Creative approaches Archives

November 29, 2018

msb ~087 Our entangled future

Our entangled future

“To access and activate our most radical potentials as a storytelling species,” the AdaptationCONNECTS project has issued an innovative call for short stories of ‘our entangled future’: stories to engage our imaginations with ‘quantum social change’ in the face of our accelerating climate crisis. “We need stories that confront the limitations of a dualistic, deterministic, and inanimate worldview and instead offer insights into a reality that is connected, entangled, uncertain, and ripe with possibility – a world of complementarity, non-locality, and potentiality.” Their call places an important emphasis on “the power of language, meaning, and metaphors to create a new reality.” Continue reading “msb ~087 Our entangled future”

November 26, 2018

msb ~084 Hurricane bells

Hurricane bells

I just posted this moving radio programme to ClimateCultures’ Views from Elsewhere, but there’s more to explore in artist Peter Shenai’s hurricane bells and stories of Hurricane Katrina. Cast in shapes reflecting Katrina’s evolving wind speed, they bring dissonant and consonant voices that turn data into art: nature, recast by human climate disruption, in turn, reshapes human artefacts: nature-cultures powerfully entwined. Continue reading “msb ~084 Hurricane bells”

November 23, 2018

msb ~083 Between the flame wars and the echo chamber

Between the flame wars and the echo chamber

Feeding the flame wars? 'Someone is wrong on the internet' cartoon — Feeding the flame wars?

We’ve all had scarring (non)conversations with people who hold very ‘contrary’ views on climate change. Also, unchallenging ones with our own tribe. Flame wars vs echo chamber? Perhaps there’s a Map of Temperaments as to which type we each enjoy most in different company; but, more importantly, I like this handy guide from Karin Kirk at Yale Climate Connections, on a ‘spectrum of persuadability’ of those pushing back on climate change. Continue reading “msb ~083 Between the flame wars and the echo chamber”

November 14, 2018

msb ~076 Climate data: climate art

Climate data: climate art

Climate Symphony Lab 2017: noisy data — Climate Symphony Lab; noisy data

A conversation today reminded me of a workshop I joined last year, where we created audio art from climate data. Climate Symphony Lab tapped into public interest in, but confusion with, science to make new ways to internalise what environmental change ‘looks’ (or sounds) like. Climate data: climate art. Actually being in on debates on what to include and exclude, which available technologies to use (instruments, laptops, voices, feet, breath, tearing paper?) was unusual, enlivening and unsettling. It brought a direct, participative responsibility to what can be seen as quite distant, individualist artistic practices — and even more distant, communal practices of science. Continue reading “msb ~076 Climate data: climate art”

October 25, 2018

msb ~062 Connecting with change

Connecting with change

I’ve mentioned the book Anticipatory history and how I keep returning to it. The term also describes a loose collection of approaches that extend beyond the book’s collection of texts, each a means to open up conversations about change in places we feel deep attachment to, now facing uncertain futures.

To help us bring in new perspectives when we try to make sense of change, ‘anticipatory history’ approaches might include:

Looking imaginatively at past changes and at the contingencies which underlined (and could have undermined) the events and actions that shaped what it is now. Examples are reverse chronologies, timelines, oral histories and artistic representations.
Taking a fresh look at the language we use to talk about the natural and cultural processes at play. The book itself provides one way into this, as a form of glossary arising from a dialogue between specialisms.
Imagining and naming unfamiliar or new ways of living with change that might be adopted in this place.

Continue reading “msb ~062 Connecting with change”

October 24, 2018

msb ~061 Anthropocene foreshadowings

Anthropocene foreshadowings

Edge of Darkness: ‘stop the Anthropocene or the teddy bear gets it..’

I may need to spend time tracking down TV classics from the 1960s to 80s. Adam Scovell’s excellent survey of British TV fictional alarm calls reminds us how Anthropocene warnings have been with us for almost as long as the Great Acceleration itself. “It’s not that these programmes were ahead of their time: it is more frustratingly, that we have moved on so little in how we deal with the monumentality of ecological issues and their increasing scarring of the strata of our planet; the danger has been growing but with far more fervour than our willingness to address it.” Continue reading “msb ~061 Anthropocene foreshadowings”

October 18, 2018

msb ~057 Creativity: a bright idea

Creativity: a bright idea

At The Conversation, Gareth Loudon argues for education for greater creativity as a bridge between silos of knowledge. This includes that famous ‘two cultures’ gap identified by CP Snow decades ago: the separation of sciences and humanities. Specialisation, of course, involves people becoming more expert in smaller areas (that unkind old joke: you learn more and more about less and less until you end up knowing everything about nothing). The separation is then reinforced in how we’re taught, how we expect the world to work and be managed. Continue reading “msb ~057 Creativity: a bright idea”

October 9, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~050 Truth and story

Truth and story

A few years back, I helped novelist Clare George with some of her public writing workshops, Imagine There’s a Future. Speakers shared their climate change work, writers discussed scenarios and wrote new stories. For me, this was a powerful introduction to the value of creative work on our climate predicament, for writers and readers. Clare describes how the stories came from very diverse authors working together. “Climate change campaigners sat next to climate change sceptics and openly discussed their most heartfelt fears and dreams in ways that would not have been possible without the help of fiction.” Continue reading “msb ~050 Truth and story”

October 3, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~046 “I hear those voices that will not be drowned”

“I hear those voices that will not be drowned”

I wanted to pick up where I left off in Evocative Objects, which omitted what I’d ‘brought’ for that ‘Show & Tell’ workshop on objects with personal resonance in our changing climate. Maggi Hambling’s massive, 4-metre high steel seashell, Scallop, stands on Aldeburgh beach in Suffolk, resolutely dividing opinion among locals and visitors. I love it, and wrote about it in ClimateCultures’ A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects: “Being in its presence was to experience very direct communication with both environment and history, and an unsettling encounter with the future. Aldeburgh has been disappearing from the map for centuries … the sea moving in by stages.” Where Scallop now stands on shingle, were once homes and streets, lives and livelihoods. Continue reading “msb ~046 “I hear those voices that will not be drowned””

October 2, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~045 Future forest, plastic tide

Future forest, plastic tide

So far, I’ve only managed to watch 30 minutes of the BBC’s excellent Drowning in Plastic: impossible to stomach the full hour-and-a-half at once. Footage of shearwaters dying from the plastics their parents unwittingly fed them is, appropriately, gut-wrenching: the animals as oblivious to their plight as we are to our hour-by-hour petrochemical churn that creates it. So – like the other recent BBC 90 minutes on landfill – I’ll be taking this in chunks. But the first viewing leaves me wondering how to respond to another plastics piece today, on a colourful ‘future forest’ made entirely from three tons of recycled plastic waste… Continue reading “msb ~045 Future forest, plastic tide”