This is the complete ClimateCultures blog archive for 2020: 23 original posts from 22 members. Our authors for 2020 were:
James Aldridge, Julian Bishop, Clare Crossman, Jo Dacombe, Mark Goldthorpe, Dave Hubble, Nick Hunt, Rob La Frenais, Adam Ledger, Lisa Lucero, Mirjamsvideos, James Murray-White, Caroline New, Selva Ozelli, Peter Reason, Indigo Moon, Kelvin Smith, Deborah Tomkins, Philip Webb Gregg, Veronica Worrall, Yky, Margin Zheng.
You can find our latest posts for 2021 and explore previous posts from our growing network of members published in 2019, 2018 and 2017 — and you can also explore all our posts by category, – or by author listed in our sidebar.
December 2020
Owned by the Wood in Winter
by Mark Goldthorpe
31 December 2020
Review
1,160 words: estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe reviews The Wood in Winter, an illustrated essay by John Lewis-Stempel, and finds an elegant exploration of life — wild nature and human — in the harshest season, and an Anthropocene question: who owns the land?
Hacking the Earth
by Rob La Frenais
17 December 2020
Conversations
1,930 words: estimated reading time = 7.5 minutes
Curator and writer Rob La Frenais interviews scientist and fellow ClimateCultures member Bill McGuire about Skyseed. McGuire’s novel explores geoengineering — the ‘fix’ proposed by some as global heating’s global solution. What on Earth could possibly go wrong?…
November 2020
You, Small Creatures, Big Monsters
by Mirjamsvideos
20 November 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
2,060 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes + 9 mins video
Video artist Mirjamsvideos shares reflective artworks which subtly demonstrate our relationship with the world, using ugliness in trash and beauty in small things to overcome our lack of insight into systems we’ve made toxic to ourselves and others.
Art Photography — Emotional Response to Global Crisis
by Veronica Worrall
2 November 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,560 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes
Photographer Veronica Worrall explores how art can offer an important emotional response to global pandemic and climate crises, sharing her ‘lockdown’ project to generate images — where photography partners with natural processes to produce a visual essay of optimism.
October 2020
A Cosmology of Conservation: Ancient Maya Environmentalism
by Lisa Lucero
20 October 2020
Cultural Change
1,190 words: estimated reading time = 5 minutes + 42 minutes video
Anthropologist Lisa J. Lucero shares a talk she recorded specially for ClimateCultures, drawing on her extensive archaeological research into how ancient Maya culture adapted to environmental change, and whose non-anthropocentric cosmology can help us rethink our own worldview.
Celebrating Clean Air Day
by Selva Ozelli
8 October 2020
Art & Eco Activism
2,380 words: estimated reading time = 9.5 minutes + 2 mins video
Artist and writer Selva Ozelli marks Clean Air Day with a roundup of international art shows she has curated and participated in during this year of pandemic, spurred on by urgent connections between our environmental and health crises.
September 2020
On Green Verges
by Julian Bishop
21 September 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,210 words: estimated reading time = 5 minutes
Writer Julian Bishop, living on the very edge of the metropolis, found a fascination with local verges during Covid-19 lockdown — and their previously unregarded nature took up residency in his imagination, leading him to a poetic challenge.
On Re-emergence and the Avoidance of Clichés
by Dave Hubble
8 September 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,620 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes
Artist and writer Dave Hubble reflects on his creativity under lockdown: how novel conditions and wanting to avoid coronavirus-saturated art sparked new work, drawing out potential beauty in the materiality of pollution and prompting the question, what next?
August 2020
A Queer Path to Wellbeing
by James Aldridge
17 August 2020
Signals from the Edge
2,670 words: estimated reading time = 10.5 minutes
Artist James Aldridge explores experiences of being ‘other’ as an ability to see beyond the boundaries of binary distinctions: offering us signs of a more inclusive queer nature, from a place that until now has been the edge.
July 2020
Imagining Woodlands Under Lockdown
by Jo Dacombe
30 July 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,760 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes + exercise
Artist Jo Dacombe shares an exercise she developed for students to respond creatively to the sensory nature of woods, and which she’s adapted for online engagement with nature during Covid19 lockdown as part of her Imagining Woodlands project.
All the Little Gods Surrounding Us
by James Murray-White
13 July 2020
Review
1,000 words: estimated reading time 4.5 minutes
James Murray-White discovers in ‘Winged’, a new collection of words and images from fellow member James Roberts, a creative expression of the natural world’s ‘being-ness’ and a way for us to deepen our own presence within the more-than-human.
June 2020
Rewilding — Slantways
by Philip Webb Gregg
29 June 2020
Creative Works
1,100 words: estimated reading time 4.5 minutes
Writer Philip Webb Gregg shares a new poem exploring rewilding as a sideways step into a stranger world, resisting simplifications of ‘progress’ and the gains and losses of our current model, even as we seek to change it.
May 2020
Gulp! Water Choices, Stories and Theatre
by Adam Ledger
27 May 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,800 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes
Theatre-maker and arts academic Adam Ledger shares the thinking behind Gulp!, The Bone Ensemble’s project on global water issues, and the challenges of creating an engaging and participatory family drama on environmental issues, inequalities and opportunities during Covid-19.
In Time: Crisis, Care, Creation
by Margin Zheng
15 May 2020
Challenges of Creative Engagement
1,800 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes
Artist Margin Zheng felt moved to perform Lola Perrin’s work, Significantus, as part of their climate activism, and adapted the piano suite to new conditions when Covid-19 prevented public events, producing a unique online concert: Crisis, Care, Creation.
April 2020
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #12
by Philip Webb Gregg
27 April 2020
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
1,670 words: estimated reading time 6.5 minutes
Writer Philip Webb Gregg explores being human in the Anthropocene, using three objects that offer to carry, fuel or guide our search for experience and meaning, but whose less subtle qualities have great power to lead us astray.
Signal from the Edge #3 – I Am Purpose
by Indigo Moon
Signals from the Edge
1,300 words: estimated reading time 5 minutes
Writer Indigo Moon shares a short story exploring one person’s sense of purpose. Evoking ideas of conversation with the universe to illuminate times of zoonotic pandemic and climate crisis, Indiana reflects on the presence of signals from within.
March 2020
Towards an Erotics of Place
by James-Murray-White
30 March 2020
Spiritual Ecology
1,750 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes
Filmmaker James-Murray-White shares his experience of some of the world’s desert places, and what the book Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape offers as a way into explorations of these places, of our sense of connectedness and of self.
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #11
by Kelvin Smith
12 March 2020
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
1,900 words: estimated reading time 7.5 minutes
Writer Kelvin Smith‘s three objects — electric lighting, symbolically living money, once-and-future reefs — question what is fundamental to human presence on Earth, what’s been taken from the land and what new creations might arise in future seas.
February 2020
Bristol Climate Writers Presents … ‘Desert Island Books’
by Nick Hunt, Caroline New, Peter Reason, and Deborah Tomkins
27 February 2020
Speculative Worlds
3,000 words – approximate reading time: 12 minutes.
Four writers of fiction and nonfiction (all members of Bristol Climate Writers and ClimateCultures) share the ‘Desert Island Books’ they discussed at a recent library event on climate change: Nick Hunt, Caroline New, Peter Reason, and Deborah Tomkins.
Fool’s Gold — the Cairn and the Wishing Well
by Mark Goldthorpe
6 February 2020
Conversations
1,700 words + photo gallery – approximate reading time: 8 minutes
In this piece — commissioned by artists Hayley Harrison and Pamela Schilderman for their exhibition, Fool’s Gold — editor Mark Goldthorpe explores notions of value and care through our experience of objects as works of nature, culture and transformation.
January 2020
A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #10
A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects
600 words: estimated reading time 2.5 minutes
Citizen artist Yky offers three objects that explore Anthropocene themes of our relationship with time and the world and the responsibility that we hold in our own hands, using a common photographic presentation to help make these visible.
An Invitation to Act: Letters to the Earth
by Clare Crossman
14 January 2020
Review
1,700 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes
Poet Clare Crossman was inspired to respond to a public call for Letters to the Earth and her poem is included in the publication — a book which offers “a spelling out that we are interconnected with nature.”
Climate Emergency — a New Culture of Conversation
by Rob La Frenais
2 January 2020
Conversations
2,300 words: estimated reading time 9 minutes
Independent curator and writer Rob La Frenais interviews fellow ClimateCultures member and ClimateKeys founder Lola Perrin about her ground-breaking global initiative to ‘help groups of people tell the truth to each other’ about the ecological and climate emergency.