When Naomi Wright joined Regen as its first Art and Energy intern, she found herself standing at the edge of something new: a collaboration that blurred boundaries between art, community, and the energy transition.
Naomi had already spent much of her career bridging worlds — from nature connection to inclusion and policy work — but, as she put it, “I’ve always found myself straddling two identities: not fully an artist, not fully a scientist. At Regen I was allowed to be both.”
Naomi’s internship coincided with Relight My Fire, a four-day festival in Exeter in September 2015. Hosted by Regen alongside the Transition Network International Conference, the festival transformed city streets, parks, and heritage buildings into a canvas for energy stories. Its theme, From Industrial Revolution to Energy Devolution, invited audiences to explore Exeter’s energy past and imagine possible futures through performance, installations, storytelling walks, and workshops.
For her part, Naomi designed an energy walk through Exeter, inviting participants to notice energy in unexpected places.
“I wanted people to feel energy not just as a bill or a power station,” she explained. “It’s in the wires above us, the ghosts of coal chimneys, even in the simple act of walking together.”
The responses were powerful. “A group of engineers told me they’d never looked at their streets like that before,” Naomi recalled. “And I remember pedal-power cyclists and poets starting to see their creativity as connected to energy choices — whether it was who supplies their power or how they generate it for a gig.”
Naomi came to see Relight My Fire as proof of something essential: that unlikely pairings create sparks. “Arts and energy projects put a lens on the world that’s rarely viewed,” she said. “They cast a different light, raising people’s heads and helping them imagine.”
For her, the festival wasn’t about scale but about ripple effects: “You don’t need thousands of people. What matters are those little prods that make someone see differently, the seeds of curiosity that grow into action later.”
The experience shaped Naomi’s future path. “That festival clarified what I wanted to do next,” she reflected. It gave her confidence to develop mass-participation projects and playful solar artworks, and confirmed that creativity could help people connect to climate action with joy rather than despair.
She also noted the fragility of this kind of work inside larger organisations. “Arts and energy can feel like the tiny percent of an organisation, but it matters,” she said. “It holds the space for imagination, and imagination is what keeps people moving.”
Looking back, Naomi identified three conditions that make arts and energy collaborations effective:
Relight My Fire was just four days in Exeter, but its influence has rippled outward. For Naomi, it was a personal turning point: “It made me realise creativity is more than decoration — it’s oxygen. It allows us to see futures worth striving for.”
And for Regen, it demonstrated how art and energy, when combined, can make the invisible tangible and the overwhelming hopeful
“I’ve always found myself straddling two identities: not fully an artist, not fully a scientist. At Regen I was allowed to be both.”
“I wanted people to feel energy not just as a bill or a power station — but in the wires above us, the ghosts of chimneys, even in walking together.”
“Arts and energy projects put a lens on the world that’s rarely viewed. They cast a different light, raising people’s heads and helping them imagine.”
“Arts and energy can feel like the tiny percent of an organisation, but it matters. It holds the space for imagination — and imagination is what keeps people moving.”
“Creativity is more than decoration — it’s oxygen. It allows us to see futures worth striving for.”
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