A growing community inspired by nature and sprouting from Phnom Penh. We are a collective of doers, dreamers, and neighbours aligned with the global Solarpunk movement. Guided by active hope, we focus on building a regenerative society where community resilience and environmental health thrive together. In our vision, the “Solar” represents a commitment to conscious, ethical clean energy—and also envisioning optimist futures. The “Punk” signals our deeply grassroots, bottom-up approach, focused on community, DIY approaches and collective care.
We started in 2025 with an art residency and exhibition, opening up new channels for locally rooted co-explorations led by a thriving group of artists, social entrepreneurs, volunteers and creative change-makers, collaboratng and organizing events that explore ideas of co-creation and re-imagining possibilities.
Some of the current projects are art+design co-ompetitions, wetlands advocacy and tours on potential sites for implementing a pilot sponge park and an urban pocket forest following the Miyawaki method, organizing deep time walks (and exploring versions for children and a traditional Cambodian theatre performace inspired by our planet), a reading group focused on commoning, finding a space for a library of things, repair cafe and learning-by-doing workshops/skill sharing sessions (e.g. collective building of a bamboo installation), circular serviceware explorations, clean energy advocacy, river based study trips with imagination sessions, and walking+participatory mapping and design research focused on local neighborhoods.
Our 2026 art program includes artist pairing for co-creation sessions, an art residency and exhibition as part of Clean Energy Week, and we collaborate with HBF foundation, EnergyLab Asia, Seapunk Studios, Sambor Village, Microgalleries, and various local social businesses and eco-projects such as Leng Dei, Maloop garden, or F3 – Friends Futures Factory. Samples of work:
Some more previous artworks produced by Solarpunk artists can be found here. Example of exhibitions we organized, such as CEW in F3, 2025:
More pictures of season 1 here. For season 2 we focused on co-learning experiences and have been interested in skill-sharing events, for instance on Sociocracy and implementing in our decision-making process, or the collective making of a bamboo installation inspired by Bunong Indigenous architecture, facilitated by Elettra and Stephania:
More photos of the learning-by-doing process, by Marion Girard, can be found here. Exhibition and community gathering in Maloop garden, 2026, including live painting on donated decommisioned solar panels, improvisational concert of Cambodian traditional instruments with electronics inspired by Metamorphosis, discussions on projects emerging from the community, etc:
More pictures of the exhibition and community gathering in Maloop garden here. Other events the Solarpunk community has been doing are Deep Time Walks with Di Kilsby, curated journeys with explanation on the evolution of our planet, and neighborhood walks to facilitate participatory mapping in Leng Dei food garden and eco-literacy project, Boeung Tompun:
More pictures from the walk+codesign and participatory mapping here. Our approach is rooted in place, and in deep relation with Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems. We organize a yearly art residency in Kampong Thom province in collaboration with Sambor Village and the local Kui community:
More photos from the first Solarpunk art residency in Cambodia can be seen here.
Various members from the Solarpunk community have been including in their previous work various practices that fit our motto and values, now integrating in the ecosystem of community projects sprouting in Phnom Penh. Examples are collective food gardening, second-hand markets and swaps, skillsharing sessions or the establishment of ‘repair cafe’ events by Irina Chakraborty:
