This research examines how changing infrastructures of space, energy and work are reshaping creative practice. Across the creative industries, rehearsal and artistic development are increasingly displaced from purpose-built studios and professional workspaces into homes, borrowed rooms and other improvised environments. The project explores a Scandinavian example: creative practitioners using rural cabins, ranging from off-grid retreats to grid-connected second homes, as places to rehearse, compose and develop work.
Through comparative ethnographic fieldwork across Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the research asks what happens when creative labour moves into spaces never designed for it. Heat, light, energy systems, architecture, remoteness and domestic routines are treated as conditions that shape the pace and possibilities of creative work. Bringing infrastructure and energy anthropology into conversation with creative labour, the project uses ethnography, screenplay, environmental sound and Laban Movement Analysis to examine how these conditions are experienced through bodies, atmospheres and creative decisions.
