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CALL: 2011 Ars Bioarctica art&science residency in Kilpisjärvi Finland

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Ars Bioarctica is long term art and science initiative by the Finnish Bioart Society. Since 2010 it is organizing an artist-in-residency program together with the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki in the sub-Arctic Lapland.

The residency has an emphasis on the Arctic environment and art and science collaboration. It is is open for artists and art&science research teams. Amongst the first residents have been Andrea Polli (US), Helene von Oldenburg (DE), Claudia Reiche (DE), Raquel Renno (BR), Anu Osva (FI) and Sini Haapalinna (FI).

The residency takes place in the facilities of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. The Kiekula-house provides the residents with a
combined living and working environment, kitchen, bathroom, sauna and internet connection. The Kilpisjärvi Biological Station offers to the visiting artists the same possibilities and infrastructure as its scientists and staff. This includes access to all scientific equipment, laboratory facilities, the library and seminar room as well as the usage of field equipment. A dedicated contact person in Kilpisjärvi will familiarize residents with the local environment and customs.

The basic costs of a residency period include: Travel to Finland, travel within Finland to Kilpisjärvi, accommodation, meals and sauna. There is a possibility to cook in a common kitchen or to eat in the canteen of the station. The Bioart Society will assist with the funding process.

Applications have to include a work proposal, a working plan with time schedule, the desired residency outcome, a list of necessities for the work to be carried out and the artists CV.

The application deadline is 28th of February 2011.

The evaluation of the applications emphasizes the quality of the proposal, its interaction of art&science, its artistic and scientific significance, the projects relation to the thematic focus of Ars Bioarctica and its feasibility to be carried out at
the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in the given time.

For applications or questions contact Erich Berger:

erich[dot]berger[at]bioartsociety[dot]fi

More info:
http://bioartsociety.fi/3 information on residency
http://www.bioartsociety.fi/residency/ blog by residents
http://www.helsinki.fi/kilpis/english/index.htm Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, Helsinki University

Atlantic Rising

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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H49fnCMi0WA

Atlantic Rising is a charity on a 28,000 mile journey circumnavigating the Atlantic overland along the 1metre contour line. This is the level scientists predict sea levels may reach by the year 2100.

Along the way we are creating an educational networkbetween 15,000 students in low-lying coastal communities. Through our photography, films andwriting, we are also documenting what will be lost if these predictions come true.

We don’t claim to have all the solutions to stop sea levels from rising.  But we hope our work will help the next generation understand their responsibility to each other to build a sustainable future.

Atlantic Rising explores what will be lost around the Atlantic Ocean if sea levels rise by one metre. Our work in low-lying communities around the ocean rim is journalistic and educational. We are creating a network between 15,000 pupils; enabling them to build friendships, share experience and collaborate on climate change projects. We are also reporting the stories of people whose lives are already being affected by sea level change and providing a platform for marginalised voices.

We don’t have all the solutions to the causes of sea level rise. But we hope our work will raise awareness about the difficulties faced by Atlantic communities and help the next generation learn their responsibility to each other to build a sustainable future.

We believe education is the most important weapon we have in combating climate change. Today’s children will inherit the environmental legacy of previous generations and it is vital that climate change is a subject that is accessible and relevant. We also believe that most children listen to their friends much more than they listen to teachers.

By building connections and discussing our shared history, we hope to make pupils aware of the interdependence of Atlantic communities. By encouraging collaboration on climate change projects we hope to highlight the immediacy of the problem and the collective responsibility we have to find a solution. By encouraging friendships we hope to make people care about it enough to act.

Atlantic Rising – About the Project.

Hacking together a project

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In a blog a couple of weeks ago, Matthew Taylor called for ideas for a new RSA project on manufacturing. Given the RSA’s commitment to practical project work, he suggested that heavy industrial projects would be impractical for us and that worthy reports on the future of manufacturing in the UK are two-a-penny.

The rise of hacking (see this paper published by the RSA’s Design team in 2009) provides food for thought, but the practical project isn’t yet clear… Anyway rather than go over the same ground again, I thought I’d do something more constructive, like make a map of the Hackspaces that are springing up around the UK. This one (click on it to go to the actual map) shows the Hackspaces listed on the Hackspace Foundation website as of today.

I’d be interested to know what factors contribute to the forming of a hackspace. Is it a university near by? More diverse or tolerant communities? Concentration of creative or high-tech industry? What do you think?

Map of UK Hackspaces – data taken from http://hackspace.org.uk/

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Think Big, Teach Local

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It’s an exciting moment in the Area Based Curriculum project in Peterborough. We’re at the point where we try to move away from bothering busy people with important jobs, asking them to do things they wouldn’t normally do, and towards a role supporting people moving ahead with their own projects. Where the RSA stops being ‘doer’ and begins to act in the role of ‘supporter’. Communities and schools work together to design a curriculum. We don’t do it for them. We don’t determine who gets involved, or what goes in the curriculum. That’s the whole point.

The point of an Area Based Curriculum is that communities and schools work together to design a curriculum. We don’t do it for them. We don’t determine who gets involved, or what goes in the curriculum. That’s the whole point. Eleven years of working with schools on Opening Minds has convinced the RSA of the power of a curriculum that is conceived, designed and implemented by teachers in a school. The Area Based Curriculum goes one step further: reaching out beyond the school gates and asking the people in a local area to pitch in and work with teachers, bringing their ideas, resources and expertise.

The problem is, of course, that in order for the work to be worthwhile we of course do have a view on what should go in the curriculum, and who should be involved. We insist that the curriculum reflect the diversity of a local area, and seek to engage those not normally involved in education. We ask that the projects take proper account of the national entitlement of all children to a certain set of shared knowledge, at the same time as reflecting local knowledges and priorities. Our reasons for doing the work in the first place are based on principles – educational and ethical and political. For it to be worth doing we must care about the outcomes, and take responsibility for ensuring that our intervention is not a hollow one that reinforces existing power structures and exclusions, fails to secure different outcomes to what existed before, or worse.

Our project in Peterborough is at the point where we do what we said we went there to do, and try to provoke a genuinely community owned and led curriculum. We have to hope that we have got the balance right: between providing enough steer to the work so that we achieve and can measure what we set out to do, and stepping aside at the right time to allow the teachers and community partners in Peterborough to develop and own their own projects.

The Big Society must intend to achieve better outcomes for society, and someone has to define what those are – otherwise why bother?

This tension between the stated aims of a given intervention and local ownership, of course, is present in all work by agencies seeking to enable people to do things for themselves. This includes central government espousing ideas like the Big Society. At the beginning the intervention, or policy, or suggestion for change is just that – ‘centralised’, ‘top down’, ‘external’. The Big Society must intend to achieve better outcomes for society, and someone has to define what those are – otherwise why bother? At the same time the enactment of the Big Society needs to be internalised and owned by communities, professionals and individuals. What are the mechanisms for making this happen? How do we establish a shared sense of what we are trying to achieve? And how far does or should the original intervener (in this case the Coalition Government) retain responsibility for the outcomes?

The Area Based Curriculum is, ultimately, about culture change. It’s about subtle but crucial shifts in perceptions of ownership, responsibility and expectation. So too is the Big Society. We will soon find out whether our assumptions about how to effect change in a way that empowers have been correct, and we will learn a lot on the way. Sharing this learning with others doing similar work will be crucial to informing the success of the Big Society.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

The Jellyfish Theatre shortlisted for AJ’s Small Projects Award | Architecture Foundation

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The Oikos Project’s Jellyfish Theatre, by artists Kobberling and Kaltwasser for The Red Room, in partnership with The Architecture Foundation, has been shortlisted for the Architect’s Journal’s 2011 Small Projects awards.

This is the second year running an AF-initiated project has been considered for the awards. Last year the AF’s new HQ designed by Carmody Groarke, was shortlisted.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday 9 February.

Photo courtesy Maja Myslaborska

via The Jellyfish Theatre shortlisted for AJ’s Small Projects Award | Architecture Foundation.

The Horticultural Society of New York – Water Matters

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Water Matters:

25 Years of Students Celebrating

NYC’s Water Resources

February 9 – 18, 2011

For the last twenty-five years, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has invited fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students to express their knowledge of the city’s water resources using art and poetry. This exhibition is a selection from more than the thousands of entries submitted by students from all five boroughs. Their creative work showcases the city’s water supply and wastewater treatment systems, water’s importance to all life, and ways that we all can protect, conserve, and preserve water resources.

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary, the 2011 Water Resources Art and Poetry Contest invites kindergarten through twelfth grade students to submit their art and poetry entries online. Visitwww.nyc.gov/dep for more information.

Gallery Hours: Monday through Friday, 12 to 6pm
Click here for directions.

Related Program
In conjunction with Water Matters, the Green Screen Film Series will present Flow on February 17th (at 6:30pm). Come check out the exhibition and watch this award-winning documentary on the world water crisis, directed by Irena Salina.

via The Horticultural Society of New York.

The Ecology of Innovation

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Our approach has been to teach these principles to local residents and help them apply them to the behaviours that underlie local environmental problems. We think that giving community activists the knowledge and support to “nudge” their neighbours could be a better way of encouraging behaviour change. National attempts to apply these principles could leave people feeling preached at, or alienate people by taking covert approaches.

Instead, we think that training community activists with the knowledge they need to nudge their neighbours can harness their local knowledge, their “one-of-us” status, and their existing trusted relationships with their community.

Towards the end of last year we tested this approach in a two-day workshop. Twenty-five enthusiastic residents learned about the effects of personal, social and infrastructural factors on human behaviour, then worked together to apply this knowledge to Peterborough specific problems. After a pitch to a panel of judges, two ideas were selected for seed-funding and non-financial support to allow them to become pilot projects.

One of the pilots will encourage a wider segment of the community to manage local plots of unused land. The group behind this project plan to map unused land in their neighbourhood and throughout Peterborough, then run small interventions to encourage local people to take an active role in stewarding the land.

The other pilot will encourage residents living near an area of ancient woodland to take an active forest management role. Currently neglected and the scene of anti-social behaviour, the community decided to create a woodland walk to make walking through the forest a normal activity for local residents.

Part of this approach to local nudging was informed by a paper – The Ecology of Innovation – that we published just before Christmas. It presents a few simple principles that could be used to encourage and support local people in getting projects off the ground. These principles include ensuring that local community organisations are able to participate in contributing their ideas, and supporting their ideas with financial and non-financial support so that they can be tested. You can read the paper online or download it here.

In 2011, we’re looking forward to getting these ideas off the ground, and also holding more workshops to encourage and support more ideas that could make Peterborough into an even greener place to live!

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Art show partners creation with science

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ASU Sustainability contest inspires paintings, sculpture and multimedia

Fertilizer is rarely an inspiration for an art show, but on Feb. 5, at the Desert Botanical Garden, sustainability, fertilizer and phosphorus scarcity will provide fertile fuel for creative vision.

The art show, a juried exhibition with more than 20 works by artists from Phoenix, Chicago, Portland and Houston, was created in partnership with scientists engaged in the Sustainable Phosphorus Summit, to take place Feb. 3-5, at ASU. The exhibition will include paintings, photography, sculpture, multimedia and innovative approaches to portraying sustainability through dance and music.

Free and open to the public, the art show starts at noon, with the top prizes awarded at 6:30 p.m. An RSVP is required to attend: sustainablePsummit+DBG@gmail.com.

The Sustainable Phosphorus Art Show is scheduled to take place from noon to 7 p.m., Feb. 5, at the Desert Botanical Garden, in Phoenix. Cash bar and reception will take place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

If you miss the exhibit Feb. 5, the art show will move to ASU’s Step Gallery, in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, in Tempe, from Feb. 14-18.

Additional information on the scientific program of the Sustainable Phosphorus Summit can be found here. For more information on phosphorus sustainability, visit sustainablep.asu.edu/p-info.

Peggy Coulombe, Margaret.Coulombe@asu.edu
(480) 727-8934
School of Life Sciences

Art show partners creation with science | ASU News.

ashdenizen: from no plays about climate change to three in a month

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It was only a couple of years ago that this blog was writing about why theatres don’t touch climate change. It seemed, at the time, as if there was something about theatre, or the way people conceived of mainstream theatre, that made the subject almost impossible to treat. This was part of a more general avoidance of the environment as a subject for the performing arts. The Ashden Directory had been launched, back in 2000, as a way of following and encouraging those works which did engage with this subject.

But now things are changing. Eighteen months ago there was finally, a good play about climate change.  It was also possible to see in the works, for instance, of Wallace Shawn and Andrew Bovell the green shoots of climate change theatre.

Fast forward to January 2011, and this month alone three climate change plays will open in London - Greenland at the National, The Heretic at the Royal Court, and Water at the Tricycle.

Why is this important? Because climate change alters the way we think about our lives. The news contained within the various IPCC reports will be as influential, as paradigm-shifting, on the way we see ourselves as Darwin’s Origin of Species. It is, ultimately, a question of values and relationships. As such, it is a natural subject for theatre.

But new plays don’t open in a vacuum. For them to succeed, there needs to be a lively engaged audience that has some sense of what is at stake. That’s why we have also been involved with the Open University in producing a new series of podcasts that puts cultural work around climate change in perspective.

The podcasts bring together 17 artists, activists, writers, film-makers, scientists, entrepreneurs and academics, including comedian Marcus Brigstocke, choreographer Siobhan Davies, BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, architect Carolyn Steele and Mike Hulme, author ofWhy We Disagree About Climate Change.

Radio 4’s Quentin Cooper chairs these four ‘Mediating Change’ discussions which cover the history, publics, anatomy and futures of cultural responses to climate change. The podcasts are now available to download from iTunesU.

via ashdenizen: from no plays about climate change to three in a month.

Sustainable Revolutions — TCG Circle

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(This post was originally posted on the TCG Think It, Do It, Blog It as part of  The MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program.)

By Anthony Runfola, Childsplay

It’s been just over a year since we had our first meeting about our Think It! Grant. Today is my last day in the office for 2010 and I’ve spent it looking over the notes from those meetings as well as from our three sustainability summits.

At Childsplay, we will begin our 2011/2012 season planning in earnest next month. With that comes the opportunity to start laying the groundwork for some of the organizational changes we have been talking about throughout this past year.

So, in the spirit of the season, I present to you my Sustainable New Year’s Resolutions for 2011!

  • Encourage our artistic director to hire teams of designers that work on at least two shows within the season to see if each production can share resources.
    • Many theatres have been doing this already to address financial concerns. But a great side effect is that you may be reusing certain units between shows.
  • Challenge our designers to think about sustainability when designing.
    • As we noted in our post from this past May, designers thought differently about what they would design when challenged to “make it sustainable.” Of course, we are going to have to be more specific than that when we try to do this for real.
  • Include production staff in design meetings from the very beginning.
    • Not surprisingly, communication emerged as an essential component to creating more environmentally conscious scenery. I will venture to have our TD work along with the director and designer beginning at the very first meeting.
  • Ensure all metals used in scenery get recycled.
    • This really is a no-brainer. It will cost a bit more to make this happen, but certainly the price is nothing next to the cost of continuing to dump metal into the ground.
  • Be proactive in trying to find a taker for our used scenery before strike.
    • To be fair, I’ve tried this before without much luck. But I will keep trying!

via Sustainable Revolutions — TCG Circle.