Inviting artists to submit to the VAS annual exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Visual Arts Scotland would like to invite artists from across Scotland, the UK and Internationally to apply to be part of one of the oldest and biggest exhibiting events celebrating contemporary art in Scotland.
Visual Arts Scotland presents our Annual Exhibition 2022, celebrating the best in innovative contemporary visual arts. The exhibition will take place at the Royal Scottish Academy, National Galleries of Scotland, The Mound, Edinburgh in January 2022. This annual show promises to be one of the most diverse exhibitions of contemporary art to be held in Scotland in 2022 with an expected audience of over 30,000 people.
We welcome entries from artists working across a diversity of artforms. Please note that there are five specific open calls pertaining to work type. Please click on the links below to apply:
General submissions (ceramics, painting, sculpture, tapestry, drawing, print, glass, design, bookmaking and all other mediums not listed in other specific open call categories)
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.
Is reason or emotion more important in driving climate action? Will solutions to mass extinction come from the head or the heart? Or are these binaries themselves part of the problem? While some climate activists argue that we should focus on facts instead of feelings, others know that our intense emotional response to climate chaos is far from irrational. Moreover, feelings like anger, hope, anxiety, and fear profoundly shape our perceptions of the world, and can motivate us to act or shut down and retreat. To better understand how those mental and emotional states relate to environmental crisis and public perceptions of risk, this episode explores why emotions matter in the climate battle.
This segment also looks at the work of Rachel Carson to explore how narrative can rouse the public to action, and draws on insights from evolutionary psychology to examine the ancient relation between mind and environment as expressed in feelings of love and wonder toward the natural world.
Facing It is a podcast about climate grief and eco anxiety. It explores the psychological toll of climate change, and why our emotional responses are key to addressing this existential threat. In each episode of Facing It, I explore a different way we can harness despair to activate meaningful solutions.
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.
I think that with this cycle of colonialism, and what it has brought, that we are coming to the end of this century, and with hindsight, we will realize that it was a very small moment in a much larger space, and that we are returning to very deep knowledge. What does it mean to live here on this planet? What does it mean to have the possibility, but also the responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships? I say that the solution to the climate crisis is ‘cardiac’. It will go through the heart. We are talking about love of the planet. That’s the work.
I’ve known France for many years in the arts community and through the Canada Council. Our conscient conversation affected me deeply. I recall during the recording that I felt my shoulders relax and my breath slow down as she spoke about time and indigenous world view.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation that I would like to highlight:
Terra nullius
For me, the challenge of the ecological issue or the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves is to understand the source of the problem and not just to put a band-aid on it, not just to try to make small adjustments to our ways of living, but to really look at the very nature of the problem. For me, I think that something happened at the moment of contact, at the moment when the Europeans arrived. They arrived with this notion of property. They talked about Terra Nullius, the idea that they could appropriate territories that were ‘uninhabited’ (I put quotation marks on uninhabited) and I think that was our first collision of worldviews.
Eurocentric vision of artistic practices
If we take a longer term view of how the eurocentric view of artistic practices have imposed itself on the material practices of world cultures, this is going to be a very small moment in history. The idea of disciplines, the way in which the Eurocentric vision imposed categories and imposed a certain elitism of practices. The way it also declassified the material culture of the First Nations or it was not possible, it was not art. Art objects became either artifacts or crafts. It was completely declassified, we didn’t understand. I think the first people who came here didn’t understand what was in front of them.
The Real Tragedy
The artist Mike MacDonald was telling a story, Mike, who is a Mi’kmaq artist, who is with us now, but who has done remarkable work, a new media artist, he was telling a story once about one of the elders in his community, he was saying that the real tragedy of Canada, it’s not that people have been prevented from speaking their language. The real tragedy is that the newcomers have not adopted the cultures here. So ‘there have been great misunderstandings.Â
Reauthoring the world?
I don’t think we need to rewrite anything at all. I think we just need to pay attention and listen. We just need to shut up a little bit for a while. Because it’s in the notion of authoring and that the word ‘author’ presupposes the word authority and I’m not sure that’s what we need right now. I think it’s the opposite. I think we need to change our relationship to authority. We need to deconstruct that idea when we’re being the decision makers or the masters of anything. I don’t think that’s the right approach. I think you have to listen. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t imagine – I think that imagination is important in this attentive listening – but to think that we are going to rewrite is perhaps a little pretentious.
I would like to thank France for taking the time to speak with me, for sharing her deep knowledge of indigenous arts and culture, her commitment to diversity and equity, her generosity and her ability to shift her immense talents and wisdom to wherever is there is the most need.
The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a series of conversations about art, conscience and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). The language of the guest determines the language of the podcast. Episode notes are translated but not individual interviews.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
The term ‘conscient’ is defined as ‘being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts and motivations’. My touchstone for the podcast is episode 1, e01 terrified, based on an essay I wrote in May 2019, where I share my anxiety about the climate crisis and my belief that arts and culture can play a critical role in raising public awareness about environmental issues. The conscient podcast / balado conscient follows up on my http://simplesoundscapes.ca (2016–2019) project: 175, 3-minute audio and video field recordings that explore mindful listening.
Season 1 (May to October 2020) explored how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action. I produced 3 episodes in French and 15 in English. The episodes cover a wide range of content, including activism, impact measurement, gaming, arts funding, cross-sectoral collaborations, social justice, artistic practices, etc. Episodes 8 to 17 were recorded while I was at the Creative Climate Leadership USA course in Arizona in March 2020 (led by Julie’s Bicycle). Episode 18 is a compilation of highlights from these conversations.
Season 2 (March 2021 – ) explores the concept of reality and is about accepting reality, working through ecological grief and charting a path forward. The first episode of season 2 (e19 reality) mixes quotations from 28 authors with field recordings from simplesoundscapes and from my 1998 soundscape composition, Au dernier vivant les biens. One of my findings from this episode is that ‘I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, ‘the state of things as they actually exist’, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way’. e19 reality touches upon 7 topics: our perception of reality, the possibility of human extinction, ecological anxiety and ecological grief, hope, arts, storytelling and the wisdom of indigenous cultures. The rest of season 2 features interviews with thought leaders about their responses and reactions to e19 reality.
my professional services
I’ve been retired from the Canada Council for the Arts since September 15, 2020 where I served as a senior strategic advisor in arts granting (2016-2020) and manager of the Inter-Arts Office (1999-2015). My focus in (quasi) retirement is environmental issues within my area of expertise in arts and culture, in particular in acoustic ecology. I’m open to become involved in projects that align with my values and that move forward environmental concerns. Feel free to email me for a conversation : claude@conscient.ca
acknowledgement of eco-responsibility
I acknowledge that the production of the conscient podcast / balado conscient produces carbon. I try to minimize this carbon footprint by being as efficient as possible, including using GreenGeeks as my web server and acquiring carbon offsets for my equipment and travel activities from BullFrog Power and Less.
a word about privilege and bias
While recording episode 19 ‘reality’, I heard elements of ‘privilege’ in my voice that I had not noticed before. It sounded a bit like ‘ecological mansplaining’. I realize that, in spite of good intentions, I need to work my way through issues of privilege (of all kinds) and unconscious bias the way I did through ecological anxiety and grief during the fall of 2020. My re-education is ongoing.
Join us in New York City for Dispatch to the Future, the official kick off of Climate Change Theatre Action 2021, a three-month festival of participatory theatre and action around climate taking place in more than 30 countries around the world.
Sunday, September 19, 2021 – Rain or Shine! New York City’s Central Park @ West 103rd Street Every half hour from 12:00-4:00 pm $15 tickets
Featuring original short plays by Angella Emurwon (Uganda), Jessica Huang (US), Aleya Kassam (Kenya), and Marcus Youssef with Seth Klein (Canada), with additional text by Chantal Bilodeau, Dispatch to the Future takes you on a 75-minute interactive guided walk through a series of live performances tucked away in green oases. In turn poetic, political, and whimsical, this event aims to be a joyful and family-friendly experience. You will also be invited to participate in the Climate Ribbon arts ritual, launched at the Climate March in NYC in 2014.
The walk and the plays are directed by Lanxing Fu, Megan Paradis Hanley, Rad Pereira, and Jeremy Pickard. Produced by Sami Pyne.
Our entire cast and crew is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Groups will be limited to 15 people. Masks are optional for fully vaccinated individuals based on personal comfort levels, but we ask that you wear one if you are not vaccinated. We will follow CDC guidelines as they continue to evolve.
The Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) and Triga Creative (Triga) invites you to our second Eco-Design Charrette taking place between September 19th and December 18th, 2021. This year we will be hosting our events online, as part of the Climate Change Theatre Action Festival (Climate Change Theatre Action). The Eco-Design Charrette aims to fuel each participant with the knowledge and inspiration needed to design with an ecological consciousness. Through rapid design seeding and idea exchange we will expand how we imagine scenography and its power to change our world.
This online Eco-Design Charrette is centred on the creation of concepts for each of the fifty Climate Change Theatre Action Plays (Playwrights). Over the span of the Charrette each participating designer will create a seed concept for at least one of the short plays. Our intention is not to ask designers for fully fleshed out designs, but to begin a design concept with ecological thinking at the centre of the creative process. In order to support this work and create a context for the cross pollination of ideas, Triga Creative will host a series of short play readings, design conversations and eco-scenography workshops.
The Eco-Design Charrette period will be an opportunity to develop your eco-scenographic practice alongside other designers and generate concepts for publication and exhibition with an international reach. All designs generated during the Eco-Design Charrette will be published in a two-part volume by the Centre for Sustainable Practices in the Arts (Books). The designs will also be exhibited at World Stage Design in Calgary in 2022 (WSD2022 Exhibition). The charrette will culminate the global participatory CCTA festival with an online closing celebration during which we will share the work created with our international community.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Send Triga Creative a statement of interest in the Eco-Design Charrette to hello@trigacreative.com with the subject line “Charrette Applicationâ€Â before midnight on September 6th, 2021. Please include an overview of your previous design experience, your interest in eco-scenography, and your availability to participate in up to two sessions of programming per week between September 19th and December 18th, 2021.
We will be creating the schedule with consideration of everyone’s availability and with the intention of making our programming as accessible as possible across all time zones. Please be specific about which time zone your availability is relative to. Note that availability for all of the programming is not required for participation.
We will review all of the submitted letters and be in touch with everyone before September 19th, 2021. If you have any questions please write to Alexandra Lord, Shannon Lea Doyle and Michelle Tracey at hello@trigacreative.com. We would be happy to hear from you!
Featured Image: Seed Concept for Nibi (Water) Protectors By Corey Payette, Designed by Kim Sue Bartnik for the 2019 CCTA EcoDesign Charrette
The Metcalf Foundation invites you to join us for the virtual report launch of Art and the World After This, which will feature a presentation by David Maggs — sharing key ideas from the paper — and a thought-provoking panel discussion with leading international voices in the arts.
Date: September 15, 2021 Time: 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm ET (via Zoom) We are delighted to announce that we will be joined by:
Marcus Youssef, International Associate Artist at Farnham Maltings in the UK and a Playwright in Residence at Tarragon Theatre
Diane Ragsdale, Director of Cultural Leadership at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Hasan Bakhshi, Director of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre at Nesta
Together, with David, they will discuss key questions posed by the paper as well as the wider implications for the arts sector and beyond.
I don’t want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it – can be confused for there not being one. I’m sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There’s a sense of biophilia about it.
ian garrett, conscient podcast, may 25, 2021, toronto
Ian Garrett is an artist, designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. Ian is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University in Toronto, is the co-founder and director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA), and Producer at ToasterLab. Ian maintains a practice focused on the integration of sustainability, design, and technology in performance and performing environments. He has spoken and consulted on the arts and the environment around the world. Originally from Los Angeles, Ian has also called Houston and now Toronto home, where he lives with wife Justine and their two dual citizens, Miles and Henrietta.
I’ve known Ian for many years as a leading thinker and activist in arts and sustainability. He is a hard worker, a visionary and generous person. Our conscient conversation covered many topics including one that I had not touched upon yet this season, including arts and sustainability in the digital world.
We also talked about measurement of impact, such as the Creative Green project, which is at the heart of our ability to move forward as an arts sector in the climate emergency.
Some notable quotes from our conversation include:
The extreme thought experiment that I like to use in a performance context is: if you had a play in which the audience left with their minds changed about all of their activities, you could say that that is positive. But, if the set that it took place on was a pile of burning tires – which is an objectively bad thing to do for the environment – there is a conversation by framing it as an arts practice as to is there value in having that impact, because of the greater impact. And those sorts of complexities have sort of defined the fusion and different approaches in which to take; it’s not just around metrics.
The intent of it [the Julie’s Bicycle Creative Green Tools] is not like LEED in which you are getting certified because you have come up with a precise carbon footprint. It’s a tool for, essentially, decision-making in that artistic context, that if you know this information, then you have a better way to consider critically the way that you are making and what you’re making and how you are representing your values and those aspects, regardless of whether or not it is explicitly part of the work. And so there’s lots of tools in which I’ve had the opportunity to have a relationship with which that are really about empowering artists, arts makers, arts collectives to be able to make those decisions so that their individual values towards sustainability – regardless of what they’re actually making – can also be represented and that they can make choices that best represent those regardless of whether or not they’re explicitly creating something for ‘earth day’.
The separation of the artist from the person and articulating as a profession is a unique thing, whereas an alternative to that could just be that we are expressive and artistic beings that seeks to create and have different talents but turning that into a profession is something that we’ve done to ourselves and so while we do that, we exist within systems, our cultural organizations exist within systems, that have impacts much farther outside of it so that a systems analysis approach is really important.
As I have done in all episodes in season 2 so far, I have integrated excerpts from soundscape compositions and quotations drawn from e19 reality, as well as moments of silence, in this episode.
I would like to thank Ian for taking the time to speak with me and for sharing his deep knowledge of arts and sustainability, his passion for education, his leadership on tool development and his keen sense of ‘what’s next’ on the horizon.
The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a series of conversations about art, conscience and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). The language of the guest determines the language of the podcast. Episode notes are translated but not individual interviews.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
The term ‘conscient’ is defined as ‘being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts and motivations’. My touchstone for the podcast is episode 1, e01 terrified, based on an essay I wrote in May 2019, where I share my anxiety about the climate crisis and my belief that arts and culture can play a critical role in raising public awareness about environmental issues. The conscient podcast / balado conscient follows up on my http://simplesoundscapes.ca (2016–2019) project: 175, 3-minute audio and video field recordings that explore mindful listening.
Season 1 (May to October 2020) explored how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action. I produced 3 episodes in French and 15 in English. The episodes cover a wide range of content, including activism, impact measurement, gaming, arts funding, cross-sectoral collaborations, social justice, artistic practices, etc. Episodes 8 to 17 were recorded while I was at the Creative Climate Leadership USA course in Arizona in March 2020 (led by Julie’s Bicycle). Episode 18 is a compilation of highlights from these conversations.
Season 2 (March 2021 – ) explores the concept of reality and is about accepting reality, working through ecological grief and charting a path forward. The first episode of season 2 (e19 reality) mixes quotations from 28 authors with field recordings from simplesoundscapes and from my 1998 soundscape composition, Au dernier vivant les biens. One of my findings from this episode is that ‘I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, ‘the state of things as they actually exist’, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way’. e19 reality touches upon 7 topics: our perception of reality, the possibility of human extinction, ecological anxiety and ecological grief, hope, arts, storytelling and the wisdom of indigenous cultures. The rest of season 2 features interviews with thought leaders about their responses and reactions to e19 reality.
my professional services
I’ve been retired from the Canada Council for the Arts since September 15, 2020 where I served as a senior strategic advisor in arts granting (2016-2020) and manager of the Inter-Arts Office (1999-2015). My focus in (quasi) retirement is environmental issues within my area of expertise in arts and culture, in particular in acoustic ecology. I’m open to become involved in projects that align with my values and that move forward environmental concerns. Feel free to email me for a conversation : claude@conscient.ca
acknowledgement of eco-responsibility
I acknowledge that the production of the conscient podcast / balado conscient produces carbon. I try to minimize this carbon footprint by being as efficient as possible, including using GreenGeeks as my web server and acquiring carbon offsets for my equipment and travel activities from BullFrog Power and Less.
a word about privilege and bias
While recording episode 19 ‘reality’, I heard elements of ‘privilege’ in my voice that I had not noticed before. It sounded a bit like ‘ecological mansplaining’. I realize that, in spite of good intentions, I need to work my way through issues of privilege (of all kinds) and unconscious bias the way I did through ecological anxiety and grief during the fall of 2020. My re-education is ongoing.
Throughout her highly imaginative multidisciplinary projects, Jessica Segall has been engaging with a wide range of fragile ecological sites, frequently with animals as her collaborators – for instance, swimming with tigers and sculpting with live bees. In this interview, Segall shares some of her work and thought processes, and talks about her upcoming projects.
You are a multidisciplinary artist using a diverse range of media, some most unconventional – lemons, refrigerators, tigers. How do you choose your media? Can you give me a couple of examples?
The media in each work is chosen for its utility or ability to best answer a proposition. There also has to be a transformation. Usually one of the material questions is: Will this work? Sometimes half of the proposition hangs in the air for a while until I find its material counterpoint. Fugue in B Flat started that way, as a material prompt and then a proposal before it became a sculpture. I had always wanted to work with the free pianos available off of Craigslist – its an unusually available material in our time and place. Pianos once had high enough value in craftsmanship and social meaning that families would pay to have them hauled up flights of stairs. But today, an inherited piano is not worth enough to sell, or pay to have removed, so every day there are new pianos available for free in New York City.
Years later, when I was learning to keep bees, the piano resurfaced. Bees are the last animals we colonized into livestock. In more primitive beekeeping methods, bees formed their own hive structures in skeps, or baskets. But to more efficiently extract the honey without harming bees, the idea of “bee space†was utilized, which determines the size of beehive boxes and frame proximity. While the interior architecture of the beehive is laid out within 3/8 of an inch, the superstructure of a beehive could be anything, which led me to consider the piano as a potential hive, considering the available space in between the soundboard and harp.
There are other reasons to work with pianos and bees of course – I play music, studied Anthroposophy and am invested in ecological futures. But practically, the material has to perform.
Zzzzzzz, 30″ x 40″, photograph, 2016Fugue in B Flat, 8′ x 5′ x 2′, piano, bees, live audio feed, 2016Fugue in B Flat (detail), 8′ x 5′ x 2′, piano, bees, live audio feed, 2016
In your site-specific work, you seem to be drawn to vulnerable ecological sites. Can you talk a bit on what draws you there?
Yes, the sites I chose to work in have great ecological vulnerability, or speak to human vulnerability. They deal with both the human and geological timescales. The Arctic is a timeless space, a geological era before and after human life on earth. Placing the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard was a way of safekeeping our genetic future, but even there, the permafrost is unreliable, in a big part from our own making. I treated my visit to the agricultural basin of California as disaster tourism – the almond blooms in my photos are often confused for the cherry blossom in Japan. But that beauty is monoculture relying on the major efforts of on-demand water and pollination services. In a way, these are all economic landscapes, shaped by human consumption.
What do you think brought you to art?
Honestly, I was too young to remember! My first painting was on my grandfather’s easel. My family introduced me to art culture and activism from a young age. Growing up, I had a great-uncle who made kinetic Dada sculptures, and my cousin was a performance artist in the East Village in the 90s. Both my parents wrote books. Luckily there was a public arts school where I grew up so I’ve been focused on art for a long time.
I was attracted to the radical criticality of art. Its queer culture and discourse. I never imagined how much time I would spend writing grant proposals.
Tell me about “Nom Nom Ohm,†your installation from 2016. In the list of material I found fruits, root vegetables, and rewired chandeliers.
“Nom Nom Ohm†is in a vein of work examining alternative power sources and degrowth. It is also a modern day vanitas. They are chandeliers that are rewired to be powered by fruits and vegetables. I liked the idea of the chandeliers in the marketplace, powered by the fruits sold there and proposed this work to Cuchifritos in The Essex Market in New York City. The market was about to be relocated and this work was something of a visual for the transition from this long-standing neighborhood market into high rise luxury apartments.
Nom Nom Ohm (detail), chandeliers, fruits, vegetables, copper, zinc, light, dimensions variable, 2016. Photo by Bill Massey.
What can you tell me about your 2018 two-channel video installation “Un-common Intimacy†described on your website as “Performance swimming with predators at private wildlife parks in the United States.â€
“Un-common Intimacy†was shot in private wildlife reserves in the six US states that allow private ownership of large predators. Today, there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild; strange colonial ecosystems that rely on private property but also voluntary guardians in service to a nexus of entertainment and conservation economies. That’s the setting. What you see in the video work is more of a blank slate as its filmed entirely underwater. I’m swimming with tigers and alligators, capturing the potential intimacies under these conditions.
Un-common intimacy, installation view, 2018. Courtesy of Fons Welters Gallery.
Performance seems to be a constant in your work. In 2009, you had a performance called Tourist Crisis Center in collaboration with Tourist Artist Collective. I am curious to know more about that.
This was a project in collaboration with several other artists I studied with at Bard College – Anne Cleary, Jess Perlitz, Brigid McCaffrey and Jane Parrot. We were invited, via friend and poet Arlo Haskell, to The Studios of Key West to make a public work. Somehow we resolved to build an offshore public office for tourists in crisis. Symptoms included fugue states, and other crises one experiences when shifting from worker to full-time consumer. We built an office on dock floats, complete with a fax machine, a telephone, office plants and a rolling chair, while Arlo pulled us around the island with his boat, dropping us off at key points for public interface. We took turns manning the office, while dressed in our secretarial finest. Some of us helped tourists write letters home. Key West is the kind of unbelievable community that only gathers in the farthest reaches of land masses. We were stopped by the Coast Guard at one point by a concerned caller phoning in “a lady being dragged on a desk.†We were also stopped by border patrol as we tried to swim from our desk to shore, in the logic that we were a ruse for illegal immigration. That was in 2009. I can’t imagine what the politic would be today.
Artist as Tourist Collective, Tourist Crisis Center, desk, fax machine, typewriter, plants, 2009
Where do you think your work is heading now?
On the horizon is a mix of studio work in Brooklyn and opening up my practice to coordinating public events and activism. I am co-organizing a lecture series at my studio in Brooklyn on economy, ecology, and trust, along with other ways of seeing our environment – through queer ecologies and animism. There are several long term projects I’m working on strategizing land art as land conservation; methods to counteract increasing privatization of federal land, and the militarization of our borders.
In the studio I will be working on new multi-species sculptures and a video work making parallels between climate change and BDSM. I will be traveling a bit for site-specific work in Finland, France, and Columbia while keeping a studio base in Brooklyn.
(Top image: Un-common intimacy, video still, 2018. All photos courtesy of the artist unless otherwise indicated.)
This interview is part of a content collaboration between Art Spiel and Artists & Climate Change. It was originally published on Art Spiel on April 10, 2019 as part of an ongoing interview series with contemporary artists.
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Etty Yaniv works on her art, art writing, and curatorial projects in Brooklyn. She has exhibited her immersive installations in museums and galleries, nationally and internationally. Yaniv founded the platform Art Spiel to highlight the work of contemporary artists through art reviews, studio visits, and interviews with artists, curators, and gallerists. Yaniv holds a BA in Psychology and English Literature from Tel Aviv University, a BFA from Parsons School of Design, and an MFA from SUNY Purchase.
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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.
Scott Crawford Morrison delivered this talk at ‘Scotland’s Climate Assembly and the Cultural Sector’ on 29th June 2021.
It concludes with three key recommendations for how the cultural sector can reframe how we measure success, in order to align with climate change targets, and how we can contribute to a wider societal shift.
My name is Scott Crawford Morrison, and I work in the classical music sector. I come from an arts management background rather than a climate or policy background, but, for the past five years, as you’ve heard, I’ve been working hard at the forefront of making change in the organisations I’ve worked for, and in Scottish classical music sector as a whole.
As an introductory caveat, I would like to note that in my experience, short talks like this one are most effective at generating discussion when they’re a bit provocative. So, I’m going to offer some intentionally bold ideas and questions to get you thinking.
The goal that I’ve been brought here today to discuss is Scotland’s Climate Assembly’s 16th: reframing the national focus and vision for Scotland’s future away from economic growth and GDP in order to reflect climate change goals. The subsequent recommendation to the Scottish Government is: business and government to adopt a measurement framework for success that incorporates sustainability, wellbeing and happiness alongside profit.
So, as I see it, how to reframe how we measure success is a two-part question, with two sides.
The two parts of the question are a ‘how’, and a ‘what’:
Number 1: a practical discussion of how we measure success.
Number 2: a more conceptual discussion about what we define as success.
There are also two sides to this two-part question.
A: how do we reframe and measure success internally for creative works and industries?
B: how do the arts as a sector help with the wider national effort of reframing how society measures success?
I’m going to look over the next five minutes at the two parts of the question and the two sides.
Part 1: the ‘how’. How we measure success and what we define as success are intrinsically linked. To illustrate the potential malleability of this relationship, I want to refer to an essay called “What Data Can’t Do†from the New Yorker, which I read one lockdown day in March of this year. Writer Hannah Fry notes some historical examples of this relationship:
Soviet textile factories, she writes, were required to produce quantities of fabric that were specified by length, so looms were adjusted to make long, narrow strips.
Uzbek cotton pickers, judged on the weight of their harvest, would soak their cotton in water to make it heavier.
Similarly, when America’s first transcontinental railroad was built in the 1860s, companies were paid per mile of track. So, a section outside Omaha, Nebraska was laid down in a wide arc rather than a straight line, adding several unnecessary yet profitable miles to the rails.
She goes on to quote this interesting snippet from James Gustave Speth:
“We tend to get what we measure, so we should measure what we want.â€
Part 2: the ‘what’. So what is it that we want? And what do the arts currently measure as success? Well, in my experience, many of the current primary metrics of success are quantitative. That is, things like numbers of tickets sold, number of participants reached, number of international performances, number of reviews, number of online views, retweets, engagements, and ultimately, they’re judged on deviation from budget: how much above or below the projected costs they’ve come in. It’s true that the arts sector recently has been getting to grips with the quantitative side of sustainability, calculating emissions and measuring waste. And though most of us are now tracking these things, I believe that they’re not key in the decision-making process yet.
For example, if a show sold the highest number of tickets, racked up the most international performances, reviews and social media engagements, but was also the highest emitting show of an organisation’s season, at this point, would that organisation consider the show a success or failure? I think it’s likely they’ll consider a success. And I want to ask whether we need to adjust that, or nuance that. I’d also like to suggest that, as a sector, if we continue to prioritise the ease of collecting numbers, and have the expectation that they will go up each year, we will continue to be stuck in an endless growth mindset.
Though for seemingly well-intentioned ends, the expectation of endless growth in the arts is exactly the same mindset that led to the climate crisis, leading to patterns of overwork and overconsumption. I think we should be aware of this similarity, and have deeper discussions about the potential complicity of our own expectations of endless growth, and the endless growth mindset that has led the planet to the point of environmental collapse.
In the interest of time, just now, I’ll highlight just one current measure of success that I think requires rethinking, which is international touring. International touring, particularly in the classical music sector, is certainly one of the key measures of success among peers, yet it is also often the biggest source of an organization’s emissions.
I posit that one-off international performances need to be a thing of the past. We need to work to override the current connotations of glamour with a sober acceptance of the terrible damage international touring is doing to the planet. And we need to adjust our ideas of success, our business models and our ways of decision-making accordingly.
So just to close, I’ll return to the two sides of the question. First of all, in terms of how we reframe success as a sector internally, my brief recommendations are:
We shouldn’t just track carbon emissions after the fact, we should project for them in the same way that we would financially for upcoming activity.
I think we need to interrogate our own values, honestly, asking what we think is successful and giving deep thought to why we think that.
Lastly, I think we need to make emissions a key part of our decision-making process.
In terms of how we contribute to a national shift in reframing success: I believe the arts are leading the way in transforming as individuals, organisations and as a sector. By talking openly, honestly, in a compelling way about how we’re making change, I believe that we’re uniquely well placed to help with a wider societal shift.
I think the arts need to be experimental and bold, not just in the rehearsal room and on stage, but in the office and boardroom, when strategic decisions are being made. I think we need to talk more to our audiences about the changes we’re making and why. And lastly, I think we need to be honest and transparent about the whole process.
Thank you very much.
Scott Crawford Morrison works in the UK classical music sector, and is a founding member of the Green Arts Initiative Steering Group. From 2016 to 2021 he was Projects and Development Manager with Scottish Ensemble in Glasgow. He is now Senior Development Manager at Sage Newcastle.
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.
A creative exchange between Cornwall + Scotland for a Scotland-based VAS member and Cornwall artist.
Visual Arts Scotland is delighted to announce ‘From One to Another’, our forthcoming partnership with the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, Borlase Smart John Wells Trustin Cornwall and Marchmont House, which will offer a VAS member the opportunity to spend a month-long residency at the Borlase Smart John Wells Trust in Newlyn, Cornwall and a Cornwall-based artist to take a month-long residency at Marchmont House in the Scottish Borders in November 2021.
This is an exciting partnership developed in recognition of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s connection to both Cornwall and Scotland, and we are excited to connect the selected artists and encourage dialogue around issues of practice and place across the breadth of the United Kingdom.
In a year where borders in the UK have been used to contain, protect and control in response to COVID-19, this residency gives space for artists to consider what connects us through ideas of collaboration, discussion and understanding differences to help forge relationships that break the boundaries of these invisible walls.
The Scotland-based VAS member resident will be based with the Borlase Smart John Wells Trust and will live and work in the newly renovated multi-use studio space in Newlyn, Penwith. This was once the studio to John Wells and Stanhope Forbes and has a strong historical connection to the rich artistic and cultural heritage of Cornwall and in particular Penwith.
The Cornwall-based artist will be resident for a month on the Estate of Marchmont House, a Palladian mansion built in 1750, based in the Scottish Borders. They will work in the Tower Studio, which is part of a newly created artist hub; Marchmont Creative Spaces. This hub was built to help support creatives with affordable work and community spaces and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the Borders. The artist will also take up residency in the Courtyard Cottage a few metres from the studio and be supported on site by the Marchmont House Creative Spaces Team.
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.
