perspectives from near and far away to meet in place and going aboard the MV Frances Barkley in Port Alberni, following the Alberni Inlet to Bamfield on Vancouver Island.

Tracing the hidden currents of watersheds, rivers, inlets, and the communities they sustain, human and more-than-human, this drift engages the realities of changing ecological, social, and political tides. Watersheds are not only interconnected bodies of water but living network systems: adaptive, relational, and interdependent. They offer models for how resilience is built through connection, diversity, and continuous exchange.

In a time of accelerating fragmentation, this gathering responds to the urgency of building resilient networks rooted in stewardship, reciprocity, and place-based knowledge. C.R.A.F.T. × U.F.Ɵ. collaborate as a connective platform to form new relational capacities and infrastructures that can hold complexity and change.

Situated aboard the MV Frances Barkley, traveling between Port Alberni and Bamfield, the Pacific saltwater and mountain watershed flows converge in the Alberni Inlet, a tidal meeting place whose history continues to shape the local communities. Practitioners move with these flows, exploring new roles, interventions, local wisdom and perspectives that speak to resilience. The vessel becomes both carrier and connector: linking tidal communities, species, stories, and practices. We reflect on how we shape and are shaped by the systems we inhabit, and how intentional collaboration can generate living networks that can sustain itself. This drift is designed to produce action, connectivity, practical tools, insights or collaborative interventions that participants carry into their own communities after our journey.

CHANGING TIDES is a call to come together across disciplines, environments, and perspectives to co-learn, co-build, and co-activate. Along the Alberni Inlet we gather insight while we join the ship’s daily cargo routes and observe how it supports local systems. As we move with the river toward its ocean outlet, we bring our practices, and communities into shared confluence, not only to witness changing tides, but to change tides.

Our drift participants have no fixed geographic root. They are a migrating network that brings together people from near and far to learn from place, species, and communities, while connecting different practices and ways of life.

CHANGING TIDES is both a method and a collective response and forms a letter of resilience where we gather: a call to relate, a call to action, and a call to confluence, building resilient, interdependent networks among plants, animals, microorganisms, and humans, and the systems that sustain them.

We have selected a group of participants from near and far but also like to welcome new faces, perspectives and practice.

We have 1 open call available (alongside 10 invited speakers) that we like to give away to someone who wants to contribute to this call and practice.

We cover the Drift costs ( MV Frances Barkley / studio gathering ).

Please send an email or message to info@unidentifiedfacility.org or reach out to us on Instagram, or C.R.A.F.T.

Apply by 12 March 2026

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We invite you to join us as a participant in CHANGING TIDES, a day-long drift taking place on Saturday, March 28, departing from Port Alberni, Vancouver Island.

We will meet 28 March at 7:30 AM aboard the MV Frances Barkley and return to Port Alberni at approximately 5:00 PM. Our route follows the inlet with stops at Kildonan Post, Haggard Cove, and Bamfield, before turning back and moving in a slow, steady rhythm toward the harbor. For this journey, the MV Frances Barkley becomes our sharing space, and place to learn, engage, and be in place together.

On the way to Bamfield, each participant is invited to contribute a maximum-10-minute contribution in response to the theme CHANGING TIDES. Your contribution should engage, educate, or inform the group in new ways of seeing. This can take many forms: a story, presentation, poem, scientific or artistic perspective, or an activity you ask the group to do.

Your contribution can be simple, informal, or experimental, and may come from your own practice, experience, or way of understanding the world. You might share a question, a method, a small exercise, a reading, a gesture, an object, a sound, or a short guided activity. Contributions may be artistic, scientific, cultural, personal, or practice-based. We value different ways of knowing and communicating, spoken, visual, embodied, relational, and practical.

We will document all contributions and while aboard, we will work collectively to co-create a letter of resilience with shared material, drawing from dialogue, inquiry, and group process forming a call to action and equipping our practices with diverse relational tools.

On the way to Bamfield, everyone will share their contributions; on the return journey, there will be time to reflect, produce, and gather. Throughout the day, there will be space to observe, move around the boat, engage with its journey and take in the coastal communities. Upon our return, we will develop visuals and written pieces that capture key messages and support the creation of new ways forward.

These drifts are playful and intentional spaces where we create an equal, safe, and experimental zone to learn from one another, build connections, and develop shared practice.

Although CHANGING TIDES takes place on Saturday, we recognize that some of you will be traveling or staying overnight. We are therefore extending the drift across the days:

Friday, March 27, 6–8 PM
Collective welcome, introductions and shared meal / firepit at C.R.A.F.T. studio in Port Alberni

Saturday, March 28 (7:30am start)
Gathering early at the harbor for a full-day drift. After our arrival back at 4:00 PM, we return to C.R.A.F.T. studio for relaxed evening, conversation, food, and optional further production.

Sunday, March 29
The drift has ended, but those who are around are welcome to gather for a walk and coffee.

C.R.A.F.T. and U.F.Ɵ. are covering the boat fare as well as food at the studio. Light food and drinks will be available for your own purchase on the boat gallery menu.

We hope you will join us for this shared experience and meeting and learning from each other.

Boat journey and more information on the vessel MV Frances Barkley https://ladyrosemarine.com/