Yearly Archives: 2019

An Interview with Artists Timo Aho and Pekka Niittyvirta

by Amy Brady

This month I have for you a two-person interview with Finnish artists Timo Aho and Pekka Niittyvirta, who recently collaborated on an installation in Scotland entitled Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W); it brings greater awareness to the risks of sea-level rise. Both artists have created previous works that speak to large, systemic issues, such as humanity’s relation to technology and the markets. With Lines, installed at the Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre in Lochmaddy on the island of North Uist, they explore our relation to nature and the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Per Pekka’s website: “By use of sensors, the installation interacts with the rising tidal changes; activating on high tide. The work provides a visual reference of future sea level rise.” The effect is quite chilling.

Please tell me about your light installation at the Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, Scotland. What inspired this project? And what do you hope viewers take away from it?

The inspiration for the artwork derived from a connection and co-existence between contemporary society, urban development, and oceans. We started the project within the context of physical positions of seaside communities and their futures. The process quickly turned towards the causality of climate change.

After looking at the theme from various angles, we concluded we’d make an artwork discussing this very relevant issue in seaside communities around the world. Highlighting the future predictions of sea-level rise with LED visually resonates with contemporary consumer society, and at an individual level.

We were hoping to pinpoint an important issue by the means of art: Art carries the potential to convey complex ideas, concepts and scientific data in a powerful way that other mediums, like texts or graphs may fall short of.

Have you collaborated before on art projects?

We both have collaborated before with other artists and appreciate the synergy, both at the practical and conceptual levels. Working collaboratively often leads to new and surprising solutions.

Working as a team allows us to undertake larger entities. Collaboration also allows for larger capacity both in concept development and production stages.We discussed working together on some other concepts and ideas, but this was the first project to be actualized. We have known each other since childhood through skate- and snowboarding. During the project we were working from different locations, Timo from Scotland and Pekka from Finland. Distance meant long conversations on Skype, contemplating the process from various angles.

Both of you have created works that speak to large, systemic issues, including humanity’s relationship to technology, economics, and various social structures. Why focus now on sea-level rise, a consequence of climate change?

We both share an interest in the workings of contemporary society and its related phenomena. In the last decade or so, climate change has been a part of wider discussions about consumerism and economic growth.

As individuals, members of communities, and participants in history, we feel it is only natural that these themes filtrate our artistic practice.

Do you think about issues of climate change beyond what you create in your art?

Pekka: I tend to look at these issues nowadays from the perspective of a father. What kind of environment (nature or political) are we leaving for the generations to come? Can we sustain peaceful development and democracies? Climate change will probably be the biggest globally destabilizing factor in the future. Even today most of our global crises derive from a scarcity of resources and livable land.

Timo: I spent a big part of my past life as a professional snowboarder and have also spent a lot of time in coastal areas. The physical changes in the seasons and extreme weather are already present, as well as coral bleaching, glacial retreat, and the start of the sixth mass extinction. What will be the future of this planet within the next few hundred years? It seems that even with the facts provided by leading scientists, we have been incapable to react on this important topic that will affect us all.

You both are located in Helsinki. How would you characterize the ways in which your city – or Finland more generally – is talking about climate change?

The conversation is divided. Now especially, when parliamentary election is at hand in April, these topics are used and exploited for political agenda. Amid all the talk and promises, Finland is making strange decisions concerning carbon sinks by increasing clear-cuttings and its usage of minerals.

What’s next for you?

As the original title of the work, Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W),suggests, this is an artwork that can be executed in alternative coordinates. Hence, we have conceptualized possible variations of the Lines at different locations.

We are currently working together on a concepts for a site specific installation dealing with geopolitics, mining/minerals and borders in the arctic region bordering Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Besides collaboration, we are both working on our own projects. Timo is working on a solo exhibition coming up this summer, which explores urban semiotics and visual pollution. He’s also working on a piece for an environmental/land art exhibition thematically dealing with geodiversity, environment, and sustainability.

Pekka is working on the last iteration of his exhibition trilogy, a multi-year project consisting of thematically linked exhibitions. The trilogy discusses growth of the global market economy as well as geopolitical and economic tensions by means of omnipresent control, judicial manipulation, and the landscape.

To learn more about these artists and their work, check out their respective websites: Timo Aho and Pekka Niittyvirta.

(Top image: Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W), courtesy of the artists.)

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.com and follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Painter Michelle Irizarry Allows Her Art to Evolve with Her Growing Understanding of Climate Change

by Peterson Toscano  

Originally from Puerto Rico, Michelle Irizarry is a visual artist and civil engineer living in Orlando, Florida. As a result of climate change, she has seen a big transformation in her work as an artist.

A mother of two girls still in elementary school, she not only uses her art to process her own relationship with climate change, but to reach people with a message that will get them to think, feel, and act. Hear about her powerful new paintings and the role of art in her life as she deepens her understanding of climate change.

Coming up next month, writer Aaron Thier and his wacky and moving novel, Mr. Eternity

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

This article is
part of
The Art House series.

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As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Wild Authors: Paolo Bacigalupi

by Mary Woodbury

Paolo Bacigalupi’s novels tell stories about human impacts on the environment – and, in turn, the results of these impacts back on humans. An award-winning author, Bacigalupi often explores bioengineering and loss of fossil fuels or fresh water in his stories. His novels in this field include The Windup Girl, Shipbreaker, The Drowned Cities, Tool of War, and The Water Knife. A new novel – co-authored by Tobias Buckell – The Tangled Lands, came out in 2018 from Saga Press. His Pump Six and Other Stories is an earlier short story collection that takes into consideration a future Earth, post-environmental neglect and abuse.

Most of Bacigalupi’s fiction and nonfiction deal with root causes of not just climate change but the kind of morality that causes destruction to our physical place on the planet and also to our social and economic structures. Of course, all these systems are related to each other. The definitions given for eco-fiction overall take into account stories that do not disconnect from natural history, natural present, or natural future – that a connection to the environment is noted richly in the story. Bacigalupi accomplishes this in his fiction.

I consider Bacigalupi one of the more prolific storytellers dealing with climate change. As pointed out often in this series, climate change can be explained as a hyperobject, a vast and looming object that is so large it’s hard to grasp. Climate change isn’t really just one subject either. It is connected to a series of other issues that build up to it or trickle down from it. It takes a crafty artist to place moral observations and questions into a story without preaching. I’ll cover a few of his stories here, but urge readers to investigate the rest.

The Windup Girl is a novel in which fossil fuel sources have been depleted. The story takes place in Thailand, where it’s evident the seas are rising. “Windup” refers to a type of spring, called a kink-spring, used to store energy and which post-dates fuel used in the old combustion engine. “Girl” refers to a beautiful genetically engineered windup girl, Emiko, who works in a strip club. In this future age, non-human people, like Emiko, are genetically engineered to be obedient in order to do slave work for the rich, and natural biodiversity has all but disappeared in food growing. Bio-engineering everything has brought on disease and terrorism.

Thailand, however, tries to protect against modified and mutant seeds and beings, and a few brave scientists are trying to hunt out any remaining non-modified foods. As you can imagine, in a world where mega-corporations and rich elite cater to their own whims, there’s also corruption, hit men, and bad guys. Then we have the good guy scientists. So in that sense, this novel, like Bacigalupi’s others, is a suspenseful mystery that is fast-paced and keeps the reader on edge.

As previously pointed out in this series, it’s best that authors aren’t didactic in storytelling. Bacigalupi accomplishes this well by just telling a very good story whose world-building is palpable and appeals to all our senses, and whose characters draw us in. Io9 states:

The Windup Girl is obviously about the geopolitics of the present… and yet Bacigalupi never slides into moralism or judgment. All his characters have their flaws and heroic moments… Ultimately that’s what makes this debut novel so exciting. It’s rare to find a writer who can create such well-shaded characters while also building a weird new future world.

Telling stories about our future Earth seems to be Bacigalupi’s specialty, and Ship Breaker is another story I’ll look at. Geared toward a young adult audience, the novel takes place on the Gulf Coast in the United States in a post-ecologically collapsed world in which New Orleans has been nearly swallowed up by the sea and people literally break old oil tankers apart in order to scavenge for any valuables left. The main character is a teenager named Nailer, whose life is tough – his father is a drug-user and abuses him. Finding a ship full of treasures that he can sell to rich and greedy corporations seems like one way to earn a living, but he is also faced with a moral dilemma when he and his friend Pima find out that the ship is owned by a beautiful girl named Nita, who needs their help.

I am very fond of stories where ragtag people beat the odds by trying to do the right thing. This future Earth has man/dog hybrids, intense storms, and dismal living – more like surviving – conditions. Another thriller, this book packs in very memorable characters and suspenseful moments, making it a favorite among book reviewers.

Many reviewers think in terms of dystopian fiction when exploring books by Bacigalupi. The Guardian points out, however, why dystopia is popular among teens:

Teenagers don’t see dystopias as dystopias; they see them as barely fictional representations of their day-to-day lives.

I think this statement is interesting as it circumvents the idea of present reality represented in the fictional future, which is a common theme in this series. Fiction about global warming and the corruption within finds itself both in the present and in the speculative future. We have no further to glance than at our doorsteps to find rising seas, melting polar caps, fossil fuel greed and industry corruption, and a vast divide between the wealthy and poor – which are always players on the stage of Earth’s demise.

Bruno Latour describes climato-quietism as as “quietism in theology being a laid-back attitude that somehow, without doing anything much, God will take care of our salvation.” But I think a form of it exists among science-believing people as well, in that we hope that climate disruption is something that technology or someone in the future might address so we can continue our current lifestyles without too much of a worry. We’re already experiencing dystopia but cannot see it in front of us. Fiction makes it realer through intense reflection or displacement, but sometimes it still seems too far away. It takes stark fiction, like Bacigalupi’s, to hold the mirror steady.

Bacigalupi’s The Drowned Cities takes place in the Ship Breaker universe. Another young adult novel, it features characters Mahlia and Mouse in a climate-changed world with half men/half monsters, a sure sign of biotech gone wrong. (But what happens to biotech creatures without their masters? They begin to think for themselves.) The world is bleak, with drowned cities and war-torn landscapes in which survival is a desperate act. What reviewers have pointed out about this novel is its memorable grit and darkness. Even romance can be fleeting and dangerous. The Verge has a similar take on The Drowned Cities as The Guardian did on Ship BreakerThe Verge states: “nearly everything he describes could be taking place right now.”

Tool of War is the third part in the Ship Breaker trilogy – Tool being the half man/half monster we met earlier, a biotech creature left in the woods to its own survival. But the reader can also understand that Tool is a consequence of war in general. Tool has the capability for mass destruction, but left to its own conscience, it finds peace and an affinity to lead its teenage armies into doing the right thing – the only thing that will afford humanity a future at all – and that is rebuilding the drowned cities. It’s heartening to see the trilogy’s previous teenagers unite together in this finale, but in the meantime, the bad corporations are trying to neutralize Tool, so it’s not easy sailing. With characters struggling to find identity and purpose in a climate-changed world, we think that we could be them. That we could also be tools. Ultimately, we know that it’s probably best not to be someone else’s puppet but to join in the good fight.

The Water Knife (a fleshed-out novel from the short story “The Tamarisk Hunters”) is a more contemporary story set in a nearer future, in which the dwindling Colorado River pits three states – California, Arizona, and Nevada – against each other in a water war. Summoning the natural history, present, and future of place, the Los Angeles Times describes the novel:

Bacigalupi’s use of water as sacred currency evokes Frank Herbert’s Dune. The casual violence and slang may bring to mind A Clockwork Orange. The book’s nervous energy recalls William Gibson at his cyberpunk best. Its visual imagery evokes Dust Bowl Okies in the Great Depression and the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis Dam that killed 600 people and haunted its builder, Mulholland, into the grave.

The American Southwest is a region historically plagued by droughts, but climate scientists tell us:

[The] 21st century drought in the Southwest will primarily be driven by increased evaporation due to warmer global surface temperatures. Relative humidity will decrease as temperatures rise, which will lead to increased evaporative demand from soils. Enhanced evaporation due to global warming will reduce soil moisture in the Southwest by an average of 3 cm/year. By 2099, soils in the region will be 10-20% drier than they are today, which will increase the risk of drought by at least 20%.

What has been a very dry region, with droughts, is meant to get worse in the future with water wars becoming likely eventually. This makes drought (similar to deluge, in other regions) a common theme for writing fiction that relates to future Earth. But, as stated before, the way Bacigalupi world-builds and writes driven, memorable characters sticks with readers very well.

Bacigalupi’s newest novel The Tangled Lands – co-authored by Tobias Buckell – is a fantasy novel in which the use of magic in the city of Khaim causes environmental destruction in the form of brambles that begin to take over. Previously, it seems that magic has been good and useful, until, that is, it becomes toxic after a tyrant named The Jolly Mayor begins to collect the magic so that he can control everyone else with it.

The bramble begins as a sprout but grows wildly, with thorns and creeping vines, and produces a sleeping poison. The bramble kind of reminds me of the invasive Himalayan blackberry – which has been called “invasive, noxious, and beautiful” – that spreads wildly throughout the lower mainland of British Columbia. It’s hard to stop it. The story is told in a sequence of four connected tales: an alchemist trying to fight the bramble, a mother trying to find her children, a blacksmith’s family trying to build protective armor, and a family searching for their daughter. An uprising takes place as citizens realize that magic is now destroying the environment.

We might take these stories as ways to combat things that destroy our environment, and ultimately us. The Washington Post points out:

Like we do, the citizens of Khaim grapple with their complicity in the destruction of the world, even as they fight for the right reasons.

The Tangled Lands was released on February 27, 2018.

Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer who has global warming on his mind, for sure. On Facebook, he states, and I quote:

I wrote The Water Knife because I was concerned about America’s willingness to pretend that climate change wasn’t real, and wasn’t a pressing problem for us. I wrote it as a thought experiment: What happens when we try to pretend that facts don’t exist and science data isn’t real? Where does it lead? In that story, the result is that those who have been clear-eyed and planned for the future are struggling, but still hanging on, and those who pretended it wasn’t coming have lost everything. There are drought refugees, border controls between states, and an increasingly dysfunctional and fragmented United States. I added in Merry Perrys, a group of religious fundamentalists who pray for rain, because Rick Perry did just that during the Texas drought of 2011. Now he’s the Energy Secretary. And now, a climate denier is our President, and our government agencies are being asked to remove data about climate change, to not to speak about climate change, and to not acknowledge climate change. The House of Representatives is looking to cut funding to the IPCC, and Trump is looking to pull out of the Paris climate agreement – all while the planet hits record heat levels.

It’s refreshing to see authors admit their concerns and not be afraid to talk about issues. Climate disruption is a valid subject in fiction; fiction has the capacity to hold a mirror to us, enabling us to see what is there that we otherwise do not see, like a dark shadow. Great fiction acts as a conduit for channeling issues to us in story form, and thanks to authors like Paolo Bacigalupi, we are not short of this literature.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Opportunity: The Sunny Art Prize 2019 – International Art Competition

The Sunny Art Prize is an international art prize hosted by Sunny Art Centre, London. This fine art competition in the UK is a global platform offering art opportunities to emerging and established artists to showcase their artworks internationally. The exhibiting galleries are located in cities across the world, including London, Beijing and Shanghai. The art contest will also give the art prize winners the opportunity to be part of a one-month artist residency. The Artist Residency Programme is organised in collaboration with established Chinese art institutions and it provides the chance to engage with historically and culturally rich places in China.

The art competition welcomes submissions from all over the world. The diversity of the prize is also reflected by the variety of art practices it represents, from two-dimensional work such as paintings, drawings and photography to three-dimensional sculptures and ceramics, as well as contemporary installations, mixed media artworks, video and digital work.
Sunny Art Prize 2019 Submissions Deadline: 30th June 2019

What Is Awarded?

First Prize

  • £3,000
  • A public solo exhibition in London
  • A group exhibition in London
  • A one-month residency in China (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)
  • A group show in China (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)

Second Prize

  • £2,000
  • A group exhibition in London
  • A one-month residency in China, (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)
  • A group show in China (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)

Third Prize

  • £1,000
  • A group exhibition in London
  • A one-month residency in China, (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)
  • A group show in China (either in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou)

The prize winners will be joined by 27 shortlisted artists in a group exhibition at the Sunny Art Centre, London. From these 27, 7 artists will be selected to exhibit their works at one of our partners’ galleries in China along with the three Prize winners.

Advantages

  • Exhibit your work globally in prestigious galleries from London to Shanghai
  • Win from a cash fund of £6,000 to expand your practice
  • Win the first prize and get an exclusive 1-month solo exhibition in the heart of London at the Sunny Art Gallery
  • Participate in a residency in Asia, and engage with historically and culturally rich places in China
  • Reach audiences worldwide by showcasing your work online to over 100,000 visitors.
  • Be included in the finely printed catalogues released internationally for each edition of the Prize

Who Can Submit?

Submissions are accepted from every country in the world and are all equally judged. Please note that you must be at least 18 years old to enter the competition.
Entries may include:

Accepted Media

  • Painting
  • Sculpture
  • Photography
  • Ceramic
  • Original Prints
  • Installation Art
  • Mixed Media (both wall-hung and three-dimensional)
  • Video Art (Including moving image, projected work, and digital installations)
  • Drawing

Size Restrictions

All 2D work such as painting, drawing, projected videos (including moving images and installation) must be 120x120cm in size max.
All three-dimensional work, including sculptures, ceramics, and mixed media artworks, must be 80x80x80cm max in size. Installation art (whether made of mixed media or digital) must be assembled on site at the exhibiting location and can reach 100x100x100cm max.

What Do We Look For?

We wish for artists to engage with real contemporary issues. Winners of previous editions did so by raising awareness of global issues and themes ranging from climate change, the current international debate regarding immigration and refugees to our perception of identity, gender, and much more.

For further details visit the website: https://www.sunnyartcentre.co.uk/artprize/

The post Opportunity: The Sunny Art Prize 2019 – International Art Competition appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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Q24: ISSUE TAKEOVER: Lab for Aesthetics and Ecology

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Our first-ever issue takeover! The Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology takeover of the CSPA Quarterly proposes generative spaces of experiment and failure for a speculative, sustainable aesthetics. The issue grapples with the metaphors of compost and glutinous narratives. It paints with the eerily luminous colours of climate breakdown, and offers instructions for post-(r)evolutionary survival. It stays with the troubles of enlisting nonhumans as labourers of detraumatization, and presents cyborg witches as unholy guides towards reparative tactics for modest hope. Edited by Ida Bencke and Dea Antonson. Designed by Zille Bostinius.

Sector donates to support Creative Carbon Scotland’s work

Members of Scotland’s arts & cultural (and food) sector have been showing some creative ways of raising funds to support Creative Carbon Scotland’s work.

We’re delighted to have been the recipient of a number of donations – from artists to food vendors – to help support our work putting culture at the heart of making a better, environmentally sustainable Scotland. We’re thrilled to see the sector’s support for our work being expressed in a range of different ways, adding to the Regular Funding we receive from Creative Scotland and the in-kind support of the City of Edinburgh Council.

The Album (EP)

WracklinesWe are thrilled to be the beneficiary of the profits from sales of ‘Wrack Lines’, an EP created by Jo Mango in collaboration with Rachel Sermanni, RM Hubbert, Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow) and The Pictish Trail. The name of the EP, released on Olive Grove Records, refers to the name given to the waving line of detritus that is left on the beach when the tide goes out. The EP grew out of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded ‘Fields of Green’ research project, which explored what audiences, organisers and musicians can do to encourage environmentally sustainable behaviour around music festivals. The research was a collaboration between the University of the West of Scotland, Edinburgh University, Lancaster University and Creative Carbon Scotland.

Since its release with a special performance by Jo Mango and Pictish Trail at Celtic Connections in 2016, several songs from the EP have been played on BBC Radio 6 by Stuart Maconie, Gideon Coe and Guy Garvey. The EP is available to buy as a digital album or CD through Bandcamp, and lots of streaming services!

The Merch

The sale of canvas bags as part of the #SustainableFringe campaign led by Poltergeist Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018, has been another welcome source of donations towards our work. The group from Poltergeist Theatre took on the #SustainableFringe idea and used it to encourage production companies, audiences and theatre makers to get involved in environmentally sustainable action focusing on three areas of visible waste at the Fringe: plastic, paper and material.

A new approach for the #SustainableFringe campaign will be brought to the Fringe this year by the newly launched Staging Change initiative which is creating a network of performers and theatre makers who believe in a greener future for theatre at the Fringe and beyond.

The Mag

We’ve gratefully received the royalties from Ade Adesina‘s contribution to the inaugural edition of ‘Mycelia’ a new print magazine published in Glasgow by Hedera Felix. Ade is a full-time printmaker who lives in Aberdeen whose work  is a visual commentary on the ideas of ecology and our ever-changing world. Mycelia is a new magazine dedicated to weird fiction, experimental literature and visual art that explore the weird and the eerie from Hedera Felix an independent publisher which begun launched in 2018. Mycelia 001 can be purchased through Hedera Felix’s website.

The Food

The – vegan with veggie-friendly offerings – street-food vendor Freddy & Hicks each month collects donations towards charitable causes from their customers and we were fortunate enough to be chosen in September. Freddy & Hicks started life at Borough Market in London before migrating to Glasgow. You can now find their exciting veggie and vegan burgers and more at the street food market at PLATFORM from Friday to Sunday every weekend as well as a whole lot of other pop-ups around Glasgow and beyond.

What’s next?

We are really thrilled to be the recipient of these pieces of support, it shows us that the work we’re doing is important for others and a diverse range of funding helps us to focus on helping the cultural transition to create a fairer, more equitable and zero-carbon society.

If there are ways you or your organisation would like help make this happen at any scale, we’d absolutely love to hear from you. Please drop Ben a line or call our office on 0131 529 7909.

The post Sector donates to support Creative Carbon Scotland’s work appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

Powered by WPeMatico