10 November 2023: We held a Green Tease at The Stove Network in Dumfries exploring landownership, land justice and the role of culture.

The evening started with a shared community meal, giving attendees space to talk and get to know each other. Maja Rimer, our culture/SHIFT officer, introduced Creative Carbon Scotland’s work and highlighted that the climate crisis is a cultural issue.

Richard Bracken, Highland-based artist and maker, presented his work with The Abriachan Forest Trust. Artists and Community Landowners is a collaborative project, working with the community to tell the story of their landownership journey through a series of handmade walking sticks. The sticks represent a connection between the hand and the land, an object held by an individual that can be passed on to others, along with local knowledge and insight.

Richard passed the engraved walking sticks around the room, allowing people to get familiar with them before setting off on an artistic walk in Dumfries, through the town centre, by the river Nith and back to The Stove. People were encouraged to write a short response, reflection or dedication from the walk, and attach these to a walking stick that was left at The Stove as an artefact of the event.

‘…it was interesting to see how the sticks could function as objects for prompting different communities to talk about themselves and their possible futures. I did feel that walking with this particular collection of sticks helped to give the walk a purpose beyond simply reaching a destination. Some of the discussions I had with people while we walked were to do with connecting to land and local landmarks on a personal level, while others spoke of their involvement in existing community groups and focus on the climate crisis.’

Richard Bracken

John Wheeler, one of our panellists, felt that the active, artistic approach engaged the attendees, including the younger generations:

‘We all know something of the power of the staff – in stories from the Old Testament to Gandalf’s Middle Earth. Our grandchildren are forever wanting to cut, carve and whittle staffs. The 14-year-old who came with us on that walk was totally engaged with Richard’s walking sticks. He is a naturally artistically inclined lad, but I have never seen him quite so willing to chum a flock of grown-ups on an (environmental) dusk walk as he did that night.’

At the panel discussion, Linsay Chalmers, Development Manager at Community Land Scotland, spoke about campaigning and policy change, the Landownership Bill and supporting communities to tell their own stories. Martin O’Neill, Artistic Director at The Stove Network, described The Stove’s work in the community and how they facilitate people’s exploration of the concept of ownership. He emphasised the role of artists in this work, including the work of Richard Bracken, who discussed the unique position of artistic freelancers, and their ability to empower people to reclaim a fundamental connection to land through creative projects. John Wheeler from community group Nith Life, a local storyteller, explained the need for the protection of river Nith and emphasised the power of building connections.

‘It was fantastic…to be able to contribute to the panel discussion alongside Linsay, John and Martin, who were able to bring local and national perspectives. I would hope that in terms of the conversation around community landownership, the evening served as part of an ongoing process of people gaining inspiration, identifying challenges and forming ideas together.’

Richard Bracken

The panel answered questions and issues highlighted by the attendees including: How do we empower local indigenous defenders and support people mobilising? What does it mean to be creative? How do we use the culture of landownership to dismantle the culture of ownership? What does it mean for landownership to be radical? Should it be seen as such?

‘The Green Tease event was perfectly timed regionally. Dumfries, in particular, is in a unique place with regards to landownership and grassroots conservation. The opportunity to connect communities with larger infrastructures and sectors across the arts and ecology is really happening and it feels as though we are ready to move forward in a beautifully creative way, connecting artistic process with grassroots activism.’

Martin O’Neill

Further resources

The Stove – Artists and Community Landowners: Meet the Artists: Richard Bracken

Artists and Community Landowners project and podcast series

Community Land Scotland 100 years of community landownership project

Dumfries and Galloway Regional Arts Fund

Dumfries and Galloway Regional Community Fund

About Green Tease

This event took place as part of the Green Tease events series and network, a project organised by Creative Carbon Scotland, bringing together people from arts and environmental backgrounds to discuss, share expertise, and collaborate. Green Tease forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme. 

(Top image: ID: Tags with handwritten notes and reflections hanging from a stick.)

The post Reflecting on: Radical landownership, community and creativity appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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We are pleased to announce that we are funding three new projects run by Climate Beacons partnership in the first half of 2024, taking place in Argyll, Caithness and Fife. These projects continue to build on the previous work done by the Climate Beacons, which were originally established in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow.

Argyll

In Argyll, ACT and Cove Park will be working together on developing a Rainforest Community Network that brings together landowners and local communities around the shared goal of preserving the region’s temperate rainforests of the region, with a particular focus on Kintyre and Tighnabruaich. Activities will include an artists-in-schools programme, guided nocturnal walks, family events and volunteering opportunities as well as an important ‘pledge day’ where community members will be invited to guarantee their future involvement in restoring and conserving the rainforests.

‘We are delighted to have the opportunity to work together again on this important project. Thanks to funding from Creative Carbon Scotland, we will establish the first ‘Rainforest Community Network’. A project designed to connect communities with their landscape and with each other through creative engagement and community empowerment.’ – Emma Henderson, Curator of Engagement, Cove Park

Caithness & Sutherland

In Caithness, Lyth Arts Centre (LAC) is presenting Climate Beacons Film Festival 2024, a film programme focused on climate issues in Scotland and beyond, covering themes like Scottish deer management, remote environmentalism, ancestral knowledge and indigenous practice, and global industrial impact and land use. Each screening will take place in a carefully chosen and thematic location – a Highland estate, a forest croft, a community hall next to a stone quarry. Their programme will be hosted by special guests to create spaces for conversation, engagement and a chance for everyone present to dissect the themes.

LAC is working with local groups including Wick High School, Natures Path Natural Ways, and Thurso Community Café.

‘After the success of our 2023 Climate Beacons Film Festival, we are so excited to be able to deliver a 2024 version across Caithness & Sutherland. The winters are long and dark here, it’s really important for us to be able to offer our communities ‘beacon’ events to gather, share food and get into the nitty gritty of what climate action in the North HIghlands is and could be.’ – Sinéad Hargan, Co-Director and Programme Curator, LAC

Fife

In Fife, Levenmouth Academy is working with Midgie Bite Media to create a documentary film produced by pupils at the school about what climate change means for their area. This documentary will show the story of high carbon to low carbon in an area that once had the highest level of coal exports in Scotland, and has since been neglected and suffered the consequences, but is now leading the way in a green transformation.

‘We’re excited about making a film with pupils reflecting on the green transformation of Levenmouth It’s fantastic to have this opportunity to do something so creative and ambitious. We literally have no idea what this is going to look like!’ – Duncan Zuill, Teacher, Levenmouth Academy

You can find out more about Climate Beacons on the project page.

Creative Carbon Scotland’s role in this project forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme, which promotes how the arts and culture can transform society in response to climate change.

(Top image ID: A group of people in warm outdoor clothing, some carrying umbrellas, standing in a forest setting. Courtesy of ACT in Argyll.)

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11 October 2023: Experts in climate justice and creative climate education gathered at Leith Community Croft to explore what intergenerational climate justice is, why it matters and how culture can be a way of giving a voice to future generations.

Children and future generations are at the forefront of bearing the burdens of the climate crisis. Yet, they have little say over the decisions that will affect them more than anyone. Intergenerational justice argues that children have the right to be heard, that the climate crisis is a human rights issue and that climate action must reflect the needs and voices of everyone impacted. The complex interaction of the climate crisis with existing inequalities and injustices is an area where the arts and cultural sector can play a role in developing understanding and breaking down barriers to children participating in climate action.  

To get the Green Tease started, three leading experts on intergenerational climate justice provided inspiration with their practice and perspectives on the role creative industries should be aiming for.

We heard from Dr Elizabeth Cripps, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh. Liz is a well-known expert in climate justice and ethics and author of What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care and Parenting on Earth: A Philosopher’s Guide to Doing Right by Your Kids – and Everyone Else. She focused on climate justice and inequalities – while older generations are responsible for climate change, younger generations are facing more of the impacts while having less opportunities to influence climate policy. Therefore, children should have the right to be heard. One option to improve this could be to lower the voting age, as Liz suggested. On the role of art, Liz commented on the importance of telling new stories and reaching people in different ways.

Lucy Power is a co-director of Rowanbank Environmental Arts and Education. Together with Arran Sheppard she runs Positive Imaginings, a creative climate education project based on woodland performances, providing children an opportunity to imagine a positive future in the midst of the climate emergency. In her talk she emphasized that using creative practices can create fairer opportunities for participation in climate action. As an example of her own practice of doing this, she highlighted that in the run up to COP26, they facilitated the creation of a beautiful and moving soundscape of children’s voices, the Positive Imaginings Soundscape. She also highlighted the importance of not just reaching people, but providing them with opportunities to take part and share. 

Our final panellist, Alyson MacKay, is an operations co-ordinator at 2050 Climate Group, who work to empower Scotland’s Young Leaders to lead action on tackling our climate crisis. Alyson provided a more personal reflection on perspectives on climate change as a young person and discussed issues around eco-anxiety and disempowerment of young people in relation to climate change. She advocated for a more genuine engagement with young people.

Outdoor workshop 

After the panel discussion, we utilised the outdoor space of Leith Community Croft for an activity organised by Lucy Power. Here she invited participants to find their own space in nature, not talk to anybody and just sit with their thoughts and feelings.

Lucy then placed three bowls of water on the ground each with a paper cup next to it and told us we should line up behind each bowl and move the water into three empty bowls placed a few metres away. We all assumed it was a contest and started racing to move the water. The cups had holes in them, and most of the water was lost on the way. Afterwards Lucy pointed out that she never told us it was competitive, and showed how if the three cups were stacked up, you could move the water without losing any through the holes. She explained we are preconditioned to compete, but collaboration would have got the job done better. Lucy uses methods like this with children, to help shift their mindsets and teach them to think differently, away from the individual and fast-paced thinking that society can urge us towards.

We then were given some clay and wool and were asked to create something that would represent our ideas about what we would like Edinburgh to look like in a sustainable future. Time was limited, but we created small sculptures and a web of wool tying various people together, symbolising having an awareness of how our lives are interconnected and living in a way that reflects that. Other installations focused on the future of housing and streets, access, transport and communities. 

Back in the room, we had paper and crayons to write down our thoughts about intergenerational justice in response to set prompts. The conversation was quite free flowing at this point and ‘doodling’ with the pens helped to keep it informal. Some of the thoughts that came up doing discussions were: 

• Not everyone has the time or resources to participate in climate action. How do we account for that? 
• Let’s ask children how they would like to get involved, instead of imposing ‘adult’ structures on them. 
• Too much focus on individual rather than systemic change. 
• Children should also be allowed to be young, to play, to have joy in their lives. 
• We need more hopeful, rather than technical and scientific language. Is there a way to use children’s vocabulary in order to create new climate communication?
• Using storytelling to communicate. The vital role of imagination.
• Showing rather than telling. Watching rather than asking.
• Considering the emotional elements of the climate. Science is not good at thinking about emotional wellbeing, especially that of children.
• Consultations and surveys are not the best way of gathering information, especially from children. 

About Green Tease

This event took place as part of the Green Tease events series and network, a project organised by Creative Carbon Scotland, bringing together people from arts and environmental backgrounds to discuss, share expertise, and collaborate. Green Tease forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme. 

(Top image: ID: People standing outside in Edinburgh holding long pieces of string between them.)

The post Reflecting on: Intergenerational climate justice and culture appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Loco Home Retrofit CIC are looking for visual output from neighbourhood envisioning workshop to be held in February in Glasgow.

As part of a project funded by the Climate Engagement Fund, we are holding a community participatory envisioning workshop in South Glasgow on a date yet to be confirmed in February.

The workshop will explore what climate change might mean for the neighbourhood in terms of impacts, adaptation, community resilience and emissions mitigation.

We are looking for a visual artist or creative designer/illustrator to produce an output in any medium: paint, sketch, digital, etc.

Separately we are recruiting a visual minute taker, therefore we are not looking for visual minutes for this commission.

Ideally the creator will also be able to facilitate the workshop.

The budget is £2300 plus up to £500 for materials.

Please send your portfolio or brief summary of similar past work and a few lines explaining why you think you would be suitable to info@locohome.coop. Please also indicate your availability in February. We are looking to make a contracting decision within the next 10 days.

(Top image ID: People holding a discussion at a meeting, with sheets, pens and mug on the table. Credit: Loco Home Retrofit CIC, Ltd. [supplied])

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Renowned Just Stop Oil activist Louise Harris moves from the streets to the studio, to release first ever climate song to reach UK iTunes No.1. ‘We Tried’ is a song about the climate crisis and what will happen if we don’t act.

With Chris Packham calling for it to be this year’s Christmas No.1, Louise Harris’s new climate single, ‘We Tried’, hit No.1 in the UK iTunes Singles Chart one week after its release, overtaking the likes of Dua Lipa and The Beatles.

The climate anthem, also backed by Brian Eno and Christiana Figueres (Chief Negotiator of the 2015 Paris Agreement), immediately entered the Big Top 40 Chart from Global – announced No.27 on Sun 26 November and No.26 on Sun 3 December. This is the first time a song about the climate crisis has achieved such popularity. Louise will be donating all proceeds to climate causes.

Up until now, Louise was only known for being the Just Stop Oil protestor who filmed herself crying on top of a gantry over the M25, her emotional testimony going internationally viral this time last year. This protest led to Louise’s arrest, and she was remanded to prison for eight days. She has now re-entered the public eye, however, with a powerful song and music video ‘about the climate crisis and what will happen if we don’t act’. She recently sang the song outside of Rishi Sunak’s house as part of a Just Stop Oil protest and was unexpectedly arrested.

Now facing a suspended sentence, Louise has turned to music to express her grief, despair and anger at the escalating climate crisis and lack of appropriate action from governments.

‘We Tried’ is deliberately written from the perspective of our currently projected future of irreversible climate catastrophe (‘We ran out of time…oh well, we tried’). Louise hopes this song will allow people to feel how they would feel if this future happened, and then use that feeling to spur themselves into the only hopeful solution left – collective climate action.

The powerful music video, which has already been shared by Chris Packham, Brian Eno, Adam McKay, Christiana Figueres and Dave Goulson, centres on a tear-stricken Louise and is interspersed with childhood videos, footage of politicians, climate victims and activist movements past and present. The emotive lyrics talk of an avoidable defeat: ‘Well, maybe we were meant to win… but not enough good drowned out the sin… they watched the world cave in.’

The video fades to footage of Louise’s famous gantry action where she pleads through tears: ‘I’m here because I don’t have a future…Why does it take young people like me, up on a…gantry on the M25, for you to listen?’

It ends with the message: ‘It’s not too late to avoid irreversible climate catastrophe.’ ‘There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.’ (IPCC Report, March 2023). ‘We have time – but not for long. Join collective action today.’

‘I wrote “We Tried” back in July 2022, three days after my 24th birthday, an age which children born today may never reach. The song expresses feelings of grief, anger, a longing to be taken somewhere else, and exhaustion at living in a world where you are constantly being gaslit – by the media, politicians, and, hardest of all, by people you love. The message of my song and video is this: The climate crisis affects me and my family, you and yours. No one is exempt. It has been created by a few handfuls of people in power who, I’ve concluded, must not know what love is. But what matters is – I know what love is. You know what love is. We know. And together, we outnumber the people in power eight billion times over. So what are we waiting for? There is still time to save things. We must come together, and act – not as individuals, but as a collective – through civil disobedience, protest, a mass movement. Can we truthfully say “we tried”? Where are all the songs and films and plays about this life-threatening emergency? Music and art have a unique power to move people emotionally, and empower them into action. Historically, they have been instrumental in bringing about social change, in sparking revolutions. It’s time to do it again. After all – if art can’t change the world, what can?’

Louise Harris

This climate anthem is just the beginning of Louise’s music activism journey, with plans to release an entire climate album in 2024, if she reaches her goal of £20,000.

‘It’s a beautiful song. It’s melodic. It’s “catchy”, it’s “pop”, it’s “sing-along”. It’s lovely, isn’t it…? No, it isn’t. It’s…horrific, terrifying and tragic. Listen to it, hear every desperate note, each lingering plea. Don’t just look at, see the pictures. Read the music, read the room, our planet’s youth in abject distress. This is their voice, their cry, their tears laid bare. So ask yourself: do you want this to be the ultimate anthem for doomed youth, a threnody for their funeral? It’s beautiful, beautiful for its razor sharp honesty, beautiful for its truth, beautiful for its purity of frightened heart. Please listen, please learn, please act.’

Chris Packham, Naturalist and TV Broadcaster

‘I often talk about facing the climate and ecological crises head on: not shying away from the pain and in fact using it to generate the clarity of what needs to be done. Here’s a young woman doing just that with this song: musician and activist Louise Harris. A powerful song. Thank you Louise.’

Christiana Figueres, Former UN Climate Change Executive Secretary & Chief Negotiator of landmark 2015 Paris Agreement

‘It is the young who will reap the global heating whirlwind that we have sown, but their voices are being ignored and their protests shut down at every opportunity. What better way than music for them to announce their fears and demands to a world that has to listen.’

Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards, UCL

‘This beautiful and moving song is a powerful weapon. We need to wake up to the cowardly inertia of our governments, to the greedy short-sightedness of business-as-usual, and to the numbing distractions of the media. This song woke me up. I hope it gets centuries of airtime.’

Brian Eno, musician and producer

About Louise Harris

Louise Harris is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter who grew up in a small town in Hertfordshire. She started writing songs during her second year of university, aged 19, an art she has since fallen in love with.

After graduating university with a psychology degree, Louise worked in various hospitality jobs whilst pursuing a music career. In 2021, she went TikTok viral with her song ‘dating me is like a Cambridge term’ (over 500,000 views) which BBC Radio 6’s Tom Robinson featured on his Introducing Mixtape, comparing it to the ‘revenge songs of Bob Dylan and Lily Allen’. Her recent 2023 pop-punk [2.0] version was worked on with award-winning producer Jonathan Quarmby.

Following being picked up by Amie Dibba from Ferocious Talent, which led to her signing to Ferocious Talent Publishing, Louise wrote and sung the top-line for hit single ‘Change Of Heart’ (13 million Spotify streams), co-released in Dec 2021 with major producers SOMMA & Paul Schulze, via the highly reputed house label ‘Selected’. Dance music is one of Louise’s favourite genres, as are pop & singer-songwriter. Her musical influences include Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, James Arthur, Matt Maltese and RAYE.

Having spent the most part of 2022 being arrested and even imprisoned for taking non-violent direct climate action with Just Stop Oil and Animal Rising, Louise is now seeking to release music that enables people to emotionally connect with this existential threat, and be moved and empowered to collectively fight it.

If art can’t change the world, what can?

(Top image ID: Artist Louise Harris holding a banner that says ‘WE TRIED’. [supplied])

The post News: First ever climate song to reach UK iTunes No.1 appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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