Ashden Directory

Talking about climate change

May 26, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Climate Change, Cornwall, Digital Narrative, England London, Everyday Life, Everyday Lives, Falmouth, Gardeners, Guerrilla, Kindness, Meticulous Work, Night Time, Northern England, Peckham, Renewable Energy, Robert Butler, Spontaneous Acts, Twitter, Weather Reports, World War I

Jason's story

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Wallace Heim writes:Â

One of the explanations offered for why climate change is not more prominent in peopleâ€™s thinking is that itâ€™s not physically seen. It doesnâ€™t feel â€˜realâ€™ enough.

But a different view comes out in the stories people tell about how climate change is immediately altering their everyday lives. The climate is changing how they feel about the world and their decisions about what to do.

Project ASPECT, based at University College Falmouth, is gathering peopleâ€™s stories about climate change from individuals and communities in Wales, northern England, London and Cornwall. Building a digital narrative archive, they are capturing on DVD how people talk about the climate in the context of their everyday lives.

There are those who watch. Heather continues the diary her mother started, recording every day what work is done on the family farm and the weather. Duncan and Matt are surfers in Cornwall, watching the storms. There are those who work with renewable energy, or, like Hanna, find green jobs for young people. Many are changing the way they grow food and eat: Mary from Incredible Edible; Owen with his backyard in Peckham; and masked night-time Ninja guerrilla gardeners. Singers, rappers, athletes tell their stories. Spontaneous acts of community kindness sit alongside the meticulous work of digitising the weather reports from World War I shipâ€™s logs.

In these stories of everyday life, there is a cultural reality emerging, soft-voiced, but pressing.

Six films on culture and climate change

May 23, 2012Ashden Directory20th Anniversary, Alliance FranÃ§Aise, Associate Editor, Austrian Embassy, British Council, Climate Change, Cultural Partners, Culture Change, Earth Summit In Rio, Features Interviews, Goethe Institut, Gutman, Interviews News, Italian Institute, Metaphors, Precarious Relationship, Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro Information, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Twitter

About Water - 2007 a film about our precarious relationship with water

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Kellie Gutman writes:

Filmbase, in Dublin, is presenting climate.culture.change, Â a series of films from six European countries, and discussions, through 12 June on culture and climate change. A collaboration between CultivateÂ and the EUNIC European cultural partners: Goethe Institut, British Council, Austrian Embassy, Alliance FranÃ§aise and the ItalianÂ Institute of Culture, with additional funding from the European Commission, this film and discussion series is a lead-up to Rio +20, the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Information on the program available here

Carbon-lite touring

May 22, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Bear Project, Bicycles, Carbon Footprint, Cast And Crew, Climate Change, Director Joe, Features Interviews, Interviews News, Joe Douglas, Metaphors, Panniers, Polar Bear, Polar Bears, Production Director, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter, World Wildlife Fund

The Last Polar Bears on tour

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Wallace Heim writes:Â

The carbon footprint of a production meets the content of the play in the National Theatre of Scotlandâ€™s tour of their climate change play The Last Polar Bears. For the 350-mile tour, everything needed for the show will be carried by the cast and crew on bicycles made from reclaimed bikes. The vinyl panniers are made from recycled National Theatre of Scotland banners.

As part of the productionâ€™s legacy, the National Theatre of Scotland will donate to the World Wildlife Fund’s Adopt a polar bearÂ project on behalf of the 18 primary schools on the tour.

Alongside the production, director Joe Douglas will use the tour to interview people, â€˜taking the temperature of how people are feeling about climate change.’

Floating platforms

May 13, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Beneficiary, blog, Climate Change, Economist, Eggs, Features Interviews, Floating Platforms, Flowers, Insect, Interviews News, Metaphors, Pacific Ocean, Reflection, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter, United Kingdom

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A new study shows that plastic in the Pacific Ocean has increased 100 times over the last 40 years.The only beneficiary, reports The Economist, is Halobates sericeus, “a small insect that now has lots of nice little floating platforms on which to lay its eggs”.

Soap operas for social change

May 5, 2012Ashden Directory1950s, 28 April, Associate Editor, Bbc, Bbc Radio Program, Climate Change, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Land Mines, Listeners, Metaphors, Reflection, Robert Butler, Significant Influence, Six Ways, Soap Opera, Soap Operas, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter

The Archers, courtesy BBC

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Kellie Gutman writes;

The BBC have looked into soap operas as agents for social change and have discovered in some cases they have changed the world. Â From the longest-running program, The Archers, which encouraged farmers in the 1950s to increase production by trying out new techniques, to a BBC radio program in Afghanistan, calledNew Home, on women’s rights, which taught listeners how to avoid land mines, the soap opera has had a significant influence.

A two-part programme on Your World (part 1, 21 April; part 2, 28 April) can be heard here.

SHINSAI: Theaters for Japan

April 5, 2012Ashden DirectoryAmerican Playwrights, Climate Change, Creative Activity, Earthquake Disaster, International Peers, Japanese Earthquake, Japanese Society, Japanese Word, John Weidman, Licoln Center, National Public Radio, Nuclear Accident, Pacific Overtures, President Of Japan, Primordial Power, Rehearsal Spaces, Robert Butler, Stephen Sondheim, Theater Artists, Theatre Communications Group, Tohoku Region

Practicing for SHINSAI. Photo Erin Baiano/Licoln Center Theater

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Kellie Gutman writes:

A unique event took place at 69 theatres across the United States on March 11, the one-year anniversary of the devastating Japanese earthquake. Â Called SHINSAI – the Japanese word for an earthquake disaster – it was a series of readings of ten-minute plays to raise funds for the Japan Playwrights Association.

Some theatres held one or two readings before their normally scheduled productions; others made an evening of presenting many of the plays and songs put together for the event. Â More than half of the plays have to do with the environmental disaster in Japan. To read the plays, register here

The Theatre Communications Group helped to organize SHINSAI. Japanese and American playwrights wrote works for the event; Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman reworked two songs from their 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. All plays were to be presented only on March 11.

National Public Radio did a story, which you can hear here.

Yoji Sakate, President of Japan Playwrights Association wrote:

Theater artists in Japan, centered around those living in the Tohoku region that was devastated by the great earthquake and nuclear accident, extend our hand to theater artists around the world to rebuild Tohuku and Japanese society, restoring the conditions that surround the art of theater, such as environments for creative activity, theater buildings, companies, rehearsal spaces, education and audiences. Â We seek to work with our international peers to demonstrate the potential of human beings and the theater to overcome adversity as well as the primordial power of expression on stage.

Warm winter, early blooms

March 31, 2012Ashden Directory10 Year Olds, Associate Editor, Atlanta Georgia, Blooms, Climate Change, Daffodil, East Coast, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Maths Skills, Metaphors, Miles Per Hour, Northern Tip, Paideia School, Robert Butler, Route 1, Sign Of Spring, Snowfall, Southern Tip, Twitter, Warm Winter

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Kellie Gutman writes:

Our yearly collaboration with the Paideia School, in Atlanta Georgia has just wrapped up. Â Each year they send a pre-written postcard, ready to be filled in with a date, for the first spotting of a blooming daffodil. Â All of those who receive cards are within 5 miles of U.S. Route 1, which stretches from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Maine. Â As the cards return to the school, they are used by the Â 9- and 10-year olds to plot the advance of spring on a map. Â When all the cards are in they use their maths skills to figure out the rate at which spring advances.

This year the winter was unseasonably warm on the east coast. In Boston, where the snowfall average is 41.3 inches, we have received only 9.1 inches. Â This is only a tenth of an inch more than the least snowiest winter on record.

Last year the first daffodil was spotted on April 5th. Â This year it was three and a half weeks earlier on March 12. Â We will have to wait until all the cards have been returned to see if spring in general was much earlier this year.

TippingPoint makes a step-change

March 30, 2012Ashden DirectoryAlan Davey, Climate Change, Consensus Views, Conway, Debates, Deniers, Energetic Work, Englan, Institutional Interests, Isle Of Eigg, Kevin Anderson, Many Things, Matt Ridley, Newcastle, Open Structure, Participant, Rhetoric And Argumentation, sustainability, Tbd, Tippingpoint, Tp Events

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Wallace Heim writes: The TippingPoint last month, co-hosted by the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability, made a step-change from previous TP events. Many of the same elements were there, but something shifted. Something sparked in the combination of TPâ€™s open structure and those participants, those presentations, the talk, the room and the city. It felt as if many things were converging, and instead of being an event proposing or speculating that culture and the arts could be important responses to climate change, it was an event going with and propelling the diverse and energetic work that is being made, and being dreamt of.

The presentations in more conventional conference form, many now online, were provocative, each presenting a distinct direction and raising questions that filtered through the rest of the event. Kevin Anderson and Matt Ridley’s heated head-to-head (“Two men slugging it out over data” as one participant named it) exemplified adversarial strategies and the ways in which the â€˜deniersâ€™ and those who accept the consensus views of science tend to define one anotherâ€™s arguments, leaving a blank between them. It also brought out the difficulties of seeing and critiquing the rhetoric and argumentation in debates that rely on scientific data.

Lucy Conway presented the artwork that is the Isle of Eigg, and how the population there is realising low-carbon, high socially and culturally benefitted living. Ben Twist from Zero Carbon Scotland +TBD, introduced the problem of whether art can, or should, be linked to behavioural change. Erica Whyman from Northern Stage showed how the major cultural organisations in Newcastle are collaborating across their business and institutional interests, and building a network that could include developing plans for material sustainability. The idea of organisational collaboration returned in Alan Daveyâ€™s announcement of Arts Council Englandâ€™s decision to embed environmental sustainability into its funding agreement.

On the last day, Sue Gill, of Dead Good Guides led everyone in singing a version of â€˜All Things Bright and Beautifulâ€™ before John Fox gave his reflections on the transitions in art-making from commercialised spectacle to vernacular art, to ‘random acts of culture’. “Even if the markets fail, we must not tolerate the failure of imagination.”

The three days were planned to allow for chance conversations and random mixing in small groups, like the â€˜Show and Tellâ€™ session, where participants bring an object with meaning for them relating to climate change. Some of these personal and emotive exchanges drifted into the wider discussions. The three Open Space sessions had themes, the first two mostly ignored: ‘In what ways might I influence the future’ and ‘Exploring Possibilities’, in favour of peopleâ€™s more immediate concerns. The third, ‘What am I going to do about the future’, drew out dozens of groups talking about their projects, and help that could be given to them.

The openness of TP makes reporting back very subjective. It did feel as if something happened, more than presentations and networking. The unrepeatable, and well-facilitated, combination of the people, the ideas, the timing came together to make an event that showed and advanced the many edges of social and artistic action.Audio recordings of the presentations, tweets, blogs, interviews and commentaries with participants and some of the evenings’ entertainment are on Amplified. Photos above posted on Amplified by quitexander.

‘The Great Immensity’ does a ‘Greenland’

March 10, 2012Ashden DirectoryAmbassadors, Barro Colorado Island, Cargo Container, Cerveris, Churchill Manitoba, Climate Change, Climate Summit, Conce, Contingency Plan, Flashbacks, Heretic, Immensity, Kansas City Star, Mcgeary, Musical Sketches, National Science Foundation, Panama Canal, Rebecca Hart, Robert Trussell, Scientific Information, Steve Waters, Theatrical Entertainment, Twin Sister, Vaudeville

pic: from left: Rebecca Hart, Dan Domingues, Meghan McGeary and Todd Cerveris in 'The Great Immensity'

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In the last couple of years a number of plays about climate change have beenÂ staged in London from Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan toÂ the multi-authored Greenland at the National Theatre and Richard Bean’s TheÂ Heretic.Â The Contingency Plan was funny, dramatic andÂ accurate;Â Greenland was not very dramatic, not very funny and accurate; andÂ The Hereticwas very funny, quite dramatic and fairly inaccurate.

Meanwhile, this blog has been waiting since 2010Â for the results of the substantial grant of $750,000 (Â£470,000) from the US National Science FoundationÂ for a new play about climate change by The Civilians theatre company. The reviews for The Great Immensity are now in. It sounds as if it has made some of the same mistakes as Greenland.

So what happens in The Great Immensity? The set-up is that a character called Phyllis arrives at Barro Colorado Island, a rainforest and research reserve in the middle of the Panama Canal, in search of her twin sister Polly, a filmmaker who has suddenly disappeared. The researchers on the island help Phyllis reconstruct her sisterâ€™s last days through flashbacks, video interviews from Pollyâ€™s hard drive, and vaudeville musical sketches. Phyllis learns that Polly was engaged in a project to do with the upcoming Auckland Climate Summit. The action then moves to Churchill, Manitoba, where Earth Ambassadors and others disclose what happened to Polly.

Robert Trussell in the Kansas City StarÂ calls it a â€œrisk-taking showâ€and an â€œunwieldy cargo container of theatrical virtues and deficienciesâ€.

Victor Wishna, in the KCMetropolis, an online journal of the performing arts,Â takes the viewthat what theatre does best is provoke, rather than educate or entertain. Although well-performed, he finds it a single-issue, educational show, with no subplots or diversions from the message of the irreversible damage that humans have done to the planet.

Climate is culture

March 8, 2012Ashden DirectoryArtist David, Associate Editor, British Artist, Cape Farewell, Climate Change, Communication Gap, Feature Article, Features Interviews, Gap, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Robert Butler, S David, Six Ways, Social Issues, Societal Changes, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter

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Kellie Gutman writes:

The feature article in the March issue of Nature Climate Change is written by Cape Farewell‘s David Buckland, and is titled Climate is Culture.

A pioneering project that was set up to bridge a perceived communication gap between the science of climate change and the deep societal changes required to avoid dangerous impacts is explained by its creator in Nature Climate Change this week. Â In 2001, British artist David Buckland founded the Cape Farewell project, which he feels attempts to address one of the most pressing social issues of our time.

Read the full article here.