Residue Dolls

Residue Dolls has been created by artists Paul Evans, Patrick Amber and Jon Harrison in collaboration with Professor Tony Ryan and researchers from the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures. This three part animated film, featuring puppetry co-created from everyday consumer packaging materials, aims to gently engage and inform about the chemistry and ‘life cycles’ of throwaway materials, e.g. food packaging and consumer goods.

Characters include The Modern Crisp Packets (starring environmentalist and national treasure ‘Chris Packet’), Molly the Milk Bottle, and the Zaatari Mattresses.

The three chapters aim to draw attention to innovative examples of materials reuse developed through collaboration between The University of Sheffield and various partners, alongside the fantastic Crisp Packet Project in Hastings.

Chapter three, in particular, highlights contrasts between wasteful approaches to materials in the UK and Northern England and the innovative and ingenious approaches to reuse developed in the University of Sheffield Desert Garden Project, Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan. Here materials from old mattresses to yoghurt pots have been reused and repurposed, creating viable hydroponic greenhouses.

Residue Dolls poses questions about what we can learn from different cultures and practical, engaged models of sustainable consumerism.

Footage from The University of Sheffield Desert Garden Project courtesy of Sort Of...Films