Deveron Projects is looking for a new treasurer for immediate engagement, and additional general board members.

This is an exciting time to join a passionate team in the ongoing development of an innovative, international arts organisation in the North East of Scotland.

We are looking for new board members/trustees to support and guide the organisation through an exciting phase of development. We are welcoming expressions of interest for a treasurer and general board members, people with a passion for arts and culture with knowledge/experience across arts and culture, community and organisational development, locally, nationally or internationally based.

Our programme, the artists we support and the communities we are part of are diverse, made of individuals with varied and intersecting lived experiences. We’re committed to forming a board of trustees that is representative of the diversity in our communities. We are therefore particularly keen to hear from people who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community, who are BPOC and/or have mixed heritage, people who are disabled and/or are aged under 40 as these broad lived experiences are currently not represented on our board.

As we are a registered charity the role of trustee is unpaid, although we can reimburse reasonable travel and subsistence, childcare and carer expenses. You need not have previous board experience and we are committed to training and capacity building across the team. Our board meets approximately four times a year for hours hours at a time.

For more information on these positions, please read our information pack: https://www.deveron-projects.com/about/opportunities/

To apply to join our board, please send a cover letter telling us more about you and why you would like to join our team alongside a CV to Natalia Palombo: natalia@deveron-projects.com by 11.59pm, 24 May 2023. If you’d like to discuss this position informally, please contact Natalia by email or on 01466 794 494.

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27 March 2023: At this event, we spend an afternoon at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where we through creative and scientific means explored the role of trees in the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse. 

This Green Tease event took place at the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) and provided an opportunity for creative practitioners and environmentalists to learn and make connections on sustainable tree planting in Scotland. The event started with Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes RBGE and artist Keg de Souza introducing the exhibition Shipping Roots followed by a guided walk by Dr Max Coleman before we all met at the Botanics Cottage to discuss sustainable forestry and the role of creative practice in ensuring this. The discussions were informed by presentations from Pat Snowden from Scottish Forestry and ecological artist Dr Cathy Fitzgerald. This event was organised in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh.  

Speakers 

Keg de Souza. Artist of Goan ancestry who lives and works on Gadigal land and explores the politics of space through temporary architecture, food, mapping and dialogues. Until the end of October Keg de Souza will be in residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh researching their collections and tracing colonial legacies through the movement of plants between the UK, India and Australia. Keg de Souza spoke about the exhibition Shipping Roots, which explores how plants have moved through the British Empire including eucalyptus, prickly pear and many seedlings which came to the UK in sheep fleeces. The exhibition highlights the role of art in linking the story of plants, history, and people in a physical space, opening up dialogues and imaginaries that are critical in finding solutions to the climate crisis. 

Dr Max Coleman. Science Communicator for the Botanics. Max Coleman has had an interest in trees for as long as he can remember. He worked for a number of years in nature conservation, and developed an interest in natural forests and the processes that operate within them. As a science communicator, he aims to make plant science accessible and engaging. Max Coleman guided us through how and why a shift to natural regeneration is positive for plants, people and planet. 

Emma Nicolson. Head of Creative Programmes was appointed to RBGE in December 2018. She formerly served as founding director of ATLAS Arts based in the Isle of Skye and spent three years as a senior manager for Australia’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Emma has been actively involved in the arts for over twenty years working with leading cultural institutions across the world. Emma Nicolson introduced the new exhibition and spoke about RBGE work with artists in residence and their determination to work with ecological issues.  

Pat Snowden. Head of Economics and Woodland Carbon Code at Scottish Forestry. Pat Snowden covered research on CO2 removals generated by planting different types of woodland and provided background to the Woodland Carbon Code, which is the UK’s government-backed, voluntary carbon market standard that helps companies become carbon neutral. He highlighted how Scotland is creating 75 % of all new woodland in the UK and how this is an effective carbon sink, and that the government is planting at least 4000 ha each year (!) of native woodland. 

Dr Cathy Fitzgerald. Ecological artist based in Ireland originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand. She works for a sustainable behaviour change through long-term ecological ‘ecosocial art practices’ and has developed the project “The Hollywood Forest Story” turning a conifer plantation destined for clear-fell into a permanent, species-rich productive forest using new continuous cover forestry methods. Cathy Fitzgerald shared her work exploring sustainable forestry through art practice with a focus on the consequences following the monoculture that comes from clear-fell forestry. She argued, that we must learn from Indigenous peoples that successfully protect 85% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity regions. You can watch the full recording below (very recommended).  

Discussions and visualisations 

Following these inspiring presentations people went to discuss the questions: How can we ensure more sustainable forestry in Scotland, and how can creative practice and art contribute to that?   

To sum up these discussions we had Artist and designer Alice Dansey-Wright visualize them. You can see the result here.  

The post Reflecting upon “The right tree in the right place” appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland’s Director Ben Twist offers some thoughts about how SPRINGBOARD went and what the next steps are.

As noted in a previous what and why blog, SPRINGBOARD: Assembly for creative climate action, began on 27 February 2023. We held the four-day online assembly as part of the long-term, collaborative SPRINGBOARD project, which aims to bring about transformational change in Scotland’s creative sector to help build a net-zero, climate-ready world. 

SPRINGBOARD is a jumping-off point for Creative Carbon Scotland and, we hope, for others. The waters we are leaping into are perhaps choppy and uncertain, but the reason for jumping is clear and present: the increasing urgency of the climate emergency. Alongside this, Creative Scotland’s Climate Emergency & Sustainability Plan provides a spur for action, asking the cultural and other sectors to think about what the plan means for them and how they can contribute. To push the metaphor further, the springboard provides some height enabling us to see more clearly where we want to get to and will provide extra energy to jump there.

Our idea for the online assembly was to bring together people with similar interests, nationally rather than locally (as in our local assemblies), and to encourage collaboration between climate- and culturally-focused organisations and individuals. There are challenges to working online, but it also means that people from Orkney and Dumfries can collaborate without having to travel. We were trying something new and we didn’t know whether it would work, but this first annual assembly had 12 cross-sectoral cohortsof people working on their shared interests, 28 speakers and more than 200 attendees.  

What have we learnt so far? 

I think we’re still absorbing the lessons and they’ll become clearer in coming weeks, both in terms of what they are and how we need to respond, but I want to offer some initial reflections or takeaways from my own experience of SPRINGBOARD 2023. 

We need transformational, not incremental change 

Alongside the aims I’ve mentioned above the online assembly also aimed to shift our own and others’ thinking about how we respond to the climate emergency. We’ve been doing good work in the cultural sector: energy use amongst Creative Scotland’s Regular Funded Organisations is down by around 35% since we started measuring; organisations are coming up with imaginative ways to reduce their emissions; some are starting to think about adapting to the climate impacts we can expect. But the trajectory to very low carbon is steep: we need massive reductions quickly. The changes we need to make are not simple or linear, and the reductions won’t be achieved by simply doing what we currently do more efficiently. Adapting to climate change will ask us all to rethink all sorts of elements of our work and lives. We need transformational change.  

During the assembly I showed a slide with a useful definition of transformational change from the health field, which I’ve also mentioned in that previous blog: 

The morning ’conference’ element of the assembly aimed to lead us all from a very quick introduction to what transformational change might look like within the cultural field (Carly McLachlan’s keynote on the super-low carbon road map for music touring), through why transformational change in wider society is necessary and how culture can help (Halliki Kreinin’s keynote on ‘Decolonising the social imaginary: degrowth, culture and new narratives of the good life’) to what transformational change might require in organisations and individuals (our keynote panel on enabling transformation). Interestingly this last was less about the practicalities of bringing about change on a large scale, as I had expected, and more about leadership, the need to be vulnerable, to accept you could be wrong and to be open to change yourself, as well as the need for collaboration with new and different partners. 

Our panel discussions also sought to widen the discussion from simple carbon management to more radical change, focusing on climate justice, adaptation and resilience, place-based working and the journey to net zero. All of these featured collaboration, and speakers from fields other than culture were keen to join the panels. 

Artistic interventions 

For the morning sessions, three poets were commissioned to write and/or perform their work, partly to demonstrate (as if we needed it) the power of art and partly to provide other perspectives. They certainly inspired us and I felt their words resonated and especially so when they touched on aspects of our own lives and experiences which is, of course, what all good art does. 

Access 

Assembly participants can access EventsAir and re/watch any of the sessions until the end of August 2023 by logging into the portal and proceeding to the auditorium. We are adding recordings of key sessions to a SPRINGBOARD showcase on our Vimeo site over the next few weeks so that they are available to everyone: some are already there. We also have a reading list of useful articles, websites and books relating to many of the sessions and the cohorts. 

The cohorts: collaborative working in real time 

The afternoon sessions focused on intra- and inter-sectoral collaborative working. Twelve cohorts of people with shared interests or concerns, proposed by individuals or groups that responded to our call for suggestions, met over four days. Most used a structure that we had developed based on our experience of two processes: 

• a systems-thinking process used by EIT Climate-KIC, the EU’s climate change innovation hub 
• a French workshop project we participated in last year 

We wanted to make sure that the collaborative work led to action that would continue after the assembly – too often (and this has been our experience) a workshop ends and there is no follow-up, no road map for continued work.  

Using the structure wasn’t compulsory and the aim was to provide a process that enabled different groups to focus on their field’s needs and aims. We at CCS didn’t want to dictate what should happen or what should be discussed. The cohort convenors deserve a round of applause for their commitment and work – it was a big ask. 

Many groups people found the cohort process useful, although undoubtedly it was rushed – a result of the tension between not wanting to ask people to meet online for long periods or commit to many hours of work time and trying to do some difficult collaborative thinking. Some people found the process restrictive, which possibly reflects the same issue: with more time it could have been more open. We will reflect, listen and learn from this. Encouragingly, 10 of the 12 cohorts have planned their next meetings, confirming that the work will continue outside the assembly. 

The outputs of all the cohorts are available for all to see on a Miro board here and a quick review of them reveals some common themes. Groups perceived some key blockages to systemic change to work on, including: 

• Funding models and possibly commissioners of art being focused on unsustainable outcomes and ways of working, and perhaps particularly focused on growth 
• A lack of knowledge and information within the sector – where to find suppliers or experts in more technical areas; understanding of concepts such as degrowth. This might be connected to a need for training and skills development in new areas which hadn’t previously been considered important for cultural practitioners and staff 
• A lack of awareness and understanding of the potential of culture and cultural practitioners in the transformation of society. This also relates to the need for support for freelancers – artists and others – if they are to contribute to this work 

A turning point, a jumping off point 

In January I outlined to the CCS team four objectives for SPRINGBOARD:  

1. Increase the climate ambitions of the cultural sector
2. Strengthen CCS’s own and others’ understanding of transformational change
3. Increase collaboration between cultural and non-cultural sectors
4. Help the cultural sector respond to Creative Scotland’s Climate Emergency & Sustainability Plan 

I’m confident we made good progress on all of these. I am particularly pleased that there seems to be both a desire for and a willingness to work for transformational change, which is difficult and long-term, with no easy answers. But there’s more. I am enthused by the interest shown in our post-event surveys in the concept of degrowth, which is a difficult idea to get your head around. And I finished the week knowing that around 150 people in the cohorts had committed time, energy and brain power to collaborative working on challenging problems. We at CCS had facilitated that, but the willingness and the effort belonged to others. This felt like the result of many years of work: the knowledge, interest and commitment of others was combining with ours to chart a way forward. We’ll be learning from and working with the cohorts as they progress through the year towards our next assembly in 2024.

The post SPRINGBOARD 2023: a short reflection appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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The Climate Fringe Festival will be back between 10 and 18 June for its 2023 edition.

The Climate Fringe Festival is a community-led and community-organised series of events taking place across the whole of Scotland. It’s Scotland’s call for action on climate change, and will take place between 10 and 18 June.

• Already organising an event for those dates?
• Have a campaign planned for that time?
• Want to organise an event with a focus on climate, nature, or sustainability?

The Climate Fringe would love to hear from you! Together, we can show decision-makers – including the new First Minister – that our communities are coming together across Scotland to call for strong action to tackle the climate and nature crises.

For more information, go to the website – https://climatefringe.org/cff – and make sure to subscribe to our organisers’ newsletter for the latest updates.

Funding grants are now available; you can find more information at https://climatefringe.org/cff-grants.

Add your voice to Scotland’s call for action on climate change as we demand meaningful action now – for a greener, low carbon, more sustainable future.

The post Opportunity: Climate Fringe Festival 2023 appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Multidisciplinary residence/commission working alongside Crichton Carbon Centre researchers.

The Crichton Carbon Centre (CCC) is seeking to commission an artist to create new work in relation to the environment of the Upper Blackwater of Dee catchment as part of our multi-disciplinary water quality research initiative, Water Cycle, part of our Peatland Connections project.

Water Cycle has three elements:

1. Physical Science to collect baseline water quality data at 13 sites along the Upper Blackwater of Dee catchment: pH levels, peat particulate content, and water temperature.
2. Citizen Science to actively involve people in the process of data collection and conversations arising from the project.
3. Contemporary Art to contextualise the catchment and landscape dynamics.

We welcome applications across all forms of contemporary practice including inter and transdisciplinary approaches.

Contemporary artists, like contemporary scientists, conduct research to reveal new insights into the world around us. Accordingly, art holds potential to contribute to new forms of knowledge production and new ways of seeing and understanding environmental issues and complexities. At CCC, we recognise that art approaches can be an innovative, potentially unconventional, means of data collection; and that through combining art and science approaches our capacity to connect to a landscape and begin to understand it is greatly deepened.

Application deadline: 27 March

Artist fee: £6,048.00 for a min of 18 days

For full details about the commission / residence and how to apply: https://www.carboncentre.org/work-for-ccc

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We are seeking an experienced freelancer with project management and arts engagement experience.

Chrysalis Arts Development (CAD), is seeking an experienced freelancer with project management and arts engagement experience to contribute to our current programme of creative development work. This is an exciting opportunity to work as part of a highly skilled and collaborative team on an innovative programme of place-based and environmental arts-led activity with a particular role in helping us to improve the reach and impact of our audience engagement.

A priority for this opportunity is contributing to the creative consultation programme for Marton Wood, a new ten-year Slow Art initiative in North Yorkshire. The introductory programme for this project has commenced and currently includes workshops and taster activities led by freelance artists, seasonal workshops with local schools, community consultation events and a programme of artist engagement activity.

The project manager will be responsible for organising and facilitating activities for schools, youth and community groups which are contributing to the project’s development, including attendance at regular workshops and other engagement sessions. The role will also involve research to extend the reach of the Marton Wood project, working closely with the rest of the CAD team to identify additional audiences and project partners, including underserved and isolated groups and contributing to the research and writing of an audience development plan.

Fee and time

The work is offered on a freelance basis for 1.5 days per week, based on a daily rate of £170 per day, including VAT if applicable. A day is based on 7 hours. Working hours may be flexible, although a regular working pattern is required. This contract is offered for an initial period of six months commencing in April 2023, due for completion by the end of October 2023, with the option of renewal subject to successful funding being secured.

Responsibilities

• Facilitation and co-ordination of engagement programmes of activity in conjunction with CAD’s core team. This will include research and consultation, particularly with schools and community groups, organisation of venues, liaison with artists and other workshop leaders, attendance at participatory sessions and gathering of participants feedback and other relevant information.
• Contributing to the planning and implementation of CAD’s current project work which focuses on community engagement, art and environmental issues and place.
• Contributing to the development of online community engagement content.
• Data collection, evaluation, and presentation of material and project information.
• Attendance at weekly team meetings – a combination of online and in-person.
• Contribution to the research and writing of an audience development plan to underpin this work.

Experience

Essential

• Knowledge/experience of arts and community engagement practice and project management
• Strong communication and facilitation skills and confidence in engaging with young people, older people and underserved groups
• Excellent organisational and planning abilities
• Experience in audience research, data collection, analysis and evaluation
• Flexibility, willingness to travel and work evenings and weekends as required
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team with a strong collaborative ethos

Desirable

• Knowledge of visual arts practice
• Enthusiasm for and understanding of CAD’s artistic and environmental goals and values
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team with a strong collaborative ethos
• Digital Skills

To apply

Please see the full job posting on our website [opens in a new tab]
Deadline for applications: Friday 24 March 2023

The post Job: Freelance Project Manager appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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As this post goes live, so too is SPRINGBOARD: Assembly for creative climate action going live online for the first of four days of collaboration, networking and thinking with more than 200 cross-sector delegates. It’s an apt moment to remind ourselves, and you, what SPRINGBOARD is and why we’re doing it. 

SPRINGBOARD is Creative Carbon Scotland’s response to the increasing urgency of the climate emergency.

Creative Carbon Scotland has been working on climate change with Scotland’s arts organisations and others for the past 11 years, and together we have done good work and made great progress. But the challenge has become more urgent, with tougher carbon reduction targets and the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change in Scotland and around the world, which we are seeing almost daily now. We need to step up our actions, our work.

We’re clear that culture – the arts, screen, creative industries, museums and heritage and libraries – needs to massively decarbonise to achieve zero carbon, and to be resilient in the face of a changed and changing climate. And we’re also clear that the rest of society needs to do the same, and that culture has a huge role to play in what will be a transformation of society. Art and culture help society think through difficult questions; cultural organisations enable communities to come together to do that thinking. Culture has knowledge, skills, ways of working and contacts to offer to those working on climate change; those climate change people have knowledge, technologies, finance and skills that culture needs. So, cultural- and climate-focused organisations and practitioners need to work together, and they need to work together at multiple levels. Deep decarbonisation and resilience can’t be achieved by anyone on their own.

Our aim with SPRINGBOARD is to strengthen the ambition of the cultural sector in this important work, to understand the transformational change that cultural organisations and individuals will need to undertake and enable them to start the process. We want the cultural and other sectors to recognise the essential role culture has to play in this transformational change and importantly, to facilitate their collaboration to address systemic blockages to deep decarbonisation. And we, Creative Carbon Scotland, want to know what we can and need to do to help.

But what is ‘transformational change’?

Here’s a useful definition from the health sector:

‘Transformational change is the emergence of an entirely new state, prompted by a shift in what is considered possible or necessary, which results in a profoundly different structure, culture or level of performance.’

(King’s Fund[1])

Transformational change is about more than scaling up; it is complex and it will challenge us all. We believe it involves (and our thanks to Ruth Wolstenholme, Managing Director of the resilience charity Sniffer, for her ideas about this):

• Taking a whole system approach, by which we mean thinking about interventions to bring about change at multiple scales and across sectoral divides rather than one-off interventions. An example of this from the health sector, because there isn’t a climate sector one yet, might be the UK-wide smoking ban. That change affected individuals, organisations such as pubs and cafes, which had to change their policies and behaviours, and had an impact on social structures including the health service, with many fewer heart attacks and strokes. We could even say it influenced the whole of society: how we see smoking, how we see pubs, how we see the impacts of our own choices on people around us.
• Going beyond a business-as-usual model and looking afresh at our aims and objectives and thinking about how we can achieve these in different ways, not simply doing what we currently do more efficiently.
• Considering ethical questions, including challenging the status quo of the current system. For example, looking at power imbalances in terms of who makes the decisions, who is dominant. How much of a say do young people and future generations, who will have to deal with the impacts of climate change, have?
• Taking a social justice approach. This means addressing the underlying socio-ecological root causes of the actions and activities that are causing climate change and the vulnerability to it. As well as a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis – among others! – we are also in the midst of an inequality crisis, and this is being further exacerbated by climate change. Pakistan is responsible for almost none of the global carbon emissions but the monsoon flooding last year has pushed around 9m people into poverty. At home those most affected by climate change are generally the poorer and more disadvantaged, who have the lowest emissions.
• Acknowledging that transformation is complex and requires greater investment and longer time frames than one-off measures. These sorts of changes won’t happen quickly, which underlines the urgency of getting started and planning well.

So transformational change isn’t just about doing more or doing more efficiently – it’s about being differently.

And that’s a complex task, but that’s why we believe the SPRINGBOARD assembly is an important thing to do: Scotland – the whole world! – needs people and organisations at all levels and from all fields to work together now to meet the challenge of climate change. Creative Carbon Scotland is proud to be leading this charge and we look forward to you joining us on the journey.

Follow #ClimateNeedsCulture on Twitter throughout SPRINGBOARD.

Apart from the assembly taking place from 27 February to 2 March, the SPRINGBOARD project has another strand:

• A series of in-person local assemblies for creative climate action around Scotland – informal networks of cultural- and climate-focused organisations of individuals, meeting in-person to share knowledge, learn together and collaborate. Creative Carbon Scotland is supporting local partners to establish these assemblies.

[1] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/transformational-change-health-care[opens in a new tab]

The post What is SPRINGBOARD and why are we doing it? appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Where do books go?
Can you recycle, up-cycle or repurpose unwanted books?

The future can be in our hands
In the beginning was the word. The invention of the Guttenberg press spread the word and was a catalyst for change and scientific progress.

The books we read hold their own social history between the pages. Books develop our intellect, inform and inspire, they hold special meaning and some are precious to us.

But what now for the book?

Not to be too sentimental but are books to become just an expected casualty of modern technology, to be pulped or become just another filler of our landfill sites? It is a terrifying statistic that thousands of unsold books are destroyed each year. Bookshelves throughout the country are groaning with books that are unread but too cherished to be discarded.

Where do books go?

Can you recycle, up-cycle or repurpose the books we no longer want to tell new green stories? We want this exhibition to be about the books that are in one form or another a continuing part of our lives and sustainability.

How does a book feel in your hands?

Does it have the power to take you to another place?
Is it the words that excite you or are you inspired to create visual images, three dimensional works or performance?
The future is in your hands.

Deadline

Newly made or existing artworks/words/video can be submitted for exhibition/performance by: 12.00noon Monday 8 May 2023.

Up to £150 is available to exhibited artists to go towards materials and expenses.

The exhibition takes place at The Town House Museum & Gallery Dunbar Main Street throughout June 2023. Installation in late May.

If you have any questions or if you can offer sustainable workshops around the theme, please get in touch with us: contact.northlightarts@gmail.com.

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