Then Try This

Where to find us that isn't here 💚 🌟 Mastodon is fab hooray just love it. 🌟 If you want to use bluesky then learn how to bridge (https://fed.brid.gy/) and then you can follow and interact with our mastodon account (and all others) from bluesky. 🌟 We have a mailing list. 🌟 We use actual email too. 🌟 Our website's set up for RSS. All the links are in the bio because this place is designed to keep you scrolling by not allowing you to include clickable external links that might take people's attention elsewhere... Hope to see you there! (btw That's Aaron Swartz at the end, try watching 'The Internet's Own Boy' if you don't know who he is 💚) #ThenTryThis

A couple of weeks back we took the Organised Atoms project to Falmouth uni, set up a small mining operation, and made a load of noise! See link in bio for blog post with more info on this workshop...

We're so happy to announce that Jasmine Saunders will be joining us for a Cocoon Residency! Later this year Jasmine will be in residence @then_try_this as part of Dr Ben Longdon's @uk_mvp project (which is hosted @uni_exe_cec ), funded by @nercscience , with additional project partners @rfox_butterfliesmoths @savebutterflies Jasmine is a ceramicist and Natural Science student who loves supporting people in learning through tactile creativity. Inspired by the theme of interconnection between genetics, moth species and their viruses, this project will be a community collaboration with people from our own ecosystem at Potager and beyond. Together, we will get our hands stuck in carving and moulding clay to each make small moth sculptures. Using plant imprint textures, colour and metal wire links, the individual moths will come together into one big mosaic-like arrangement - all informed by Dr Longdon’s research into genetic relatedness.

We're so happy to announce that Melanie Hyo-In Han will be joining us for a Cocoon residency! Later this year @melhan will be in residence @then_try_this as part of Dr Ben Longdon's @uk_mvp project (which is hosted @uni_exe_cec ), funded by @nercscience , with additional project partners @rfox_butterfliesmoths @savebutterflies Born in Korea and raised in East Africa, Melanie Hyo-In Han recently moved from the US to the UK. She is the author of Passing Notes in Secret, Abecedarian: Banff, Canada, My Dear Yeast, and Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips, as well as the translator of several collections of Spanish poetry. During the Cocoon Residency, she'll be working on a poetry pamphlet about moths and the viruses that affect them. In Korean culture, moths have long been associated with spirits and memory; drawing on these symbolisms, as well as her own experiences with migration, Melanie will be exploring fragility and generational memory through fragmented lyric and visual poetry. She will also be hosting eco-poetry workshops for local participants, focusing on the ecological significance of moths.

We're so happy to announce that Charlotte Evans will be joining us for a Cocoon Residency! Later this year Charlotte will be in residence @then_try_this as part of Dr Ben Longdon's @uk_mvp project (which is hosted @uni_exe_cec ), funded by @nercscience , with additional project partners @rfox_butterfliesmoths @savebutterflies Charlotte is a Creative Designer from Cornwall. She established her creative design studio @theoldbrickstudio in 2020. Whilst still working under this studio which specialises in event and brand illustrations, her painting background has led her to look for ways to re-introduce a more hand led practice into her career path. Interested (obsessed) with all things nature, bugs and wildlife ever since she was little, Charlotte has always seen the importance and had a love for all beings, no matter how small. And after losing her dad 4 years ago to Motor Neurone Disease she’s done a lot of thinking over the past few years on freedom, movement and illness. Charlotte looks to draw a comparison between humans and moths with the aim to educate people further on the impact of viruses and disease through her art. Excited to return to creating in a more tactile way through painting, drawing and community. This residency feels like the perfect environment to inform and develop her practice.

We’re happy to open our call for local (to Sheffield) live coders to take part in a low-intensity residency! It’ll happen over a weekend per month from May ‘til August, finishing with a public event early September. If you’re unsure whether you’ll fit in, or feel like an ‘imposter’, you are especially encouraged to apply! The deadline for applications is 6th April. More info in the link in our bio.

An essay on illustrating complex information, from graphs to graphic novels (via data visualisation, data illustration, and explorable explanations). Including a set of prints designed for the text, made from old tetrapak oat milk cartons, scratched, torn and cut then run through a huge cast iron press. Find it through the link in bio (when will Instagram sort this out?? Never, because they don't want people clicking out to other sites unless it's to follow an ad to buy something we don't need... mini rant over)

“On being formal: Communal informatics, khipu technologies, extractivism, and debt.” A workshop with Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Alex McLean, Dave Griffiths, Julian Rohrhuber. When speaking of “formalisms”, we mostly think of formulas written in a symbolic text. When speaking of “the necessary formalities”, however, we know that we may not only write, but also act formally. Formalisation has been practiced in many different media, and many cultural contexts, in the form of specific patterns. They seem to always come into play at particular occasions, where they fulfil some sort of “function of formality”. In ritual, buerocracy, politeness, in transmission and translation, in prediction and calculation, in recording ownership, obligations and debt. Considering technologies like the Andean Khipu and accounting politics in Cornish mines let us get involved in the particularity of form and learn how to think in its matter. This exchange may help understand new facets of what it means to “be formal” and question premises of textual formalisation, reappropriating it for nonhegemonic purposes. Workshop of the Epistemic Media Research Group, Institute for Music and Media Düsseldorf, 31 January 2026. Institute for Music and Media /

There's still time to apply 💫 These residencies are open to anyone, themed on moths and their viruses, working with us and Dr. Ben Longdon at the University of Exeter. We've tried to make it as flexible and easy to apply to as possible, and as well funded as we can manage. You get up to £2300 for up to 4 weeks, which can be done in one chunk or split up, in person at our studio in Cornwall, remote or hybrid, apply on your own or as a group. The details are linked in the bio, and there you'll also find residents we've funded before which might help. Recent folks from the last two residency calls include @hat.tea , @tiffleek , @ethicalunicorn , @geraldinejonesbaskets and @anu1905 💚

⭐ Cocoon Residences - Open Call ⭐ We have funded residencies for autumn, themed on moths and their viruses. Open to all, and you can interpret this slightly unusual theme however you like! These are based at our studio @potager_garden in Cornwall, with our support, and working with our long-term collaborator Dr. Ben Longdon from @uniexecornwall All the info you need is on our website, and linked in our bio. We have tried to make the application process as light touch as possible, and the residencies as flexible and well funded as we can, but if you spot any room for improvement just let us know and we will see what we can do. The project is funded by @nercscience Pics are riso prints by @drawings_about_things

See link in bio - all proceeds will go to @panzifoundation - a charity in the Democratic Republic of Congo who support victims of sexual violence, a deliberate tactic used by armed groups to control mineral-rich regions. The DRC provides the world with 70% of its coltan (columbite and tantalum), needed for the production of the mobile phones and laptops we use. These locations are the inheritors of a legacy that started with the human exploitation and environmental destruction of now largely forgotten areas of Cornwall, which with care are slowly regenerating 175 years later. Video is of chalcopyrite (copper ore) crystals with an unknown blue mineral coating them, either bornite or covelline. Found at Ale and Cakes mine, Gwennap, #Cornwall

Introducing the new Organised Atoms mural by @_urbanfay 💫 We commissioned this as part of the @organised_atoms_cornwall project, funded by @roysocchem and in colab with @jollygoodh . It is at the site we've run all our recent workshops with families, finding and identifying crystals and using them as semiconductors in electronic circuits to make strange sounds with. Basically giving tiny kids huge rock hammers and making loud noises with what they dig up. This site used to be a working mine (called the Ale and Cakes mine!) and is now the iconic cultural institution @uniteddownsraceway . The project is about grounding technology in the earth, as all our computers are made from these same crystals. The mural artist Natasha has brought to life the miners and bal maidens (women who broke up the rocks at the surface) who worked here back in the day, with nods to the origins of our crystals and minerals in the stars. We absolutely love it and hope people enjoy it for years to come ⛏️✨