Pastoral Pollination Part 2 Project 2025 Xiaobin James Fan Royal College of Art | UK Pastoral Pollination, a short animated film, explores the phenomena of assisted ecology through a speculative societal and infrastructural response to the near-total collapse of insect pollinators. Set in 2038, four years after a fictional climate event renders all but three of the world’s 20,000 bee species functionally extinct, the project follows the emergence of a new ecological labour force, The Pollen Corps, and a systemic shift towards assisted ecology.Positioned between dystopia and proposition, the film interrogates the roles of institution, science, labour and design in adapting to ecological collapse. Drawing from real-world precedents, including hand- pollination in Sichuan and emerging artificial pollination technologies, the project proposes a national mobilisation of human pollinators. Research in the Sussex South Downs informs an in-world guidebook and architectural typologies for ecological intervention.The filmic narrative unfolds across grounded yet speculative spaces: research centres, field outposts, pollen banks, and public awareness infrastructure. These are supported by diegetic artefacts such as passive pollination uniforms and tools inspired by bee physiology. Using world- building, visual storytelling and symbolic design, Pastoral Pollination questions how society might reallocate labour and infrastructure in a post-wild world, where care, control, and collapse co-exist. Tutor(s)