RSA Arts & Ecology

Eight Ten ways to make your voice heard at COP15

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In advance of COP15, there is a growing mass of intiatives binding us together to scare the negotiators into action. Here are a some that are appearing loudly and clearly on the radar. Which ones have I left out? Drop me a line.

best-of-1TckTckTck The Global Citizens for Climate Action Campaign launched in August, partnered with Greenpeace, Christian Aid and Oxfam, counting us down from 100 days to COP15.

best-of-210:10 The 10:10 campaign launched off the back of Franny Armstrong’s Age of Stupid, focussing minds on cutting our emissions by 10% next year, but big on pressurising Ed Miliband to bring the goods from Copenhagen.

best3350.org Bill McKibben’s campaign to get world leaders to agree to a workable target of 350ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere plans for an international day of action on Oct 24.

best-4Vote Earth Off the back of the WWF’s Earth Hour campaign run back in March, the climate change charity have issued this global petition to world leaders.

best-5Sandbag “Real action on climate change” exploit the arcanities of Europe’s carbon trading schemes by  “retiring” surplus credits.  They also have a COP15 “One giant leap” petition they want you to sign.

best-6Seal the deal 2009 The UN’s European Climate Campaign, aims to create a “mosaic” of faces and voices with an online petition calling for change at Copenhagen. This is some more invisible writing this is some invisible writing.
best-7Mobilization for Climate Justice North American coalition of activists pressing for a deal are planning major actions throughout the US on November 30.

best-8untitled7Never trust a COP … and for those who don’t have faith that the more conventional appeals above are going to work, here’s the radical leftists’ direct action network on COP15.

Pretty much something for everybody there… Let us know which campaigns you think are working best.

Edit: More…

best-9Hopenhagen. A snappy web-based initiative that gives people the chance to come together over the question “What gives you hope?” [Thinks, possibly too sceptically:Is that kind of catch-all question really galvanising enough?]

And, this just in:

best-10Avaaz.org Global Wake-Up Call Following a global poll, Avaaz.org now plan a day of flash mob action in towns and cities everywhere on Sept 21.

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10:10 campaign launch: the video

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Another hastily filmed Flipcam video. I am clearly no Franny Armstrong:

10:10 campaign launch, Tate Modern, London from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.

The strategy is to create enough of a mass movement to make people feel it’s OK to make changes in their life, and to give Ed M. the kick in the pants he requires to move forward. I’m not sure how successful the event was in achieving that. It was great to get the front page ofThe Guardian and a page in The Sun but because news of the event was sprung on most people yesterday, the event seemed a little thinly attended. It didn’t feel like the mass movement we need – not yet anway. It felt mostly like people a bit like me.

It’ll be interesting to see how many people have signed the pledge online…

[Takes a look]

6,472 so far. Less than one in ten thousand.

It may be early days, but given how well it was publicised, and the readership of media partners, The Sun and The Guardian, I would say that’s a little disappointing but I’ll leave the last word to the hardcore transitionist at the end who said, “When you see lots of other people getting involved it gives you confidence that you’re not a freak, you’re not out on your own.”

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How social media will change the way the arts present themselves

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I have an article in this fortnight’s Arts Professional arguing that the arts need to get to grips with the idea that a mother of a change is a’coming, and about how the arts have a chance to build a strong, resilient network in the face of coming cuts by adopting a new, generous approach:

… we have reached a tipping point. The gap between what new and old media deliver us yawning. This changes how opinions are formed and how audiences are reached. It also raises interesting questions about where high quality criticism is going to come from in the future.

On the surface there’s a simple conclusion to be reached from the arrival of the Twitterati. Arts organisations need to think more about social media. The Barbican website already has a social media networks button on its front page. Fine idea. Twitter can fill empty seats within a couple of  hours of a performace. But at the moment that’s where most people’s thinking stops. This is a mistake because the change is fundamental. Arts organisations, if big enough, used to hire press officers on the strength of their contacts book, but what does that mean now? It’s not just the dipping circulations – accelerated by the recession, newspaper advertising revenues are expected to fall by as much as 21% across the board this year. This means cuts. Emails to old contacts suddenly bounce; they’ve gone freelance. Talent is leaching away from old media. The money spent trying to get column inches is increasingly money less well spent[…] but that’s just the half of it.

Conventional arts websites have become good at doing two things. They list events coming up and sell you tickets to them. If you’re lucky there’s a blog, but it’s often pretty thin fare. These sites exist within a fast-changing internet filled with people sharing news, wit, opinion, photographs, films and music. In comparison arts websites often look staid and monumental […] The key word is “sharing”. If arts websites want to move from the vertical model – telling people what’s good for them – to the horizontal model of using the energy of social networks, then it’s about giving stuff away. As any sociologist will tell you, the basis of any social network, real or virtual, is reciprocity.

Read the whole article HERE.

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Emulating Genius: learn how to do it in under 2 hours

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Many thanks to everyone who came to the event, ran around forming adaptive eco-systems and generated new design possibilities. (And sorry to those who couldn’t get in because the event sold out).

Biomimicry is a new discipline that consciously emulates life’s genius.

It’s a design principle based on the genius of nature. The idea is not simply to utilise the natural world, but to learn from the exceptional aspects of its design.

It is the most radical approach to problem solving I have heard of.

And when architect Michael Pawlyn (FRSA) told me about it, I thought: ‘ Hmmm, it’d be good to learn how that works – not just ‘hear about it’ as something interesting – it would be great to understand the principles of it, then find ways to apply it.’ Then I drifted off into a daydream about the possibility of applying biomimicry in the arts….

So Michael has been developing games that can teach the principles of how biomimicry works – and we g0t to try them out with him and ecologist Dusty Gedge (FRSA).

The event is part of the Barbican exhibition Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009.

The genius behind the genius of biomimicry is Janine Benyus – she is an Ada Lovelace for the 21st century. If you want to see a short introduction to Benyus’s work, her latest TED talk is now online.

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Video | Feral trade cafe: buying a narrative with your coffee.

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Feral Trade Cafe, London from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.
A Flip camera video.

It’s interesting to see how the best media art moved on from the idea of creating networks in the virtual world, to seeing how those networks could affect the real world. Early net communities were full of idealism; how far does that ability to change the way we interact with each other spill over into the physical?

Earlier this year I talked to Amy Francheschini about the way ideas from her art practice asFuturefarmers informed the creation of Victory Gardens 2008+ in San Francisco. On Friday I dropped into North London’s HTTP Gallery, where media artists/gallerists Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett have created the Feral Trade Cafe implemeting artist Kate Rich’s Feral Tradenetwork in their gallery space.

The cafe is sourced by real personal trade networks – artists bringing back Turkish Delight from Montenegro or discovering a source of honey in Rotherhithe. By using virtual space to record each trade route, every item you consume in the cafe comes with a  narrative. the bland, impersonal act of trade can suddenly come alive with stories, showing us how the items we buy under the normal rules of trade disconnect us from the world in which we live.

Read Ruth Catlow discussing Catlow and Garrett’s we won’t fly for art at the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre.

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“You know more than you think you do”

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designLast night at the RSA, the RSA’s Design & Society project launched its new project on resourcefulness, self-reliance and design with a essay by Emily Campbell: The challenge posed to design by today’s social and political agenda of inclusiveness is to ease the distinction between the professional skill of designers and the insights of users; to make these complementary and integral to the solving of problems.  But the popular narrative of design history stands in marked contrast to the agenda of inclusive process. The Designer – in fiction and often in reality – is famed for his or her passionately pursued, authentic and unique visual language. The designer is known by his or her mediated icons. The designer is famously unbending in his or her choices and only ever wears black. Despite its own rhetoric, design often disempowers us. How can it be made to do the opposite? The RSA’sDesign & Society team suggests that instead of designing for us, design should start from the assumption that we are not just consumers of design, we are all potential designers too.  Read about this project. [PDF 95KB]

knowCompetition | The “You Know More Than You Think You Do” poster, given away at the launch,  is designed by Anthony Burrill, and printed by hand from antique blocks in Rye. I have a signed copy to give away along with other goodies. Go to the Arts & Ecology ning site to find out how you can get it.

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Heather & Ivan Morison | The Black Cloud barn-raising

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The Black Cloud in production at Spike Island, Bristol from situations.org.uk

Heather and Ivan Morison’s The Shape of Things To Come: The Black Cloud barn-raising takes place on Saturday July 25 in Victoria Park, Bristol. Continuing their run of pavilions for a fragile future that, includes I’m So Sorry. Goodbye at Radical Nature, they’re creating a shelter for public performance and debate, based partly on the shabono communal huts built by the Amazonian Yanomamo – the “fierce people” of the Amazon. More about that on the Situations website. Situations are still looking for volunteers to help record the day.

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Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw is off to Latitude this weekend: champions “greener festivals”

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In a piece for this week’s Music Week Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw announces he is off to Latitude this weekend to check out Thom Yorke. Bradshaw also says he is a Big Chill regular.

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Madeline Bunting in today’s Guardian: the “quiet powerhouse” that is RSA Arts & Ecology

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Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project

Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project

Madeleine Bunting’s article on the role of arts in changing perceptions about the environment kicks off by looking at Radical Nature’s The Dalston Mill project, and discusses new work Gustav Metzger and new thoughts from Tim Smit and gives a very warmly appreciated nod to the RSA Arts & …

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How we failed to change minds

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Tim Smit

Tim Smit

We know how serious things are. So why doesn’t everyone agree with us? Despite Tim Smit’s  “scream from the future”, attitude change is agonisingly slow.

It’s tough to admit that activists have clearly alienated a lot of the middle ground – the middle ground that needs to change behaviour the most. …

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