28.9 2019 – 8.3 2020
MALMÖ

The natural world, from which humanity has so thoroughly distanced itself, no longer exists, at least not in the same way or to the same extent it once did. This realization is starting to dawn on an increasing number of us, including many artists, and has resulted in a growing desire to reconsider old truths and seek out new ways of living and understanding the world. With the exhibition project Sensing Nature from Within, Moderna Museet Malmö wants to offer an artistic and philosophical sounding board for these existential explorations of our time. 

In many places around the world today, texts are being written, lectures given, and exhibitions held that in a variety of ways explore man’s complex relationship with the environment in which we live. Criticism has hardened against the logic of a culture that leads to irrevocable destruction and the extinction of species. At the same time, there is a growing interest in more holistic world views and in the fascinating exercise of rethinking our relationships with the more-than-human world.

Moderna Museet Malmö wants to actively contribute to these important reflections and is therefore presenting Sensing Nature from Within during the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020. The project will combine an international art exhibition with an interdisciplinary program of lectures, discussions, and performances.

The seminar series that is part of the program is arranged in collaboration with Lund University Agenda 2030 Graduate School which is a global, cutting-edge research school and collaboration platform for issues related to societal challenges, sustainability and Agenda 2030.

Binary divisions, such as between nature and culture, and man and animal will be challenged in both the exhibition and the program. Intelligence, subjectivity, and emotional life will be explored within as well as beyond the human sphere. In this way, Sensing Nature from Within aims to awaken our sensibility towards the nature that surrounds us at the same time as it constitutes our own inner world.

Sensing Nature from Within is freely inspired by new and old insights into life and matter and reflects aspects of the growing search beyond our exploitative culture, for a new code of ethics.

Participating artists: Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares; Cecilia Edefalk; Elisabete Finger & Manuela Eichner; Hans Hammarskiöld; Ingela Ihrman, Anne Duk Hee Jordan; Tuija Lindström, Hanna Ljungh; Hilde Skancke Pedersen; The Otolith Group; Shimabuku; Christine Ödlund.

Curator: Joa Ljungberg

(Top photo: MONSTRA – performance by Elisabete Finger & Manuela Eichner Photo: Debby Gram)

A NEW ONLINE COURSE with ecological artist, educator and former scientist, Cathy Fitzgerald PhD

BOOK A PLACE by Friday 6 March 2020.
Course Dates: Week 1 of this 6-week course begins on Friday 13 March 2020. The course ends on Wednesday 22 April 2020.
Cost: €89

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A PILOT ONLINE COURSE FOR A SMALL GROUP OF PARTICIPANTS. THERE WILL 15 PARTICIPANTS ONLY – SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, BOOK A PLACE WITHOUT DELAY.

Essential Ecoliteracy for your Creative Practice, Teaching or Work

Feeling overwhelmed, isolated and concerned about the planetary environmental emergency? Do you sense cultural responses are needed for these urgent times? That future arts funding will be increasingly  directed to this topic? Do you wish to respond through your creative practice or teach others about this topic but don’t know where to start?

Let’s Face It – Being Ecoliterate Matters for Creatives too!

For everyone, it is hard to ignore the grim reports about environmental decline and the increasing suffering it is causing across the world. Young people are protesting, the scientists warnings are more than alarming, and even cultural institutions are beginning to talk about sustainability goals. 

As creatives (in all art disciplines), art and craft teachers, art managers, art researchers and cultural policy-writers, you might already be asking: 

• “How can I approach these urgent realities effectively and confidently in my creative work and for others that I might teach?”
• “Does this mean I have to learn about science, ecology, climate change, biodiversity, sustainability? â€œ
• “Cathy â€“ I know nothing about these areas! Isn’t it all too complicated!!?”

Introducing the pilot Essential Ecoliteracy online course

In this supportive, in-depth online course you can learn from home in your own time over a 6-week period. 

You will connect with myself and others in a weekly online Live Group Meeting. 

From this course, you will gain confidence and competence for this urgent new topic that is rarely available in contemporary art education, art teacher or curator training or in art administration courses.

My course will help you identify key aspects about this critical topic for your creative work. 

• At the end of this course, you will understand how modern civilization, and specifically our some of our cultural activity, has alienated us the living world and accordingly, why new informed cultural work is URGENTLY needed.
  
• You will more fully appreciate ecological insights from key thinkers and understand how these ideas insist on a necessary paradigm shift in how we think, create and work if ourselves and other species are to survive and thrive. 
  
• Importantly, even if you don’t implement all of these ideas immediately, you will understand how ecological understanding radically challenges commonly held ideas of creative practice, current cultural policy and even how we might fund and differently support creative ecological art practice in the future. For example, we will learn why ecological art practices are often collaborative, slow art practices that evolve over time in one place. 
  
• THE KEY OUTCOME OF THE COURSE WILL BE TO HELP YOU IDENTIFY VALUES, PRACTICES AND AIMS SO YOU CAN CONFIDENTLY WRITE A CREATIVE STATEMENT FOR YOUR WORK THAT EMBODIES ECOLOGICAL INSIGHT AND KNOWLEDGE 

So if you are interested in joining this pilot course, please email me at cathyart@gmail.com to secure your place.

It is with great enthusiasm that I announce The Blued Trees Symphony will add a new 1/3-mile measure in Minnesota this spring of 2020. The new measure will launch a powerful new partnership with the Lake Superior Living Lab Network (LSLLN)! As with all previous measures, the performance-installation will be realized at the invitation of private landowners. Minnesota landowners are resisting eminent domain takings for the “Enbridge Line 3” pipeline to transport tar sands oil across Lake Superior. The Blue Trees Symphony in collaboration with the LSLLN will join Indigenous groups represented by Honor the Earth, led by Winona LaDuke and Universities on both sides of the border, all responding to the call of the land. 

Tar sands represent a significant environmental danger to Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” America’s 5th most important source of agricultural products. The proposed Line 3 Pipeline Replacement Project would impact 700 miles of lake shoreline and endanger watersheds in Canada as well as the Midwestern United States. Mapping from the LSLLN illustrates how the location of proposed pipelines could threaten critical water reserves needed for clean drinking water, local farming, fish and wildlife. 

Each measure of The Blued Trees Symphony designates a series of GPS located “tree-notes” in an aerial pattern that represents a melodic refrain. Tree-notes are selected by on-the-ground teams of painters from the local community. Each tree-note selected is marked with a vertical sine wave of non-toxic ultramarine blue casein which can grow moss. The spatial relationships between tree-notes and local geographic features modulates the composition of each unique measure. The sigil is applied according to my precise instruction from canopy to roots and wraps around the trunk, binding soil, habitat and copyrighted art. A final mapping of all the GPS identified tree-notes generates the performable score.

This new planned measure will continue to build a case for including habitat dependent ecological art at the intersection of eminent domain and copyright law as a new category of art to be protection under VARA (the Visual Artists Rights Act). In 2018, working with copyright lawyer Gale Elston A Blade of Grass (ABOG) produced a mock trial which was held at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City to test the legal theory behind TheBlued Trees Symphony. The Blued Trees Symphonyin Minnesota will be the next step in modeling new systems that value environmental justice, beauty and human survival in the Anthropocene.

(Top Photo: Logistics of a Minnesota Measure of The Blued Trees Symphony overlaid on a Creative Commons map of the Lake Superior watershed, Aviva Rahmani, 2020.)

Contacts for further information: 
Legal adviser: Gale P. Elston PC, Manhattan Offices: 111 Broadway, 14th Floor, Yellin Suite 1403, New York, New York, 10006 W: (646) 584-3987 gpe@galepelstonpc.com

Minnesota adviser and LSLLN contact: Kathryn Milun, Associate Professor, Sociology/Anthropology Department, University of Minnesota, Duluth, 1123 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812 W (218) 726-7071 kmilun@d.umn.edu

Please consider making a tax deductible donation to the project through NYFA (the New York Foundation for the Arts) to see this work continue!
The Blued Trees Symphony is part of Gulf to Gulf, a project fiscally sponsored by NYFA, a 501©3, tax exempt organization founded in 1971 to work with the arts community throughout New York State to develop and facilitate programs in all disciplines. NYFA will receive grants on behalf of the project and ensure the use of grant funds in accordance with the grant agreements as well as provide program or financial reports as required. Any donations made to the project through NYFA are tax deductible!

Artists and arts organisations:
Take part in Season for Change 2020, a UK-wide programme showcasing cultural leadership on climate action

Led by Artsadmin and Julie’s Bicycle, Season for Change 2020 will be a major cultural festival and campaign celebrating the environment and inspiring urgent action on the future of our planet, in the lead up to the UN’s COP26 international climate negotiations in Glasgow in November 2020. 

From June-November 2020, organisations and artists across the UK are invited to respond to the climate crisis through practical actions and participatory activities that spark public conversation about the future of our planet, and showcase solutions. 

Co-created with organisations and artists across the UK, the programme will include digital content, new participatory commissions, performances, exhibitions, talks, film screenings, workshops and events. Together, we aim to reach over 10 million people, with participation from more than 250 arts and cultural partners. 

Season for Change 2020 is supported by Arts Council England, which has partnered with Julie’s Bicycle for over a decade to support the cultural sector in reducing its environmental impacts and in 2012 became the first cultural body in the world to make climate action part of its funding agreements for National Portfolio Organisations.  

Season for Change 2020 culminates on 9-19 November 2020 when the UK welcomes delegates from over 170 countries to Glasgow for COP26, the UN’s most critical climate negotiations to date. This will be an unmissable opportunity to showcase the creativity and leadership of the cultural sector on the most important issue of our time. 

Season for Change 2020 aims to mobilise artists and cultural organisations to put climate action at the heart of their programming through: 

• A programme of events and resources that will empower artists and cultural organisations to take action and inspire their audiences and communities. 
• 15 flagship participatory commissions with 10 partners nationwide that engage diverse audiences with the climate crisis. 
• A national campaign of events about climate change and the environment involving over 250 artists and arts organisations nationwide. 

“There is quite simply no issue more serious and urgent than the future of our planet. Season for Change is about story and action – amplifying the multiplicity of voices of artists, audiences and communities across the UK, and equipping them with the tools to act collectively and as individuals.”
Deborah Chadbourn, Executive Director, and Róise Goan, Artistic Director, Artsadmin

“This is the year for climate action. The UK, as host to the international climate negotiations, has an exceptional opportunity to make a big difference. Season for Change is for people from all over the country to connect to the climate crisis and make our voices heard at COP26. Come with us.”
Alison Tickell, Founder and CEO, Julie’s Bicycle

“At the Arts Council, we believe arts and culture can make the world a better place, which includes building a more environmentally sustainable future. We are very pleased to be supporting Season for Change 2020, an ambitious and timely project which highlights the innovation, imagination and commitment of artists and cultural organisations responding to climate change, showcasing practical action and sparking valuable conversations with the public.”
Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England

Season for Change will be delivered in partnership with arts and heritage organisations, artists and cultural agencies across the UK. Confirmed programme partners to date include Apples and Snakes, Cambridge Junction, Contact Theatre, East Street Arts, Happy Museum, Manchester Museum, Metal Liverpool, Sage Gateshead, Warwick Arts Centre, Watershed and academic partners such as the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation (CAST). 

How artists and arts organisations can take part in Season for Change

Season for Change 2020 invites artists and cultural organisations to host events, artworks and actions across the UK that celebrate the environment and inspire urgent action on climate change, in the context of COP26.  

Arts organisations, artists and others from the UK’s creative community are encouraged to go to the Season for Change website to: 

• Sign up to our mailing list to receive event invitations, resources, updates and programme announcements.
• Tell us about any events or creative responses about environment/climate change you are planning for June-November 2020. 
• Share with us touring work on this theme that we can promote to our networks.
• Share Season for Change with your networks using the hashtag #SeasonforChange2020 

What kind of events, artworks and actions can be part of Season for Change? Creative responses can take place anywhere – in arts venues, on streets, in schools, at festivals, on beaches, in libraries or museums and across broadcast, film, fashion and music. We invite you to use culture to speak out, champion change, showcase sustainable practice and inspire action by doing things such as:

• Programme an event
• Commission new work
• Organise a debate
• Curate an exhibition
• Provide space for spontaneous performances
• Host an open call
• Make art, theatre, music, film etc. 
• Turn your work inside out and show what you’re doing behind the scenes
• Support your community to take action on local environmental issues creatively
• Put climate change centre stage

Read the full press release

(Top image: METIS, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE, part of Season for Change 2018. Photo: David Sandison)

Julie’s Bicycle and Arts Council England have worked in partnership since 2012 to inspire environmental action across the arts and culture sector, with a focus on long-term funding partners, the National Portfolio Organisations.

Our latest report, Sustaining Great Art and Culture, details data, projections and initiatives from the opening year of a new four-year environmental sustainability programme. 

“The success of this programme goes far beyond data collection and carbon reduction. Cultural organisations are embedding climate action into the core of their operations – developing creative solutions, forging new partnerships and sparking valuable conversations on sustainability with their audiences. The actions taken to address climate change over the next decade will be crucial and, as society faces up to this challenge, the imagination, ambition and commitment demonstrated in the Arts Council’s 2018/19 Environmental Report point the way forward.” 

– Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England

This is the first environmental report to cover the Arts Council’s 2018-22 National Portfolio, which has grown by 20% and includes 184 organisations new to environmental reporting. It reveals that the Portfolio’s total carbon footprint is 114,547 tonnes of CO₂e â€“ an amount which would take almost 115,000 trees 100 years to absorb – yet also highlights initiatives organisations are undertaking in response to this challenge: from Bristol’s Colston Hall pledge to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030 to the London Theatre Consortium developing a roadmap for a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025.

Key findings of the report include:

• Organisations are making sustainable energy choices â€“ 54% have installed energy efficient lighting and controls and 32% of purchased electricity is on a green tariff contract.
• A new, creative ecology is emerging â€“ 47% are trailing sustainable production or exhibition methods and 30% are with banks that invest in social and environmental projects.
• Sustainability is powering creative expression â€“ 50% developed new creative or artistic opportunities as a result of environmental initiatives and 49% have produced, programmed or curated work on environmental themes.
• Business communication is changing â€“ 70% actively promote virtual communications technology as an alternative to travelling.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE

DOWNLOAD THE SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS

In response to the growing commitment demonstrated by the sector, Arts Council England and Julie’s Bicycle will now shift focus towards accelerating impact and stretching ambition. This includes two new strands of work: The Accelerator Programme, which offers organisations resources and expertise to develop innovative ideas into deliverable projects for greater impact, and a targeted carbon reduction scheme for organisations with large infrastructures, The Spotlight Programme.

We encourage you to please share this report, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #GreenCulture to join in the conversation. If you would like any social media or marketing assets, or have any questions, please contact the Julie’s Bicycle office: +44 (0) 208 746 0400. 

Banner image: Steve Edwin, courtesy of Bournemouth Arts By The Sea