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Arts4COP15.org: Join the network

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Our network Arts for COP15 is now up and functioning. Please come and join us there, especially if you are involved in an arts-based event in the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The site acts as a single portal for all the arts stuff that’s going on globally.

It’s a place where we can not only publicise what we’re doing around COP15, but where we can share experiences and resources and discuss whether we’re reaching audiences effectively. It also gives us a chance to measure how much is going on and work out how well it’s working.

There are already several events listed, and more to go up. You’re free to go and add your own. There’s also an open blog and a forum. Please go and get stuck in.

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Are there too many climate campaigns?

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Just as we’ve been publishing our ever expanding lists of campaigns in the run up to COP15, and as we’re on the verge of launching our own one, Arts for COP15, Green.tv asks the question “Are there too many climate campaigns?” [Their blog is currently down today… so you’ll have to take my word for it]. Have we become “bored” with the issue of climate change because of campaign overload?

For climate campaigners the real frustration is the slowness of change. The public still seem reluctant to clamour at politicians in the way we’d like them to. Could this be because they are just getting too many messages? That list of sixteen actions for COP15 is by no means exhaustive. Is this a case of too much information?

I don’t think so. Three reasons:

1) For a start, the nature of social media means that this fragmentation is going to happen, whether we like it or not. For better or worse, there will no longer be a single source of authority on any political discussion like this. On the plus side, climate campaigners like Franny Armstrong have shown how incredibly effective social media are for spreading a message.

2) Secondly, though the campaigns are diverse,  climate NGOs are showing a great deal of resourcefulness. Most of the campaigns listed below are actually partnerships between several campaigns – Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, Age of Stupid et al. Charities usually have a parochial tendency to defend their own turf with one eye on their own future fundraising – but in this case there is a lot of sharing going on.

3) So what’s the problem? With all this heat being created why aren’t more poeple taking action? Perhaps in this case we’re blaming the medium, not the message.  Most campaigns on energy and climate do not interest the mass of the people worldwide. The avaaz.org map of actions for Monday 21 September is worth looking at. Why is there a huge disparity between the numbers of actions being taken in different countries? We have to think hard about what messages appeal to the mass of people who are more aspirational than ourselves. (That’s not to say they need to be directly aspirational messages; the most effective political campaigns in recent times have usually been based on fear.)

We are in a research period, still looking for the right message. We have not found it yet. Now is not the time to start cutting down on the multiplicity of voices. Eventually one of us is going to get the right campaign, the killer one, the one that convinces more than just our friends.

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Think it, Do it, Blog it: Green Feedback!

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Seema Sueko from Mo’olelo invites your feedback on the latest version of the Green Theater Toolkit!

Available at http://www.tcg.org/pdfs/grants/Toolkits.pdf – be patient, it may take a moment to download.

Leave your feedback here:  Think it, Do it, Blog it: Green Feedback!.

FROM SEEMA:

Hello Think it, Do it, Blog it readers:

We’ve posted the updated Green Theater Toolkit scorecards for Wood Products; Plastics and Foams; Metals; and Glass, Ceramics, Earthen Materials here. Please take a look and post your comments and feedback – feel free to be as direct as you wish with feedback. These scorecards arent final, so your ideas will be extremely valuable to their development. If you dont feel comfortable posting your feedback on this public blog, you can email me directly at seema@moolelo.net please write “Green Theater Toolkit” in the subject line.

Some questions for you to consider:

1) Do you understand the charts below?
2) Is any of this useful for your theater-making process?
3) Are there any materials you wish were on the list; or anything you wish were not on the list?
4) Are there any surprises for you on this list?Thanks for taking the time to contribute to this project!

    Aloha,

    Seema Sueko
    Artistic Director
    Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company

    Bloggerscircle: why we need a plastic bag tax

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    bloggers-circleRob Greenland at The Social Business blog wrote, a couple of days ago:

    It’s in the news today that supermarkets just missed their target of 50% reduction in plastic bag use (they got to 48%).  I’m not a big fan of supermarkets but I think on this one they need to be congratulated.  Remember the reaction against proposals to tax plastic bags, and how, many believed, people would never change their habits.

    Far too many bags are still used but a 48% reduction is a massive improvement.  If businesses and the public can get their act together on this issue, what other seemingly impossible environmental problems might we solve?  It may also suggest that it’s better tonudge people into doing the right thing (like the clever question the checkout assistant was trained to ask), rather than taxing them into behavioural change.

    50% sounds great, doesn’t it?

    But in Ireland the introduction of a plastic bag tax in 2002 cut the use of plastic bags immediately by 90%, and created millions of Euros in government revenues which were pledged for use in environmental projects. Cutting ours by 50% is nothing to be proud of in comparison to that figure, especially as much of that 50% is people like Rob, me, and you, dear reader. The remaining 50% are inevitably going to be much harder to reach. Even with Tesco offering the carrot of Nectar card points for every bag reused, this is still too slow. It’s time to get out the sticks.

    Like it or not, taxation is the most effective behaviour change lever government has. As Anthony Giddens suggests is in The Politics of Climate Change these are levers we’re going to have to use, and not be afraid of using. But the revenue used from these taxes must be used creatively and positively if we’re going to trust the system. Denmark’s carbon taxes, introduced in the 90s, have created an absolute fall in Co2 emissions from that country not only because they disincentivise carbon use, but because the revenue created by the fed directly back into subsidising energy-saving measures.

    This post is part of a collaborative  initiative at bloggerscircle.net

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    Think it, Do it, Blog it: Mo’olelo: Green Guidelines!

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    Seema Sueko from Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company recently checked in about the progress of Mo’0lelo’s Aha! project: the Green Theater Choices Toolkit Scorecard. If it all looks a little technical, dont worry, she enlisted the help of Eric Wilmanns of Brown & Wilmanns Environmental to help out with some handy definitions.



    via Think it, Do it, Blog it: Mo’olelo: Green Guidelines!.

    Mo`olelo Receives $30,000 Grant from The James Irvine Foundation

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    Funds will commission playwright Chantal Bilodeau to write a play on race, poverty and environment

    Thursday, June 18, 2009 – San Diego, CA – Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, San Diego’s community-focused, socially-conscious, Equity theater company, today announced The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the Company a $30,000 grant over two years to commission a new play by Chantal Bilodeau. This grant is made as part of the Irvine Foundation’s Creative Connections Fund, which was designed to reach small and midsize arts organizations pursuing a diversity of projects and ideas.

    The funds will support the commissioning, work-shopping and development of an original script by Ms. Bilodeau that focuses on the contemporary debate over the Northwest Passage and the intersection of climate change, commercial opportunity and the survival of Inuit peoples native to the region. Through the play development process, Mo`olelo will engage San Diego’s Native American populations and environmental organizations to contribute to the evolution of the script through public readings and discussions.

    Mo`olelo launched a greening initiative in 2007 to identify how theater can be created without damaging the long-term health of our communities and the environment. In addition, central to Mo`olelo’s mission is to select plays that focus on diverse communities and allow the Company to engage local, nontraditional theater audiences.

    “Commissioning this play will provide an opportunity for Mo`olelo to draw the connection between issues of race, class and the environment,” said Seema Sueko, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Mo`olelo. “This will allow us to support on stage, through content, the greening work we are doing backstage.”

    The commission will launch in July 2009, with a first workshop and public reading of the script tentatively scheduled for June 2010. Revisions and adjustments will be made and a second workshop and public reading is scheduled for May 2011. The script is expected to be completed by June 2011.

    Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays include Pleasure & Pain (Magic Theatre; Foro La Gruta and Teatro La Capilla, Mexico City), The Motherline (Ohio University; University of Miami), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts that have been presented by Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Met Theater, Philadelphia Dramatists, Raw Impressions, and Women’s Project. She has been a fellow in the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and at the Dramatists Guild and has received grants from NYSCA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Stichting LIRA Fonds (The Netherlands), the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France). Her translations include plays by Quebec playwrights Larry Tremblay and Catherine Léger, French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé and Jean Cocteau. Current projects include the book for the musical The Quantum Fairies in collaboration with composer Lisa DeSpain and lyricist Mindi Dickstein and the translation of four more plays by Koffi Kwahulé.

    The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful and inclusive society. The Foundation’s grantmaking focuses on three program areas: Arts, California Democracy and Youth. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided over $1 billion in grants to more than 3,000 nonprofit organizations throughout California. With $1.4 billion in assets, the Foundation made grants of $78 million in 2008 for the people of California.

    About Mo`olelo – Mo`olelo means story in Hawaiian. Selected as the inaugural Resident Theatre Company at La Jolla Playhouse, Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company is a socially-conscious theatre organization dedicated to broadening the scope of San Diego’s cultural environment by telling powerful stories that are as diverse as the islands of Hawaii, by paying Equity wages to local actors and developing environmentally-friendly theatre practices. A recipient of the Patté, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, McDonald Playwriting and the Anti-Discrimination Awards, its mission is to create new works based on research within various communities, produce lesser-known works by master and contemporary playwrights, and educate youth. To learn more, visit www.moolelo.net or call 619-342-7395.

    grant from The James Irvine Foundation « Mo`olelo Blog.

    Artist’s Wildflower Park is not Art

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    {Chapman Kelley’s wildflower park in Chicago. I think this is a before shot?}

    …or at least the courts say so.

    I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out what is going on here, mostly because I haven’t seen before and after shots, but artist Chapman Kelley is appealing a court decision stating that his 1.5 acre wildflower park is not “original art.” The city of Chicago altered the park in 2004, removing half of his installation, and Kelley subsequently sued the city for $825,000.

    Here’s a bit more from artinfo.com:

    Kelley is asking the federal appeals court in Chicago to overturn a ruling that his 1.5-acre wildflower piece, in which the flowers are planted in the shape of an ellipse, was not original enough to warrant protection under U.S. copyright law. The City of Chicago reduced the work by over half in 2004, to the dismay of the artist. Kelley says the destroyed wildflowers were valued at $825,000, and he wants the city to pay him for the damages.

    There’s also this story from April ’09.

    As I mentioned before…some photos of the park now would really help me figure out what’s going on. It is interesting to follow and see if gardens will or will not be considered something that can be copyrighted.

    > More work at chapmankelley.com.

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