Overview

This exegesis explores the research question:

How can regenerative creative practice be explored and illustrated through lived experience?

The inquiry is situated within the development of the Floating Stories Lab (FSL), a community-based initiative centred around the design and construction of a 12-metre Polynesian-inspired wooden catamaran intended to function as a platform for storytelling, citizen science, education, and cultural exchange. While the broader vision for Floating Stories Lab emerged over several years through experiences working across documentary production, conservation storytelling, ocean advocacy and community engagement, the focus of this research is the lived experience of building the vessel during the Capstone period between January and July 2026.

Regeneration has increasingly emerged as a response to the limitations of sustainability discourse, shifting attention from minimising harm toward the active restoration and strengthening of social, ecological and cultural systems (Gorissen, 2020). Rather than viewing regeneration as a fixed methodology or design outcome, this research approaches it as an evolving practice of participation within living systems. Such perspectives align with regenerative design thinkers who argue that human activities should contribute positively to the vitality, resilience and adaptive capacity of the systems in which they are embedded (Mang & Haggard, 2016). This shift from reductionist approaches toward relational and systems-oriented thinking provides the conceptual foundation for the inquiry.

The origins of the project predate the research period. Through a career spanning documentary filmmaking, post-production, immersive media and environmental storytelling, I became increasingly aware of tensions between the narratives being communicated and the processes through which those narratives were often produced. Questions emerged around mobility, extraction, representation, participation and reciprocity. How might storytelling occur differently if it unfolded through longer-term relationships rather than brief encounters? How might creative practice become more participatory, situated and accountable to the places and communities in which it occurs?

These questions contributed to the development of the Floating Stories Lab: an initiative conceived as a platform for exploring alternative approaches to storytelling, citizen science and community engagement through slow travel and lived experience. Subsequent investigations into the environmental impacts of end-of-life fiberglass vessels further expanded the inquiry toward questions of materiality, stewardship and regenerative design. This process eventually led to the discovery of Wharram catamarans and the decision to hand-build a vessel rather than purchase a conventional production yacht.

Importantly, this exegesis is not a study of boatbuilding for its own sake. Nor is it an attempt to present the vessel as a model of sustainability. The construction of the Floating Stories Lab vessel functions instead as a site of inquiry through which regenerative creative practice can be explored. The boat serves as both artefact and process; a material project through which relationships, decisions, tensions, failures, adaptations and forms of knowledge become visible.

This positioning draws upon traditions of Creative Practice Research that recognise making as a legitimate mode of knowledge generation (Barrett & Bolt, 2010; Leavy, 2020). Rather than separating theory from practice, practice-led research acknowledges that insights often emerge through engagement, experimentation and reflection. Knowledge is not only applied through creative work but can be generated through the act of making itself. Within this project, the vessel build became a living laboratory through which questions of regeneration could be explored in real time.

The primary research period coincided with significant stages of the vessel's construction in Brittany, France. During this time, the project brought together volunteers, craftspeople, family members, designers, researchers and community participants. Decisions regarding materials, methods, design adaptations, resource allocation, knowledge sharing and collective labour became opportunities for observation and reflection. Rather than focusing exclusively on the technical outcomes of construction, the research attends to the relationships and learning processes that emerged through participation in the build.

Documentation forms a significant component of the inquiry. Reflective journal entries, field notes, photographs, video documentation, blog essays, public presentations and digital storytelling outputs were produced throughout the research period. These materials serve both as creative outputs and as forms of reflective evidence, capturing the evolving nature of the practice as it unfolded. In this sense, documentation was not separate from the research process but an integral component of it, supporting ongoing reflection and meaning-making.

The project is also informed by relational perspectives that challenge dominant assumptions regarding human separation from ecological systems. Indigenous scholars and regenerative thinkers have increasingly emphasised the importance of reciprocity, kinship, responsibility and participation within broader networks of life (Yunkaporta, 2019; Tynan, 2021). While this research does not seek to appropriate Indigenous knowledge systems, these perspectives have contributed to a reconsideration of creativity as a relational process rather than an individual act of production. Such ideas became increasingly relevant throughout the build, particularly as questions of material sourcing, stewardship, collective labour and knowledge transmission emerged through practice.

A significant outcome of the research is the emergence of the ‘Living Framework’. Initially conceived as a conceptual lens for understanding regenerative practice, the framework continually evolves through direct engagement with the realities of collaborative boatbuilding. Rather than being imposed upon the practice, it is emerging from it. Interactions with volunteers, mentors, materials, design constraints, environmental conditions and community relationships continually reshape the framework throughout the research period. The Living Framework therefore represents not a fixed model but an evolving attempt to understand regeneration as a lived and relational practice.

This exegesis positions the build process as an exploration of regeneration through lived experience. Rather than seeking definitive answers or universal solutions, the research examines what becomes visible when creative practice is understood as participation within interconnected social, material and ecological systems. The vessel itself remains unfinished at the conclusion of the research period. This incompleteness is significant. It reflects the central premise of the inquiry: that regeneration is not a destination or final state, but an ongoing process of learning, adaptation, relationship-building and becoming.

The sections that follow explore the conceptual foundations of the research, the lived experience of constructing the Floating Stories Lab vessel, the emergence of the Living Framework, and the insights generated through participation in an ongoing regenerative creative practice.