Cape Farewell

Julie’s Bicycle Releases New Sustainable Production Guide at Sold out Event

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JBsustainingcreativity.102840Julie’s Bicycle on Tuesday launched its new Sustainable Production Guide at the first of their autumn events on Sustainable Design in the Arts to 50 arts professionals.

Speakers Donyale Werle, Tanja Beer and Sam Collins led the debate on the role designers and production managers can play in making arts practice more environmentally sustainable. Hosted by the Young Vic, the panel addressed an audience of London and UK based arts professionals from across theatre, opera, visual arts, dance and education.

After her success at World Stage Design 2013, Donyale Werle spoke about her experiences designing and constructing shows sustainably on Broadway, and the need to the normalise sustainable practices and work with current networks and suppliers to create change. Tanja Beer presented her research into eco-design principles and went on to explain her “Living Theatre” project as an example of how work can be designed to engage and enrich audiences, and leave a positive environmental and social legacy.

Sam Collins offered a different perspective, highlighting the potential for sustainably-designed artwork to create the context for honest and open discussions about waste and carbon emissions within the industry, particularly with regards to touring shows. He used the striking example of adding a GPS device to packing crates transporting Cape Farewell’s U-n-f-o-l-d exhibition to track their journey around the world. This was followed by a 50 minute discussion with the audience covering topics of new materials, the use of toxic treatments and contending with fire regulations, waste management, and the role of artistic vision in driving the cultural shift towards a more environmentally sustainable arts sector.

The event also included the launch of Julie’s Bicycle’s new Sustainable Production Guide. Available from today for free download the guide has been developed with a community of production professionals, and offers comprehensive guidance on how to make theatre more sustainable at every stage in the production process.

The guide is available for free download at:
www.juliesbicycle.com/resources/practical-guides/production

Arts Manager Sholeh Johnston said, “The Sustainable Production Guide is the result of a collective effort within the theatre industry to understand and improve the environmental sustainability of production. It showcases best practice developed to date, links to key resources, and provides practical actions for directors, production managers, set designers and builders, costume makers, cast, marketeers and others involved with making great art happen. The guide is both a distillation of Julie’s Bicycle’s research to date, and an invitation to join an exciting community of practitioners pioneering new ways of working in line with environmental, economic, and technological drivers. We want to keep the conversation going, and continue to shout about the fantastic work being developed.”

Download the Guide here: Sustainable-Production-Guide-Final-2013

Cape Farewell’s second Sea Change expedition will set sail around Scotland’s Northern Isles

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SEA CHANGE 2013: Next week 27 international and Scottish artists and scientists will set sail across Orkney and Shetland to explore climate change impacts, adaptation and resilient behaviours among Scotland’s island communities

On 19th August Cape Farewell’s second Sea Change expedition will set sail around Scotland’s Northern Isles.  27 leading artists and scientists will explore technologies, projects and practices supporting the resilience of Scotland’s island communities, ecologies and cultures. First launched in 2010 Sea Change is a four year programme that brings together artists and scientists to investigate the relationship between people, place and resources and what it means to care for one’s ‘place’ in the context of climate change.  This latest expedition, and the 2011 voyage, will form the basis of a major exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh in November 2013, bringing together for the first time the work of artists and scientists who sailed to the Western and Northern Isles of Scotland as part of Cape Farewell’s Sea Change project.

27 artists and scientists, including the dramatist Bryony Lavery, singers Karine Polwart and Inge Thomson, visual artist Ruth MacLennan, textile artist Deirdre Nelson, photographer Jennifer Wilcox, artist and sculptor John Cumming and the sailor Jo Royle – best known for sailing from America to Australia in a catamaran partly made from plastic bottles – will sail on the 113-year-old community owned Shetland Fifie ‘The Swan’ around Scotland’s most northerly coasts and islands. They will visit on and off shore renewable energy sites on Orkney and Shetland, artisanal and commercial fisheries, Fair Isle’s Bird Observatory, archaeological sites, and local art centres and community projects based on stewardship of the island’s terrestrial and marine ecologies, economies and cultures. To find out more about the expedition visit www.capefarewell.com/2013expedition

Brought together by Cape Farewell, which has been at the forefront of climate change art since 2001, the aim is to investigate the multiple impacts of climate change on the cultures and ecologies of Scotland’s island communities, and their approaches to sustainability, resilience and the concept of ‘faring well’ in times of change.  Islands are significant repositories of the world’s terrestrial and marine biodiversity and home to one tenth of its human population. Their ecosystems are diverse, complex and extremely fragile. Over the last century island biodiversity has been subject to increasing stresses associated with invasive species, resource depletion, pollution and climate change.

The Northern Isles of Scotland are made up of hundreds of miles of spectacular coastline, one of the world’s largest peatlands, important seabird colonies and magnificent landscapes shaped by thousands of years of human interaction with the environment. These outlying ‘bellwether’ islands are vulnerable to extreme weather events and to the economic impacts of the decline of habitats and species vital to local industries and tourism. However, the islands have become pioneers in terms of sustainability programmes, wind, wave and tidal technologies and adaptation projects, and they offer exciting, new approaches to the relationship between place, stewardship and community.

Leading the voyage is Ruth Little, Cape Farewell’s associate director. She said: “Like boats, Scotland’s island communities and ecologies offer palpable and symbolic evidence of the reality of resource constraint; the relationship between needs and limits that is the stuff of climate change.  These islands, with their exposure to natural forces, deep human histories and rich and fragile ecologies, remind us that we face the same challenges across the planet. Together the artists and scientists will explore community projects that strive to deliver economic, social and environmental diversity and resilience. ‘Their journeys will help shape new art-science collaborations, residencies and projects which will culminate in exhibitions and events in 2013 and 2014.”

Speaking about the expedition the sculptor John Cumming said: “Living in the Northern Isles, I have become increasingly aware of the extent to which climate change is impacting on our lives. My art is grounded in this culture, and I feel the need to respond. Sailing northern waters with a group of enquiring and creative people provides an ideal opportunity to observe, reflect and discuss.”

Textile artist Deirdre Nelson said: “I joined the expedition as I am interested in ways that artists and scientists can develop ideas together in order to draw attention to issues concerning the environment, community and climate change.  I am looking forward to exploring the seas and islands around Shetland – this will provide a rich learning experience and new insight into islands I have had a connection with for some time through research into textiles there.”

The boatbuilder Ben Duffin said: “As a traditional boatbuilder working with long term unemployed people in Glasgow with the GalGael Trust I have a strong interest in community development, maritime heritage and social resilience. A chance to explore these themes from the deck of a traditional boat was too good to pass up.”

Artist Ursula Biemann said: “After doing fieldwork in desert zones of northern Africa for several years, this will be the first opportunity for me to head north and do a project at Sea. I would like the ancient land and seascapes to take me back six thousand years when rising sea levels submersed the first settlements along Shetland Island’s shores. This post-glacial period resonates beautifully with today.”

Cape Farewell is a pioneering arts programme set up by artist and photographer David Buckland in 2001.  It works in partnership with scientific and cultural institutions to deliver an innovative programme of public engagement – challenging audiences to think differently  about climate change and the natural systems we inhabit. The organisation has worked with over 140 world-renowned artists, musicians and writers, including Rachel Whiteread, Jarvis Cocker, Ian McEwan, Yann Martel, Sophie Calle, Marcus Brigstocke and Antony Gormley which has resulted in the creation of a broad range of climate focused art and public dialogue. More information about future projects and exhibitions can be found by visiting www.capefarewell.com

Sea Change is a four year programme of research and making across Scotland’s western and northern isles.  It is supported by Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, Compton Foundation, Lighthouse Foundation, the Bromley Trust, Esperamos Films, Edinburgh College of Art and Jon and Nora Lee Sedmak.

Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Exhibition + Festival

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logo-cf-c14-transThe Cape Farewell Foundation in Canada announced details today of a unique, visionary and powerful four-month cultural engagement on one of the most pressing issues of our time— climate change.

The Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Exhibition + Festival will take place between October 2013 and February 2014, encompassing multifaceted programs, including a major exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) Centre for Contemporary Culture, a performing arts festival with The Theatre Centre, and a rich series of public programs and events.

As the centrepiece, the Carbon 14: Climate is Culture exhibition at the ROM opens October 19, 2013 – February 2, 2014. The exhibition will include bold collaborative projects by: Zacharias Kunuk + Ian Mauro, Myfanwy MacLeod + Janna Levitt, Mel Chin, Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak, Sharon Switzer, Minerva Cuevas, Melanie Gilligan + Tom Ackers, Donald Weber, David Buckland + Tom Rand, and Jaco Ishulutaq.

The Carbon 14: Climate is Culture exhibition was produced by Cape Farewell Foundation in partnership with ROM Contemporary Culture and is curated by David Buckland and Claire Sykes.

“Confronting the facts around global climate change, the artists participating in Carbon 14: Climate is Culture are all responding to different aspects of this climate challenge, in poignant, nuanced, subversive, often humorous, and always passionately human ways. Subjects include explorations of a changing Arctic, the health of the oceans, bio-diversity and extinction, sustainability and new, clean technologies; and centrally questions of politics, economics, and ethics.”

– Claire Sykes, Curator and Programming Director for Cape Farewell Foundation

For 12 years, Cape Farewell has successfully brought together artists and scientists—some of the most creative and insightful minds available to us— to interrogate the reality of climate change, to address causes and envision solutions, and to imagine, design, and communicate on an emotional and human scale what a resilient and exciting future might look like. Working internationally through a rich program of expeditions, research, exhibitions, public art projects, books, films and performances, Cape Farewell, as creative agent for change and the leading cultural catalyst on climate, has successfully inspired some of our greatest storytellers to address humanity’s greatest challenge. Now Cape Farewell has a North American base in Toronto.

“The people of the City of Toronto will be proud to be the first North American city to host a Cape Farewell Festival, and to have an opportunity to present the global issue of climate change through a Canadian lens. Torontonians are concerned about their environment and the effects of climate change, and we hope that the Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Exhibition + Festival will become an important part of the Toronto calendar.”

– David Miller, Chair of Cape Farewell Foundation, Toronto

“In November 2011, on the shores of Lake Ontario, we invited twenty-five North American visual artists, film makers, musicians, writers, and advertising directors to gather in Toronto to interrogate eight ‘informers’ drawn from across the professional spectrum of climate engagement; climate scientists, economists, new energy technologists, and social scientists; on the facts of climate change. The ask from the creative minds was to engage and through a process of action-based research make artworks, plays, music, poetry that would form the basis of an exhibition at the ROM. Two years later, they have triumphed! Fourteen collaborative works will be presented as part of the Carbon 14: Climate is Culture exhibition and surrounding festival.”

– David Buckland, artist, and Founder and International Director of Cape Farewell

For further information, interview requests, or media passes to events, please contact:

Debby de Groot, MDG & Associates
647.295.2970
debby@mdgassociates.com

Click here to download the Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Exhibition + Festival Press Release.

Cape Farewell’s Sea Change programme: The Rural Artist Residencies has kicked off! Dorset, Uk

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images1The Rural Artist Residencies has kicked off! Dorset, Uk

Cape Farewell is creating a series of Rural Artist Residencies. Artists will be invited on to the Rural Residencies programme to engage diverse, wide-reaching audiences with the local narratives of Sydling St. Nicholas in Dorset. The idea is to involve the local community, encouraging neighbours and villagers to hold a voluntary stake in the farm’s future.

Artists will interrogate the inspirational resilience and social ties that form when local communities embrace heritage, sustainability, and innovation. So far, Cape Farewell has established relationships with three farmers around Sydling St. Nicholas : Manor Farm, Huish Farm, and Dollens Farm. They have strong community ties, commit to good stewardship of the natural environment, and employ varied practice methods, which they openly invite the public to explore. For the first residency, Chris Drury has been  invited to develop a personal response to the working life sustained by the valley, as a natural, cultural and community habitat.

For more information: click here

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Sea Change / Tionndadh na Mara

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Swan1-600x415Cape Farewell’s Northern Isles Expedition 

From 19 August – 8 September Cape Farewell sails from Orkney to Shetland via Fair Isle with 2 crews of 11 artists and scientists on the 113-year-old Shetland community boat, the Swan. Sailors include Ursula Biemann, Julie Brook, James Brady, David Cross, John Cumming, Bryony Lavery, Ruth Maclennan, Deirdre Nelson, Karine Polwart, Inge Thomson, Jennifer Wilcox, Tom Rand and Tam Treanor. Along with scientists from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the International Centre for Island Technology, Heriot-Watt University, the artists will pursue research and new collaborations relating to climate impacts on ocean ecologies, fisheries, energy production and peatlands.

Sexy Peat / Tìr mo Rùin

Highland Print Studio and Cape Farewell are delighted to announce the commissioned artists for the Sexy Peat project, celebrating the ecology and heritage of the Lewis blanket bog and highlighting the significant role that peat plays in climate regulation. Alex Boyd, Anne Campbell, Jon Macleod, Kacper Kowalski, Murray Robertson and Paul Slater will follow summer residencies in Lewis with printmaking workshops in Inverness, leading to a touring exhibition of new work.

Follow Sea Change and on Twitter @CFSeaChange. 

Carbon 13: Ballroom Marfa and Cape Farewell team up

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In Marfa, Texas

Kellie Gutman writes: Marfa is a small town of 2,121 people in western Texas.  In 2003, Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn converted a former 1927 ballroom into a performance and exhibition space called Ballroom Marfa.  In this intellectual environment, issues and perspectives are explored through film, music, art and performance.

Ballroom Marfa contacted Cape Farewell’s David Buckland to curate Carbon 13: From the High Arctic to the High Desert, which runs from 31 August until 20 January 2013.  Eight artists who have traveled with Cape Farewell to the Andes, the Arctic and Scotland’s island communities are presenting newly-commissioned works to highlight the effects of climate change.  The exhibit is supported in part by an Artistic Innovation and Collaboration (AIC) Grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

The artists represented are Ackroyd & Harvey, Amy Balkin, Erika Blumenfeld, David Buckland, Adriane Colburn, Antony Gormley, Cynthia Hopkins and Sunand Prasad.

In the online art newspaper, artdaily.org, the reviewer of Carbon 13 wrote:

Ballroom Marfa continues its ambitious mission of presenting art as a transforming media capable of addressing the most pressing issues of our time.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

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launch of ADRIFT – a new project by Cape Farewell

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Tom Chivers – Cape Farewell’s Climate Poet-in-Residence

Art and climate change organisation Cape Farewell is launching ADRIFT – an interrogation of climate as culture, devised by Cape Farewell’s poet in residence, Tom Chivers (in London, UK). They invite the public for a drink, performance and short film, as Tom Chivers maps the natural territories written into urban space. Free admission.

“Discover what’s hidden underneath the streets and find out what an ‘urban pilgrimage’ is. Join us in the Main Space at Rich Mix from 6.30pm on Friday 5th October. Appearing with the director of Cape Farewell, artist and photographer, David Buckland, Tom will be presenting ongoing research and new writing.  Over the next 12 months, follow ADRIFT at capefarewell.com/adrift as Tom undertakes a range of mixed-media investigations: text work, live performance, debate and collaborations with other artists, writers, and poets. ADRIFT builds towards the presentation of a major new poetic project, in Spring 2013, supported by a series of live events across East London.”

Tom Chivers’ commission is launched as part of Cape Farewell’s new series of Urban Interventions. This will include the summer launch of SWITCH, a youth inquiry into poetics, culture, migration and climate.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Climate is culture

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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.  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.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

U-N-F-O-L-D in New York

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New York

30 September – 15 December 2011

The Exhibition U-N-F-O-L-D exhibition continues until 15 December in New York City at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) at Parsons The New School for Design. It shows the work of twenty-five artists who took part in Cape Farewell expeditions 2007 and 2008 to the High Arctic and 2009 to the Andes, where they were able to witness the consequences of climate change and global warming. Their work is an innovative response to these processes and explores the role that human activity plays in it. In this way the artists aim to raise awareness and create a cultural shift through their work.

The programme of public events and performances can be downloaded here.

A series of exciting lectures, panels and special events are broadcasted on newschoolradio.org.
One of these broadcasts is “What Ifs: Climate Change and Creative Agency“, in which Architect and planner Dilip da Cunha and artists Aviva Rahmani and Susannah Sayler as well as artist Eve Mosher talk about their creative interventions and debate oppositions and collaborations between science and art. The webradiocast can be found on http://wnsr.parsons.edu/2011/10/19/what-ifs-climate-change-and-creative-agency/

In February 2012 the U-N-F-O-L-D heads to Liverpool, where it opens at John Moores University.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

New metaphors for sustainability: the Fetch (of a wavelength; to collect)

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Our series of new metaphors for sustainability continues with Annie Cattrell’s two meanings for ‘Fetch’. A visual artist, born in Glasgow, living and working in London, Annie is a tutor at the Royal College of Art and a senior research fellow in Fine Art at DeMontfort University. She was on the 2011 Cape Farewell Scottish Islands Expedition.

I was first introduced to the oceanographic term the ‘Fetch’ while visiting I.C.I.T (International Centre for Island Technology) on Orkney during a residency I undertook hosted by the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness during 2010.

The Fetch (length) of a wave can be incredibly long. For example, it could stretch from the east coast of the United States, where it might originate, and travel uninterrupted by land mass across the Atlantic Ocean, arriving on the shores of the west coast of Scotland, in particular the Orkneys, where it would then be forced to break against the coastline.

The simple equation relating to this phenomena is that the length of a wave determines the power and energy of it.

As a consequence scientists and technologists based in Orkney are trying to harness the waves to create renewable energies for the future.

The uninterrupted ‘Fetch’ length of a wave seems like a strong natural metaphor for cause and effect. The behaviour of oceans, seas and weather generally would appear to override any political or territorial boundaries and constraints, reminding us of the larger rhythms of earth systems that can so easily be damaged and altered by different types of human made pollutants.

‘Fetch’ can also mean to go and collect and is to some extent predictive and about a future intention. Collecting and harnessing ideas and ways of living more sustainably would seem to be navigating in the right direction!

If not now, when?, Primo Levi

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory