Thu 10th July - Sun 21st September 2025
Experience a new digital artwork for Stockport by internationally renowned artist Di Mainstone, created in collaboration with Stockport residents
Emotional Biodiversity is a breathtaking digital artwork by internationally renowned artist and filmmaker Di Mainstone, produced by FutureEverything as part of the Stockport Creative Campus Programme. Launching on July 10th 2025 at Stockroom, Stockport’s innovative new creative space, this immersive exhibition explores the emotional impact of biodiversity loss through art, technology, and community co-creation.
Di Mainstone is a celebrated artist & filmmaker whose work has previously been exhibited at major cultural institutions and events worldwide. She has produced interactive installations that encourage audience participation and often addresses critical themes such as climate change, biodiversity, and forgotten women’s histories. In Emotional Biodiversity, Di brings her signature blend of empathy and technological ingenuity to Stockport, challenging audiences to reflect on the environment, the places we inhabit, and our role in shaping a more sustainable future.
Developed with Stockport residents and an interdisciplinary creative team from the Greater Manchester area, the artwork is set in a speculative future where Stockport has been abandoned due to flooding. It follows a fictional character ‘The Last,’ a lone wanderer searching for sacred bulbs that hold the lost voices of the town’s past inhabitants.
The screen-based artwork features a sequence of 3D scanned, decorated bulbs and roots, organic forms that have been transformed into otherworldly digital designs. Each bulb and root symbolises each participant’s connection to Stockport and their personal link to the community and environment. Paired with a powerful audio installation featuring personal stories of connection, loss, and resilience.
“The artwork depicts a speculative vision of Stockport set in the future, in which the town has been evacuated, due to the effects of flooding from the nearby River Mersey. Only one person remains, ‘The Last’, a nomadic wanderer whose beliefs place the highest value on nature. On her back, she carries an array of mystical listening devices that she has crafted using manufactured artefacts of the old-world; lamps, metal-detectors and plumbing tubes – combined with the natural materials like moss, lichen, earth, and berries. Using her homemade instruments ‘The Last’ hunts for sacred bulbs that hold the lost voices of Stockport’s past inhabitants.”
Audiences are invited to experience the unveiling of Emotional Biodiversity, which will debut at Stockroom on July 1oth 2025.
Emotional Biodiversity was co-created in collaboration with Stockport residents and realised with an interdisciplinary creative team from the Greater Manchester area including visual artist Nicholas Delap, composition and sound design duo Mandy Wigby and Howard Jacob (Architects of Rosslyn), and filmmakers Mark Elliot and Simon Stec.
Emotional Biodiversity is produced by FutureEverything as part of the Stockport Creative Campus programme. Commissioned by Stockport Council and Greater Manchester Arts (GM Arts), funded primarily by DCMS via Arts Council England’s Cultural Development Fund (CDF), GMCA Spirit, and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).
