Monthly Archives: March 2019

Ben’s Strategy blog: How we bring about change – Individuals, Organisations and Structures

Creative Carbon Scotland

‘Brave!’ That’s what a fellow theatre director said to me when I quit directing to work on setting up Creative Carbon Scotland. I have an idea they really meant ‘Stupid!’. Whether they’ve changed their mind I don’t know, but Creative Carbon Scotland is eight years old and the climate crisis is now on the agenda of the Scottish cultural sector in a way that it simply wasn’t when I started.

That responding to the climate crisis is now part of cultural organisations’ work and practitioners’ thinking isn’t just down to us, of course: society is much more aware of it overall and regulations, news stories and campaigns all make it part of the general discourse. It’s sometimes tricky to know whether our work has had much impact at all, and this is something we’re determined to get better at understanding with some work this month on how we go about doing so.

One area where we can be confident though is in our work with various strategic organisations where at least some of our work has paid off. Most obvious is the work with Creative Scotland – the main body distributing Scottish Government and National Lottery funds to the arts, screen and creative industries. Creative Scotland was interested from the start but climate change wasn’t top of their agenda – we needed to demonstrate that there was also interest within the sector. Even then it took some time for crucial elements to get started.

Creative Scotland had been discussing with us the idea of introducing carbon reporting for some organisations from 2012 or 2013, but it wasn’t until 2014 that they finally announced that Regular Funded Organisations (those arts organisations receiving funding for a three-year period) would need to start measuring and reporting their carbon emissions from 2015/16 onwards. The success of this meant that the always-planned next step – a formal way of planning to reduce carbon emissions rather than just measure them – was easy to introduce, and Carbon Management Planning began in 2018. That gives some idea of how long these things can take.

Creative Scotland is now taking big steps forward

But constant discussion and working closely with the staff there now means that Creative Scotland are thinking about how climate action can be integrated into the processes for other funding streams. This is a big step forward. In the autumn of 2018 I delivered training for most of the Lead Officers that have direct responsibility for the relationships with Regular Funded Organisations. In the past this sort of work has been more ad hoc: some years ago I provided some training for organisations which had received capital funding, but not directly for the staff involved. Next year we hope staff and funding recipients will start having training workshops together to share and develop their joint knowledge.

We are in discussion with Creative Scotland’s new film unit Screen Scotland to talk about how it should act on climate change. The BAFTA schemes Albert and Albert+ are already used by many producers when planning productions and we have supported BAFTA in providing Albert training in Scotland for some years, and this is now becoming more formalised.

Festivals, theatre and more

More recently we’ve extended our work with other strategic organisations. We’ve always been members of and provided specific advice to the Edinburgh Festivals’ Environmental Sustainability Working Group – the experience from that and work with a pilot group of theatre, dance and music organisations which were members of the Federation of Scottish Theatre informed our training work from the beginning. We’ve now done workshops with staff from both the Federation of Scottish Theatre and Youth Theatre Arts Scotland exploring how they can mainstream work on climate change, building it into their other work.

iOS – no, not that one

Why write about this now? Partly it’s to explain what I think of as our ‘Individuals, Organisations, Structures’ approach to bringing about change. As I touched upon in my last blog, Creative Carbon Scotland grew up in parallel with the Scottish Government’s development of the ISM Model which is their tool for bringing about ‘behaviour change’. The ‘ISM’ stands for Individual, Social, Material, and the following, taken from the ISM tool website, explains it well (as you’d expect…) and the image at the top of the page helps:

​ISM brings together into a single figure the main factors from the three disciplines most concerned with understanding behaviour: behavioural economics, social psychology, and sociology. The factors are arranged into three contexts, symbolised by a head (the Individual) in a circle (the Social) in a square (the Material). Evidence from reviews of international behaviour change interventions suggests that lasting change requires action in all three contexts (Southerton et al, 2011).

The aim of the ISM tool is to move away from the focus on the individual and getting them to ‘change their behaviour’ and instead acknowledge the complex web of factors that lead to individuals acting in the ways that they do. Although I have some misgivings about it, rather than having any argument with the thinking behind it this is because I have found that in the demonstrations of it and reports I have heard of it being used, people still tend to end up focusing on the individual.

When Creative Carbon Scotland was developing, therefore, the ideas behind the ISM tool were in our minds. We realised that to bring about change in the cultural sector we needed in a parallel manner to bring about change in Individuals, Organisations and Structures. We needed to push on all three fronts at the same time, as the different levels act upon each other both upwards and downwards:

Diagram explaining Individual, Organisation and Structures interconnections and reliance on each other to create change.

Our work with Individuals includes the Green Tease and the Green Arts Initiative. Our work with Organisations includes the Carbon Reporting and Carbon Management Planning work we do with Creative Scotland and it also includes the Green Arts Initiative, which is about the organisations as much as the individuals who work in them. In our Structures work – which is the work I’ve been writing about above – we try to bring about change in the ‘rules’, formal and informal, which govern and affect the way organisations and indeed the whole of the cultural sector works.

One reason therefore for working with our partner strategic organisations is to mainstream those areas of work so that we can concentrate on the next steps. By helping them to integrate into their core work ideas and processes that we have tested and know work, we can clear some of our own time to focus on more strategic actions that will take us all to the next level.

More ambition, more change, now

But the other reason for writing about this now is because, just as the public awareness of climate change has increased, so has the urgency of the situation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 1.5° Report last year, a recent paper suggesting that the oceans have been absorbing extra heat at the rate of 5 Hiroshima nuclear blasts per second, the fact that Scotland’s excellent progress on decarbonising the energy supply is masking our failure to reduce the harder areas like transport and agriculture: all these point to the need for more, faster action now. Those strategic organisations we already know, and others we want to engage with, need to get more ambitious in their climate action and we will help them do so.

top image: Image of ISM tool taken from https://www.ismtool.org/ A silhouette of a head inside a circle inside a square demonstrates the different domains of the Individual located within the social and the material

The post Ben’s Strategy blog: How we bring about change – Individuals, Organisations and Structures appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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Rising Waters

Artists and Climate Change

by Susan Israel 

During a period of professional transition, a random opportunity presented me with the chance to use public art to engage people on climate change – something I had wanted to do for several years. This first installation led to an ongoing project which, after five years of incremental growth, is about to jump scale and impact. As I look back, one take-away from this project is that one person with a vision and persistence can make a difference. Anyone who wants to have an impact, in any arena, should know that we are all change-makers. It takes heart, work, doggedness, supporters, and luck, but change does come from individual dedication combined with community. In fact, that is the only way that change happens – one action at a time. This is just one story out of many.

Rising Waters is a flood warning project where I put lines in the landscape with community participation to show where future flood levels will be. I began Rising Waters in 2013 as Rising Tides at HarborArts, an outdoor art venue in a shipyard and marina in East Boston, Massachusetts. After I was invited to participate in the group show Occupying the Present, curated by Elizabeth Michelman, I walked the site with no idea of what I would do. Having attended conferences about sea level rise, I kept wondering where the water would be in the future, and, as an architect, began imagining lines in the landscape marking future high tide lines. The rest was implementation. I painted a series of rising colored lines on the facing pier: six lines, one foot apart, to show that sea level rise is incremental, implying that we can stop at any point – if we have the will. I also created a message-in-a-bottle companion installation to spur people to think about their responses to sea level rise, and invited them to submit notes to the project which I posted on my website. 

Message-in-a-Bottle, HarborArts, East Boston, 2013

HarborArts led to Rising Waters installations in the Maverick MBTA subway station and Neighborhood Health Center in East Boston. Students from the East Boston Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH) teen workforce program and younger students in an after-school program helped me make the window art. The artwork went up as a pointer to a storm preparedness event for the community and then remained for a month.  When we installed the artwork, the subway station managers told us it would be vandalized the first night, but it remained untouched until we removed it. T riders were proud of it, commenting on how beautiful it was, and were shocked to see where the water would be.

Rising Waters, University of Massachussets MBTA subway station, Boston, 2015

Next, I installed Rising Waters in six MBTA subway stations in Boston and Cambridge. The artwork was made and installed with participation from students in several public school districts, students at Harvard College, and community members. The students, particularly at Revere High School and Boston Latin, were excited to be part of a larger project and worked many afternoons after school, making the artwork with great care. Many students said they didn’t know about sea level rise until this project. At the Kendall MBTA Station in Cambridge, a station worker read the description, gasped, and then ran off. Every day tens of thousands of commuters passed by the artwork, reaching several hundred thousand people in all.

In 2015, I installed Rising Waters at the Sustainable Brands Conference in San Diego as fish stickers and flags. Since I couldn’t install ahead on the site, I added more fish between every session, growing the installation throughout the conference – it took on an aspect of performance art. Reaching corporations was important to me, and the installation caught the attention of dozens of people who asked about it out of 2,000 people from industry who saw it.

Rising Waters, Paradise Island, San Diego, 2015

By the end of 2016 I had installed Rising Waters over sixteen times – including on riverbanks, fencing, storefronts, a ferry dock, a beach, around trees, and even flowerbeds, in Eastern Massachusetts and in San Diego, California. I experimented with the right medium and format for each site and audience, using fish prints, fish flags, handprinted stickers, and various materials in search of the right combination of permanence, removability, and low environmental impact. Although the plastic film I used was reclaimed from the waste stream, I ultimately abandoned it as too conflicted a message for oceans. Ultimately, I returned to my original concept of simple lines with an installation on the Guna Yala (San Blas) islands off the coast of Panama.

The Guna indigenous tribe, who occupy this archipelago of 350 islands, will be flooded off their coral atolls by 2030, and will join the ranks of climate refugees from around the world. Flying over the rainforest in a 6-seater to reach these remote islands, with a suitcase full of supplies, knowing that I had to make this work regardless of what I found, was exciting. I had entered a new phase, though I didn’t know where it would lead me. This installation of Rising Waters showed the impending cultural destruction of a tribe who will be forced to leave their island lifestyle behind, and relocate to the mountains. Photographs from this installation were exhibited at the United Nations for The Ocean Conference in 2017. Being part of a global community working hard to tell the story of sea level rise and climate change made me redouble my own efforts.

Rising Waters, Guna Yala, Panama, 2017

Over time, Rising Tides became Rising Waters to include fresh water flooding from rivers and rain, and appeared along the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Caribbean Sea, and soon, South China Sea. With supporters in Hong Kong, we are establishing a Rising WatersChapter as the first of many around the world. I recently returned from Hong Kong where I worked with students and teachers at three schools who are launching the project. Renaissance College Hong Kong wrapped posts in their school courtyard, and additional sites will install in March. In student workshops at GT College and Hong Kong International School, I introduced the project and students worked on designing their own companion art projects. Chapters will be encouraged to localize their installations with companion events, artwork, performances, and educational materials and we are expanding our on-line educational resources by collaborating with other NGOs.

Other groups will be using Rising Waters as collaborations with their own climate advocacy projects this spring and summer, and we are always looking for additional partners. What began from my personal desire to visualize climate change impacts has become a method to launch other people on their own art, climate, and action path, empowering people to act on climate across the globe.

(Top image: Rising Waters, Maverick MBTA subway station, East Boston, 2013.)

See also Susan Israel’s previous article: Using Art to Empower Climate Action

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After 20 years of practicing architecture, Susan Israel founded Climate Creatives to make environmental issues accessible to the public, empowering and inspiring people to take action. Previously, she was a Founder and Principal at studio2sustain, Energy Necklace Project, and Susan Israel Architects. She is a licensed Architect, a LEED AP, ArtWeek Advisor, and long-time member of the Harvard Alumni Association Board of Directors. Susan speaks at events nationally and internationally. She holds an A.B. from Harvard College, Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and attended the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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One Body, One World: The Arctic Reality

Artists and Climate Change

by Georgia Rose MurrayI am an artist and lecturer from Scotland, currently preparing to leave China, after running an International Postgraduate Art and Design Course at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute for a year.

I use the language of painting to explore the mystical reality of Northern landscapes. Given my interest in light and darkness, my research has led me to Iceland during a period of Polar Night, and to Svalbard to witness the Midnight Sun and a period of Twilight from the perspective of a Barquentine tall ship, sailing on the Arctic Ocean. My connection to the Arctic landscape is ongoing and the next stage of my research journey will involve witnessing the annual returning of light in the northernmost research community in the world, Ny Alesund.

Painting is essential in helping me decipher energies and in facilitating heightened states of awareness: symbiotically my conscious and subconscious selves gauge the magnitude of human existence within the universe. This forms the autobiographical baseline for my work.

Contributing to the language of painting via honest and visceral reactions to natural light and landscapes is fundamental to my research. Working amid the sacred Arctic landscape has inspired alchemical experiments involving grinding rocks to mix with non-chemical mediums to create ecologically sound pigments, which have been the elixir to significant paintings. Collaborating with Polar scientists during periods of Arctic research has also become central to my work and crucial to my awareness of geological and biological shifts within landscapes due to climate change.

The Antigua tall ship in bay with floating photograph of Chongqing City.

Most recently I spent three weeks sailing around the Svalbard Archipelago as a member of The Arctic Circle Autumn Residency. In late September 2018, I flew to Longyearbyen (Arctic Svalbard), after living in China for eight months and found the reality of transitioning between the two locations to be otherworldly.

Like many countries around the world, China – and more specifically, Chongqing, a growing city of 18 million people – provides an intense contrast to the Arctic landscape. Having felt the strength of both locations, my responsibility now is to share my first-hand experience of the Polar North with an audience who is geographically 4,000 miles away from the source.

Since returning to China in late October, I have been working in my studio to create ARCTIC CRACKING, a solo exhibition supported by The British Council and hosted by 501 Xu Space, which opened in Chongqing on the 12th of January. (Later in 2019, ARCTIC CRACKING will travel to additional venues in the UK. Check my website for details of the upcoming international tour.) The exhibition comprises a combination of paintings, photographs, films and sketchbooks, which were created both while physically immersed in the Arctic landscape and after returning to my Chinese studio.

ARCTIC CRACKING poster

ARCTIC CRACKING aims to transcend physical space and communicate the reality of the fragile North, highlighting our need to take responsibility for preserving not only the precious polar regions but the entire planet. Climate change is causing increasing atmospheric and ecological destruction, affecting many locations on both micro and macro levels.

The title of the exhibition refers to my experience of holistically cracking in the Arctic landscape and testing myself to the limit: Touching the edge of hypothermia with frozen, dysfunctional fingers, toes and a numbness which slowed both my physical and mental reactions. In order to completely feel the reality of the Arctic, I spent time walking through the snow and on top of glaciers with bare, exposed skin, and submerging my whole body, alongside icebergs, in the Arctic ocean. The title also refers to the reality of glaciers rapidly calving (cracking, breaking and crumbling, sending tidal waves rolling over the surface of the ocean) due to climate change.

The exhibition contains several scroll paintings made on rice paper, backed with silk. Chinese landscapes and Asian temples are depicted as spiritual havens becoming destroyed by pollution and human behavior. The importance of maintaining sacred structures (thousand-year-old glaciers and temples) as sacred places of worship is implied.

Georgia Rose Murray with “One Body” flag, standing on the northernmost tip of land before reaching the North Pole.

In the paintings, a dead tiger, swallows and migrating geese represent the creatures on land and in the ocean, which are struggling to survive due to climate change. I have consciously used the traditional Chinese painting format, with more contemporary materials, such as spray paint, to represent the changes our natural world is undergoing due to toxic carbon emissions.

In addition, using a metal box and painted flags (displaying “one world” and “one body” in Mandarin characters), I created performance films, which present one human body as a metaphor for the collective “body” of humanity. In the films, my “one body” arrives as a package into the sacred Arctic landscape, steps out of the box and is humbled by the reality. Aware of the responsibility to preserve the natural environments that we are privileged to be a guest in, the “one world” symbols act as metaphors for global unity.

Body, box performance with “One World” flag, 100-year-old bay.

The use of Mandarin characters in my work symbolizes my current connection to China and the color red acts as a metaphor for the pain inflicted on natural landscapes by the expansion of human environments.

A common response to the Arctic landscape is one of awe. A humbling awareness of our human insignificance dawns as we compare our fleeting existence to the ancient, organic, presence of the rest of the universe: Magnificent mountains, inspiring glaciers, gigantic bays, the dazzling Arctic Ocean, and the vast swirling sky above us. Despite our perceived irrelevance as individuals, the “one body” of humanity and its collective behavior is causing significant destruction to our “one world.”

My future research plans involve further investigations into the Polar North at varying times of year, collaborating with scientists while witnessing the changing Arctic reality and communicating about how to effectively convey the truth.

In mid-January, after finishing teaching the semester at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, just prior to the Chinese New Year holiday, I set off to explore some additional Asian landscapes. First, I journeyed to Kathmandu and travelled around Nepal for one week, absorbing the fascinating and complex culture. The deep spiritual peace and intoxicating magic of the mountains was a massive contrast to some of the challenges (connected to poverty and female slavery) I witnessed in the cities.

ARCTIC CRACKING painting in progress in Chinese studio.

From Pokhara, I trekked to see incredible views of the Annapurna Himalayas at sunrise and sunset, and was lucky to be greeted with clear skies and snowy peaks kissed with pink light. Then I flew to the South West coast of Thailand, to think, draw and write, while enjoying the warm turquoise sea – a chance to process the vastly different locations and varying manifestations of climate change I have experienced this year.

Tomorrow I travel to the UK, to return to life in Scotland, where I will be within easy reach of the Arctic landscape.

(Top image: ARCTIC CRACKING painting in progress in Chinese studio.)

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Georgia Rose Murray is a painter and lecturer from Scotland. Her paintings depict her fascination with the sublime effects of light and darkness on the natural landscape. Her holistic processes are guided by conscious and subconscious observations and by a visceral awareness of the mystical; the works explore our human existence on Earth in connection with the spirit world.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Guest Blog: Picking a battle – How to find the right subject matter

Creative Carbon Scotland

The first step for any artist is working out what to write about. In this guest blog London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) Soundhub Composer Lillie Harris leads us through what the process was like for her writing her new piece ‘Consumption’ .

Before I had even properly started my LSO Soundhub piece, I knew that the crucial ingredient in the piece would be an emotional core, addressing a social and political issue.

Pieces don’t have to be ‘about something’ of course. Earlier this year, I wrote a piece without a clear narrative or emotional idea. ‘This will be a fun challenge,’ I had thought naively, like someone about to discover a crippling fear of heights at the top of a bungee-jump. ‘What a great learning opportunity!’

Reaching the end of that particular work was unusually difficult, and I learned, (much like the bungee jumper might) that an important part of my composer-self requires a clear emotional or narrative purpose. No ifs, no buts.

So my initial plan for this second year of Soundhub was to write a piece about social and economic inequality, and the frustration of waiting for unequal systems to change. It was inspired by the incredibly moving BBC Panorama episode about health inequality. I had scribbled down my feelings straight away like a diary, outlining the ‘characters’ I wanted to embody in the differing musical ideas, then refining them, excitedly describing how the opposing musical ideas would influence (or rather, not influence) one other.

But as days started to trickle by, I found myself oddly reluctant to get going, despite my initial passion about the piece. I realised that I was nervous about telling a story that’s so very personal for many people. My own experience has been relatively fortunate: ‘The System’ wasn’t an antagonist for me when I was growing up. Student loans notwithstanding, I didn’t really feel equipped with enough first-hand experience to do this topic justice.

Telling the story of humans and the natural world

After some deliberation, I found a story that I feel informed enough to tell: the story of humans and the natural world – and more specifically, our relentless battering of it.

My initial plans had centred around two opposing voices; with the shift in focus, they made even more sense: a domineering voice ploughing relentlessly on doing whatever it wanted, and the other, desperately trying to get its attention. As the recent flood of articles about the environment came through, reinforcing in ever more pessimistic language the reality of the situation we are in, I felt emboldened by my choice.

So the title became Consumption, a play on the literal consumption of natural resources, but also the historic term for tuberculosis: a nasty, infectious disease that consumes the life and vitality of sufferers. The opposing material in the piece became a) the natural world – full of variety, space, tiny flitting fragments, a natural chaos but also moments of unison; and b) the human capitalist economy: relentless, unending, rhythmic, and increasingly toxic.

Art can inspire people in ways facts cannot, as Ben Twist, Director of Creative Carbon Scotland, describes in his excellent TED talk, Why the arts are essential in addressing climate change.

I’m not a climate scientist, but I am a composer. And if I can write a piece that strikes the emotional core of the unprecedented losses we are facing as a result of our rampant consumerism, then I might be able to make a difference.

Hear the world premiere of Consumption at the London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub Phase II Showcase on Saturday 9 February at LSO St Luke’s. Click here to find out more and book tickets.

Share your news!

This story was posted by  London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub Composer Lillie Harris. Creative Carbon Scotland is committed to being a resource for the arts & sustainability community and we invite you to submit news, blogs, opportunities and your upcoming events.

The post Guest Blog: Picking a battle – How to find the right subject matter appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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Joya: arte + ecología / AiR is now accepting applications for residencies between 1st May and 14th July 2019.

Open Calls

Joya: arte + ecología / AiR is an “off-grid” interdisciplinary residency rooted in the crossroads of art, ecology and sustainable living practice. It is located in the heart of the Parque Natural Sierra María – Los Vélez, in the north of the province of Almería, Andalucía. Joya: AiR offers abundant time and space for residents to make, think, explore and learn from their surroundings.

Joya: AiR supports a range of disciplines including, but not limited to, visual art, writing, music, dance, curatorial and film. Founded by Simon and Donna Beckmann in 2009, the Joya: arte + ecología / AiR programme is grounded in the foundation that dynamic and sustainable creative activity is the backbone to regenerating the land that has been slowly abandoned over the last fifty years. 

Since 2009, Joya: AiR has welcomed over 650 artists and creatives to realise their projects within one of the most unique and beautiful regions of the country. This is one of the sunniest regions of Europe receiving over 3000 hours of sunlight a year. Residents have access to studio space and 20 hectares of land. Accommodation (private room with attached bathroom) and meals are included, as is collection and return to the nearest public transport system.

Joya’s working languages are English and Spanish.

Further details and the submission form are available here: https://joya-air.org/apply/

The deadline for applications is March 17 2019




We happily cater for vegans, vegetarians and occasional carnivores (we have a reduced meat consumption with an emphasis on all our food being local)



Accommodation is bright, warm and clean with wood heated radiant floors. More images… https://joya-air.org/centre/

Celebrating Women-Powered Climate Solutions

Artists and Climate Change

by Julia Levine

Juxtaposing the International Day for Women & Girls in Science with Drawdown solutions, Persistent Acts considers the vitality of women and girls in the climate conversation, and how the arts can play a role in gender parity.

Of Drawdown’s 80 published solutions for reversing global warming, three are explicitly about women and girls. As Drawdown Vice President of Communication and Engagement, Katherine Wilkinson, states in her TedTalk How empowering women and girls can help stop global warming: “Climate and gender are inextricably linked.” Gender parity is connected to numerous climate solutions, but Drawdown solution #6, Educating Girls, drives a case for equity. Enabling opportunities for safe, quality education for girls “is the most powerful lever available for breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, while mitigating emissions by curbing population growth.” Moreover, “educated women can marshal multiple ways of knowing to observe, understand, reevaluate, and take action to sustain themselves and those who depend on them.”

In honor of this day, I chatted with ecologist and environmental lawyer Kyla Bennett. Kyla has taught classes and workshops for elementary school students, and noticed that the girls were less engaged than their male counterparts. In a talk with fifth graders about what they can do to help the earth, boys dominated the conversation. We discussed the need for girls’ voices to be valued in our society, so they can more actively participate in the classroom and beyond.

Kyla also brought up the inclination of girls towards the arts (reading books, watching movies), and how our society urges them toward creative pursuits at young ages – more so than boys. This suggests that we (artists) can support girls in feeling more comfortable with science, and in engaging with scientific topics at vital young ages (8-18 years old) through means that they already love. As Kyla explained, “everything is already stacked against girls in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) area…we need to get it into their lingo.”

This is in part why Kyla wrote No Worse Sin, a young adult novel featuring a teenage girl in the face of global disaster. There is a love interest, but the story breaks the mold of a series like Twilight, to uplift the female character’s agency. Young people need stories that highlight leaders and heroes other than cis white men, and the stories for girls can and should be of substance in order to foster scientific curiosity.

No Worse Sin by Kyla Bennett.

Another example is a verbatim theatre project, A Chip on Her Shoulder, by director and playwright Kristin Rose Kelly. With Honest Accomplice Theatre, Kristin is creating a docu-play with music, investigating the experiences of women, trans people, and other minorities in the field of engineering. I talked with her about her impetus for this project, which started when she was a graduate student at Virginia Tech. As she came into leadership roles as a theatre director, she realized the extent of the gender bias against women in any leadership position, including in the engineering field, where only 15% of engineers are women. She connected with organizations like WINGS (Women Inspiring the Next Generation’s Success) to interview engineering students and professionals from around the country.

A Chip on Her Shoulder. Photo by Dylan Bomgardner.

There was a certain caution and reservation amongst female interviewees, especially those associated with institutions: “I can’t talk about this. I don’t want to use my name.” Women who do talk candidly are often labeled as having a “chip on her shoulder.” Yet there is no question that we need to break the stigmas and encourage more women and girls to embrace STEM. So many solutions to our global issues are being generated and developed in STEM; with more diversity and inclusion, such solutions can have greater impact for more people – not just those who look and think like the engineers. Kristin talked about the ethics of engineering, and the ideal that the tools engineers create should be for everyone. Empowering and uplifting women in STEM helps break the homogeneity, unlocking the unbounded applications of what engineers can do.

A Chip on Her Shoulder. Photo by Mary Rathell.

Through theatre, Kristin is spotlighting stories on the margins, stories of women in workplace situations not dissimilar to her audience’s. She is creating a piece of theatre that people across industries can relate to and helping them feel more resilient in their own workplaces and communities.

Kyla and I agree: Women are going to save the world. Whether it’s through art or science, women are drawing upon our particular ways of moving through the world and sharing modes of empathy with others to address climate. Drawdown has the research compiled on women-centric solutions; people like Kyla and Kristin are playing out the possibilities. This is notable today on the UN’s International Day for Women & Girls in Science, but it is also notable everyday that women comprise half of the world’s population.

There’s More…

Related posts:
My previous post When Women Lead
Chantal Bilodeau’s Exorcising Harveys, about tackling gender equity onstage in the Arctic
Chantal Bilodeau’s Why do Women Climate More Than Men?

Podcast recommendation: 
Mothers of Invention, hosted by former Irish President Mary Robinson and comedian Maeve Higgins, celebrating amazing women doing remarkable things in pursuit of climate justice.

Performance in New York City:
Honest Accomplice’s Engineer Not Found, created by Honest Accomplice Theatre featuring verbatim interviews from A Chip On Her Shoulder. Directed by Maggie Keenan-Bolger Rachel Sullivan and Kristin Rose Kelly with original songs by Teresa Lotz (music) and Naomi Matlow (lyrics), coming to The Tank this Spring.

(Top Image by Mariadel Alamort.)

This article is part of the Persistent Acts series which looks at the intersection of performance, climate, and politics. How does hope come to fruition, even in the most dire circumstances? What are tangible alternatives to the oppressive status quo? The series considers questions of this nature to motivate conversations and actions on climate issues that reverberate through politics and theatre.

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Julia Levine is a creative collaborator and vegetarian. Originally from St. Louis, Julia is now planted in the New York City downtown theatre realm. As a director, Julia has worked on various projects with companies that consider political and cultural topics, including Theater In Asylum, Honest Accomplice Theatre, and Superhero Clubhouse. She is the Marketing Manager at HERE and is Artistic Producer of The Arctic Cycle. Julia writes and devises with her performance-based initiative, The UPROOT Series, to bring questions of food, climate, and justice into everyday life.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Artists sustainability survey

Open Calls

Alex Brown (Artsadmin) and Tilly Hogrebe (Bow Arts) have created thisartists’ survey as part of a research programme called Accelerator, led by Julie’s Bicycle, on advanced sustainability in the arts and cultural sector. Focussing on sustainable arts practices and the circular economy, the survey aims to map existing art practices and group them around sites of potential exchange; materials, knowledge and skills, time, money, which feed into environmental and socio-economic sustainable goals.

If you have an interest in sustainability and would like to be involved in a series of workshops, based on alternative art economies and circularity, then please fill out the survey here. 

In October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report on climate change, outlining that we have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe. As a result, now more than ever, environmental sustainability is something each and every one of us should think about, both individually and as part of our networks, in our private as well as our professional lives. This thinking needs to become second nature and inform all our actions.

In a collaboration between Bow Arts and Artsadmin, and under the Julie’s Bicycle and Arts Council England Accelerator programme, we are looking at environmental sustainability within artist studios and in connection to artist practices. What materials are being used, and are environmental or other ethical aspects taken into account when these are bought? Are there ways to reduce and re-use materials, rather than recycle and dispose of? And do socio-economic factors such as time and money have an impact on how green an artist is in their practice? We are looking for answers to those questions and will aim to establish ways in which we as arts organisations can inspire as well as assist artists to take sustainability in their practices to a new level.

One of the models we are looking at in order to achieve this is Circular Economy. 

Traditional behaviour patterns often follow the model of take-make-dispose. For this it has to be assumed that there are infinite resources, which of course we know not to be the case. In addition, simple disposal at the end of a product’s life has a huge detrimental impact on the environment and should therefore no longer be an option, and in fact should never have been.

A circular economy model on the other hand is a closed loop system, designed to keep in any resources for as long as possible, get the most value out of them while in use, and eventually ensure sustainable ways of disposal. This way waste and pollution will be designed out of the system.

Ways to achieve this include maintenance & repair (of tools and equipment), reuse & sharing, upcycling, and only eventually, recycling. If you are interested in exploring the concept of Circular Economy further, have a look at Julie’s Bicycle’s resource on the topic and follow our progress on this project!

So, how will we get there?

The beginning of the process is to gain a greater understanding of current systems of sustainability and exchange within creative practice. Whether you currently consider your practice to be engaged with sustainability or not, we would like to hear from all artists so that we can effectively map material and resource use in the sector and measure how practitioners consider sustainability. There are no wrong answers to this survey, think of it as a process in order to collectively discover best practice. What matters most is the appetite for progress.

We are thinking about the circular economy through different prisms, primarily environmental sustainability, how our relationship to materials might impact artistic decision-making. If an embedded economy is the systemic whole, the actors within can only consume the amount of energy that has been inputted to keep sustainable equilibrium. We are considering our relationship with materials first but in doing so, we also examine the sites of exchange that are forged together to make an economy. This is not only in a financial sense of an economy but an artistic one, by dissecting exchanges and how the management of resources functions in a social system, we can re-examine how we create and work within a living ecosystem.

We hope in the first instance that you are interested in some of these themes of how practices centred around the boldness of art-making which allows us to navigate a collective future of environmental justice. We want to foster debate, innovative practice and cooperation that working sustainably encourages. How can this our relationship to materials and suggestions of alternative economies prefigure a regenerative future? How can we foster a community of sustainable studio users?

By asking these questions, we’re hoping to bring together groups of artists who are challenged and inspired by these ideas, and open to new ways of thinking in the way they approach their art process and production. It would be fantastic if we could get as many artists completing the survey as possible, this will be incredibly helpful in finding out about current practices. The workshops will be a chance to exchange knowledge with others on topics centred around artistic process and practice and will tackle advanced sustainability issues. The project will focus on collective action and collaboration and work like a peer exchange group facilitated by the 2 lead organisations.

To get involved in the workshops, please complete the survey and express your interest through the Google form. You should be interested in knowledge exchange that contributes to some research for Julie’s Bicycle Accelerator programme. The initial sessions will be centred around- 1) alternative economic models and the circular economy 2) sustainable material use. The subsequent sessions will be decided by the group but are likely to explore themes of collaboration, commons, time and money.

We’re really excited to be at the beginning of this journey and as we delve deeper into the idea of a creative economy that works for artists, more questions come up. We expect the next year of the Accelerator programme and path to circularity and sustainability to be challenging and enlightening in equal measure and it would be great if you joined us.

Photo by James Allen

Wild Authors: Peter Heller

Artists and Climate Change

by Mary Woodbury

Denver resident Peter Heller is a contributor to NPR, Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal,and National Geographic Adventure. He has written literary nonfiction and fiction – and he loves the outdoors, so his writing reflects his adventures, including in Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River, The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals, and his newest, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave. The Dog Stars was his debut novel, published in August 2012. Since then, he has also written the novels The Painter and Celine.

When I asked Heller if there was anything he would like to tell me about writing The Dog Stars, he said:

I believe climate change and the Sixth Great Mass Extinction – which we are in the middle of, and which has been caused by us – are the stories of our time. I think about them all the time. So, when I sat down to write my first novel, they had to inform the writing and the story.

Writers artistically document our times. They inform, create, entertain, and imagine. They warn and give hope. Sometimes they frighten us. They create new myths and expand on old ones. They have always reflected the changing world around us. In our Sixth Great Mass Extinction, like Heller said, come stories, and I believe that authors writing about this extinction are going through a period of unprecedented loss and reflection.

To learn more about the Sixth Great Mass Extinction, see National Geographic.

On Earth Day this year I took part in a panel called Climate Change and Storytelling, at the West Vancouver Public Library. Some of the main questions people asked were: How do you write about climate change in fiction, and what impacts readers the most? Is doom and gloom or cheer more effective? Authors are diverse in tackling global warming in fiction; they have their own way of storytelling – from didactic to the other end of the spectrum, not even really mentioning climate change at all. Readers are just as diverse. Some prefer science fiction. Some literary. Some like dystopia. Some can’t stomach it. Some stories, however, may hit home with almost everyone, and when I read The Dog Stars, I felt that it was one of these types of stories. However, it is a stark novel, brutal and honest to the bone.

Why Heller’s novel works so well is that it simply touches your heart, which was also our panel’s conclusions when it comes to why readers like any story, not just stories about climate change. Climate change may be a big focus in novels listed at this site, but when readers can relate to characters in the story, that’s when we get inspired. As I’ve pointed out often, impact is greater than intent.

The Dog Stars weaves an interesting story of a guy named Hig and his dog who live in an abandoned airstrip, Hig’s memories of his wife and unborn child, and his relationship with a neighbor named Bangley. Other characters enter the story: a group of Mennonites nearby and a father and daughter living “at the point of no return.” This apocalyptic novel has a conversational style, making the reader feel right at home. Hig is likeable, and the reader probably will root for Hig’s continued survival – and potential romance – in his climate-changed world where many species seem to be gone and an epidemic (“The Blood”) has wiped most people off the face of the Earth. Zoom in to Hig and his world, and you get a glimpse of Heller’s concerns for our own planet.

Heller has a deft writing style that captures loss well, but he is also all about cheering on the remaining wilderness:

There are patches of green wood, and I am their biggest fan. Go Go Go Grow Grow Grow! That’s our fight song.

He yells it out the window as he flies along in an old Cessna trying to see what’s remaining in his newly isolated existence. What’s not to immediately adore about Hig? He loves the wilderness, which is a diminishing aspect of planet Earth, but there are still signs of it. As a person who also spends a great deal of time outside, I see the woods and meadows continuing to disappear and so I revel in places that are still green, like Hig does, and I revel likewise in his prose about those places. Heller’s descriptions of woods and meadows and willows and creeks are partially why this novel hits the heart. When all these things are taken for granted, and then they are endangered, an author can bring them back with words, with warning, and with whispers of what once was – what may be in the future if we take care. John Seabrook in The New Yorker said about The Dog Stars:

The prose bears an obvious debt to manly sentence-smiths like McCarthy, Hemingway, and Jack London, but it also has lyrical descriptions of landscape and nature reminiscent of James Dickey’s poetry.

The reader can also relate because this is a down-to-earth novel, despite its nods to stars and constellations – and its main character flying around in the sky. Hig’s narration is similar to how any one of us readers might be thinking in a similar situation. We understand the eclipse of his life, from the modern era to the apocalyptic afterworld where lamentation, nostalgia, and yet hope are big. We are already starting to view similar situations found in the novel as climate change grips us in its talons and flies us toward uncertainty.

Climate change does not have to change humanity; relationships with pets, friends, lovers, and the natural world around us will live on. Nostalgia peaks because of loss, and survival may be frightening, but all the more reason to grasp onto others who help us cope with loss – similar to what’s happening in The Dog Stars. There is an uptick to the harsh environment and world that Hig finds himself in. There are plenty of frightening individuals, but we like Hig. NPR stated:

Hig, though, is Nice. He can’t quite give up his dreams of a better world, of brotherhood, of natural beauty, of grace. A failed poet, on his forays into the wilderness to hunt for deer, his voice becomes lyrical: “The moss I wonder how old. It is dry and light to the touch, almost crumbly, but in the trees it moves like sad pennants.”

I won’t spoil the story by telling everything that happens, but one particular event is a sad one that made me cry. And it made Hig fall into an existential lamentation. We are warned at the start of the novel that the future world is at the stage of lamentations:

Did you ever read the Bible? Check out Lamentations. That’s where we’re at, pretty much. Pretty much Lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water.

Despite such a downfall, Hig goes on, and we are left with a heartfelt, jarring read that makes this one of my favorite stories wherein climate change is a strong force. Perhaps it is Heller’s beautiful prose writing. Maybe it’s that I identify with Hig’s love of nature and his excitement when he finds it. But, mostly, The Dog Stars is about us, in all our quirks and loves and nostalgia – and our vulnerability and found-strength when it comes to how we survive disaster.

(Top image: Photo by Photo by Hyoung Chang, downloaded from The Denver Post.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Eco-Fiction.com on May 12, 2017.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Eco-Fiction.com and Dragonfly.eco, sites that explore ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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It’s All Connected

Artists and Climate Change

by Brenda Cummings

I am a professional actor, singer, writer and teacher from New York City and New Jersey. I have performed, written for, and worked with children for several decades. I created shows with New York’s Paper Bag Players, toured extensively with the company, created props/costumes, and led workshops in New York and on the road. In addition, I did television and theater in New York as well as regional theatre productions with numerous companies in the 80s, 90s and 2000s.

My late husband inherited his family home in suburban New Jersey, so we moved into the house in the early 2000s. His parents had been environmentalists and educators in the area during the 50s thru the 90s. They had grown all their own vegetables, volunteered at the local nature center and helped to educate locals about environmental issues. I always had great respect and admiration for their work, so I tried to pick up where they left off.

We adopted a beautiful 10-month-old girl through the foster care system and when she started kindergarten I realized that the kids in our upper-middle class area were not learning how to prepare for climate change or think sustainably. How could they possibly deal with the environmental problems they’d be inheriting? There was practically no public transportation in our area, bottled water use was wide-spread, parents idled their SUVs in front of schools, the food and plastic waste at school was appalling, and environmental education had become practically nonexistent. When our town banned beekeeping, I’d had enough.

I started working on Granny Green’s Green Machine, writing songs, and picture books. I created set pieces, props and costumes from recycled materials. I offered shows as well as arts and crafts programs to help kids learn how to make art or useful things out of their trash.

The idea I wanted to impress upon them was that everything we do affects other things. All the parts of the natural world are connected like the parts of a machine. I hoped that the children would take information home through a song, a story or a treasure. I began presenting the programs wherever possible – in schools, at Earth Fairs, and the youth development organization 4H and scouting events.

Available on Amazon.

I talked to teachers, administrators, and parents about changing things in our schools but I failed to light any fires. I joined a local sustainability group to talk about the issues with like-minded people. There were not many of us at the time, and sometimes it felt like what we were doing was subversive. There were times when I was dismissed or treated like a screwball in my town, but eventually I was asked to join our town’s environmental commission and head our Green Team. We began doing annual town clean-ups, showing educational films, and bringing in lecturers. Soon after, I was invited to write a sustainability column for the local newspaper. We worked with neighboring towns to broaden our scope, but very few of the area’s residents actually came to our events, and we were, from time to time, met with outright hostility.

I have sometimes gotten arguments from parents and educators who say that talking to children about climate change is too scary. I think it’s scarier to keep children in the dark about their future. One of the songs I wrote for the show is The Polar Bear Blues and along with it I describe how the greenhouse effect works. It’s not scary. It’s science with a song.

The Polar Bear Blues by Brenda Cummings

I try to promote the idea that kids can make changes at home and in school. The theme song of the show is In My Backyard — I can make the whole world greener in my own backyard.

I did an Indiegogo campaign in 2016 to raise funds to publish I Am the Hugger! – a picture book about trees and the many wonderful things they do for us. I will be eternally grateful to my friends and family members who contributed to the publication of the book.

Our taxes got higher and higher, my husband lost his editorial job, and the 2016 campaign and election had a negative effect on the way children were treating our African American daughter. The bullying got so bad that at one point a group of boys chased her down the street with sticks, hurling racial epithets at her. We left New Jersey a year and a half ago and moved to progressive Tacoma, WA where my family lives. I’m slowly getting into the performance and art worlds here and I’m in the process of publishing some new picture books and recording a new album.

Starting over at 60 is challenging, but I don’t plan to stop any time soon. Children need to know the truth if they’re going to help solve the many problems they will face. These days, more and more young people are speaking out about climate change and the environment. Their courage and understanding of the issues gives me hope for a better future.

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Brenda Cummings recently moved from the New York City area to Tacoma, Washington. She performed in New York and regional theater, including Mrs. Pierce, My Fair Lady; Mrs. Lynch, Grease (The Papermill Playhouse); Georgette, School For Wives (The Yale Repertory Theater); Adelaide Churchill, Lizzie Borden (Goodspeed Opera House), and Teresa, Don Quixote(Denver Repertory Theatre). Brenda worked with Obie award-winning playwright/actor Jeff Weiss in Hot Keys, Come Clean and That’s How the Rent Gets Paid. Brenda was with the Obie award-winning children’s theatre company The Paper Bag Players, and has presented Granny Green’s Green Machine since 2009.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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An Interview With Interdisciplinary Artist Catherine Sarah Young

Artists and Climate Change

by Amy Brady

Today I have for you an interview with Catherine Sarah Young, a Chinese-Filipina interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer who creates works that investigate nature, our role in nature, and the tensions between nature and technology. We discussed her latest projects and why she’s drawn to the subject of climate change.

Your work combines art and science. What are you hoping to communicate through your interdisciplinary work that art or science alone can’t?

I am hoping to communicate the beauty and fragility of nature and how our actions create impact on the planet. More importantly, I hope to inspire people to redefine our relationship with nature, with each other, and with the self – and to get them to act. With this broad aim and lots of things to be inspired by, I am usually driven to create many different things. I was trained in molecular biology, fine art, and interaction design, and all these have brought me a myriad of lenses with which to see the world. Science helps me to see the world for what it is in its many dimensions, while art creates emotional connections that are important to see nature as part of our identity. Design is incredibly useful, too, since it’s about empathy, and we need that when we want to effectively communicate or facilitate something to another person, especially when this might be a complex topic that is not easy to swallow.

Tell us about your most recent project, Wild Science.

This is a project I started in Vienna in April 2018 during an art residency with KulturKontakt Austria and the Austrian Federal Chancellery. I did this after five years of working on The Apocalypse Project. I had observed a shift in conversation since 2013 when I began work on climate change, where we went from asking what climate change was, to what were the systemic issues that were causing it, such as wealth inequality, lack of access to science, lack of collaborations between disciplines, etc.

It was great to start this in Vienna, which has a rich history of both art and science, so I was able to go through a lot of museums. I also had the fantastic opportunities of working with Dr. Gerhard Heindl, the historian of the Schönbrunn Tiergarten which is the oldest zoo in the world, for the project, Der Tiergarten: Human Forces on the Animal Kingdom, and to have conversations with people from the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, such as Dr. Silke Schweiger, curator of the Department of Herpetology, and Ms. Melina Franz and Ms. Mirjana Pavlovic from the taxidermy team for the project, Scientific Method.

One of my favorite projects in this body of work so far is Letters for Science, where I ask people to write letters to science denialists. I was able to go to Eferding thanks to KulturKontakt Austria’s Artist in Residence Go to School program, and a group of thirteen year olds chose to write letters to climate change deniers. (The project is still ongoing and everyone is welcome to contribute.)

I like being prolific and there are always all these questions in my head that I need to answer by doing projects, so I’ll likely keep working on both The Apocalypse Project and Wild Science for a while, and perhaps others.

Der Tiergarten board game and cards by Catherine Sarah Young.

You told me something during our very first chat that I haven’t been able to get out of my head: that an artwork you created using a breathing mask actually became a part of your wardrobe while you lived in China. This is an extreme example of just how relevant your work truly is. It’s also an example of how a piece with humorous connotations evolved to be a lot less funny as the world we live in has grown increasingly more polluted. Have you noticed other works of art changing in meaning as the world changes?

Futurists often quote William Gibson, “The future is here; it’s not just evenly distributed.” I remember including masks in the Climate Change Couture series almost as a joke, and I brought one of them to Beijing with me for a potential exhibition or just to show people. Instead I ended up wearing it because the smog was just too much for me. I think visions of the future catch up to us more quickly because we are changing the planet so fast. I keep revisiting the works of people such as Buckminster Fuller, Agnes Denes, Cai Guo-Qiang and others as I feel that their work keeps being relevant in different contexts.

In your artist statement, you write that your work is “critiquing broken real-world systems and proposing alternative realities.” Are you hopeful that humans will create a future reality that is actually sustainable?

We are all part of these broken systems, and this can make one feel helpless. But for me, to make art is to be hopeful. It may feel easier to be willfully blind or uncaring about these realities, or make them even worse by manipulating our consumerist tendencies, but creating art is a way where I can face each day with purpose and have a stake in the future. So I am hopeful that we will make a reality that is sustainable – we have to, if we wish to survive. Right now I’m thinking of my experience with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s (Un-)Learning Place, which ended for me just a few hours ago, because I was surrounded by academics, artists, and other cultural practitioners whose work and lives were so different than mine. One prevailing emotion I felt in myself and in others was a disquiet with institutions that have failed us. So I hope that we will dismantle these or find ways to fix them and keep engaging with people who are different than us and who may even disagree with us. I grow so much with these art residencies and fellowships – they are not only ways for me to connect with people and to challenge myself and my assumptions, but to also remind myself that among the greatest of freedoms is the ability to think for oneself and to question everything without fear.

What’s next for you?

After a short stint in Berlin, I’ll be taking a much-needed rest in Manila, then I’ll be back in Beijing in March to continue my residency with China Residencies and Red Gate Residency. I’ll be in Kampong Thom, Cambodia in May and in Bangkok, Thailand in June for parts 2 and 3 of my fellowship with the SEAΔ program of Mekong Cultural Hub and the British Council. I’ll also keep making more art, writing more stories and articles, and training more in taekwondo.

Read more about Catherine Sarah Young and her work at her website.

For previous articles about Catherine Sarah Young’s work, check out:

Scientific Method: Documenting the Invisible Processes of Research
Wild Science: Experiments in Nature and the Vanishing Amazon
Turning Sewage into Soaps: The Sewer Soaperie by The Apocalypse Project
Climate Change Couture

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.com and follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x. 

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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