Challenges of Creative Engagement Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

Cockroach Cabaret — Learning to Make Friends With Arthropods

Composer and performer Camilla Cancantata considers the nonhuman voice in Cockroach Cabaret. Scrutinising human actions, her alter ego questions the role of humanity on planet Earth, asking if we can pull ourselves back from the brink of apocalypse.

1,570 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes

The Cockroach is an alter ego that I developed years ago, after writing a song called the Complaint of the Cockroach as part of my Songs for Interesting Times collection.

Cockroach Cabaret. Showing a photograph of Camilla Cancantata © 2006 — Cockroach Cabaret. Photograph: Camilla Cancantata © 2006

The Cockroach is uncertain about the role of humanity on planet Earth, and frankly astonished by our behaviour. Why are we so hell-bent on our own and other species’ destruction? Why do we despise, torture and eat some animals and keep others as pets, the eating of whom is generally considered shocking? Why do we seemingly consider ourselves superior, despite our very recent arrival on Earth?

It seemed to me that a creature that emerged in the Carboniferous era, survived several ice ages and outlived the dinosaurs, that is still thriving and diversifying, should be treated with respect. The Cockroach points out the relatively recent arrival of vertebrates, and even more recent arrival of primates, and how modern humans have essentially been here for the blink of an eye.

Alas, our jumped-up species totally fails to view creatures from a more ancient lineage than ours with any kind of evolutionary perspective. 90% of animals on Earth are arthropods — animals (including all insects) that manage perfectly well without an internal skeleton. They also form half of the biomass of all animals on Earth — whereas humans have the smallest biomass — 0.01% — even less than viruses! And a tragic statistic that the Cockroach thinks all humans should know: only 4% of mammals now on Earth are truly wild, and less than 6,000 tigers live in the wild.

Cockroach cabaret — solidarity with the more-than-human

Most cockroaches live in woods and forests in warm climates. Only a few can live around humans — and be hated for it. They are deemed pests — they upset our routine, eat our left-over food, some of them carry diseases. But they got on quite happily with life before we turned up. Cockroaches, like certain flies — also often hated by humans — compost and recycle, keeping the planet free of waste.

Showing BatCave Cockroach, photograph by Ltshears — BatCave Cockroach. Photograph: Ltshears (2005), shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BatCave_Cockroach_0123.jpg

So did humans, for a while — and most indigenous tribal peoples still do, living gracefully, taking only what they need to survive, and co-operating with the non-human world. The Baka people of Africa, for example, build beautiful housing out of leaves and branches, which will merge back into the landscape when they move on.

In the ‘developed’ world — whatever that means — colonialism and industrialisation have created vast amounts of increasingly toxic waste that, in the 21st century, has now become virtually impossible to break down. We gaze in confusion at coloured plastic boxes and wonder if that old toothbrush can be recycled?

To restore some balance and perspective, I founded the Arthropod Friendship Association, only partly in jest. You are invited to join, the requirements being that you agree with and try to adhere to, or at least respect, the constitution:

The Arthropod Friendship Association

Constitution

Aims and objectives

To break down the barriers to understanding between arthropods and vertebrates and create new relationships. This includes examining and reducing both irrational and justifiable vertebrate fears of e.g. being poisoned, infected with life-threatening diseases or losing food supplies.

Explore differences between approaching the world with an exoskeleton or internal bone skeletal structure.

Educate in order to reduce current inequalities, where a few powerful vertebrates control the lives of millions of arthropods.

Acknowledge that most arthropods have been on the earth for many millions of years longer than vertebrates. They deserve respect.

But respect is in short supply for cockroaches. Google ‘cockroaches’ and you will be taken to endless sites of extermination. And that terrible question — “What are cockroaches/wasps/spiders etc for??”

To which the only sensible retort is “What are humans for??”

Once I started on the path of cockroach solidarity, I discovered others had been there before me — Don Marquis, the author of archy and mehitabel, and Marion Copeland, who wrote Cockroach, a poetic and thoughtful book that made me decide I too am an eco-feminist. There are many others, some of whom feature in Copeland’s book.

Archy and Mehitabel — cross-species comrades

In archy and mehitabel, Archy lives in a newspaper office, back in the early 20^th century, and comes out at night to use the typewriter, calling himself a ‘vers libre poet’ trapped in a cockroach body. The human daytime workers make sure there is always a fresh sheet of paper for him to write his stream of consciousness poetry: he needs all his weight to put down a key, and so cannot use capitals or punctuation. Mehitabel is a disreputable and wonderful female alley cat who is a reincarnation of Cleopatra, or believes she is. The two creatures of the night have a slightly uneasy relationship but are comrades in adversity.

“Damned be this transmigration,” writes Archy — “I with the brain of a milton fell into the mincemeat at christmas and was damned near baked in a pie”…

Mehitabel, after hanging out with suburban middle-class cats — “fat slick tabbies” — says — “none of that for me give me the alley archy me for the mews and the roofs of the city and the occasional fish head and liberty is all I ask freedom and the garbage can”…

Cockroach (Animal) by Marion Copeland (2003) – cover.

Marion Copeland’s book explores both entomology and history, and also takes a look at the culture surrounding cockroaches, including a plethora of poetry, stories and children’s stories, all sticking up for the humble and despised creatures of the world. She notes how small children are generally fans of cockroaches and other so-called bugs, and only later learn — presumably from adults — to hate them. She quotes Janelle Cannon, author of a children’s book, Crickwing, about a golden rainforest cockroach, who says: “considering how long these well-designed bugs have survived…it is easy to see that we humans invaded the cockroaches’ pantry long before the cockroach entered ours!”

Absolutely. We humans invaded everyone’s pantry, not only invaded, but laid waste to it. Our endless wars devastate lands and landscapes and their non-human inhabitants, animal and plant. We even destroy the means of our own sustenance: irreplaceable seed banks in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine and Afghanistan have been destroyed by war and wanton looting. Corporations and industrialised agriculture kill off entire ecosystems, poisoning land and water. The heating of the Earth caused by our reckless use of fossil fuels is having impacts that will reach far into the future.

The Cockroach is clear: too many humans are taking up too much space with too much stuff. Yet we do not even look after our own kind. We tolerate inequality with ease and cannot control the violence and wanton destructiveness of our own species: we need to respect and learn from the ancient heroes of evolution who have survived so much. With the help of their wisdom, we may still be able to pull ourselves back from the brink of apocalypse.

You despise us, criticise us, try to paralyse us
Call us vermin, want to wipe us out
You say there’s too many of us but we’d like to know
Which one of us will be the first to go?

Camilla adds that, “although health issues meant that the Cockroach Cabaret couldn’t go on tour this year, next year looks hopeful. Expect music, songs and spoken word, in a thought-provoking performance with plenty of humour and some salient facts. No live cockroaches are exploited for this show. Contact me on camilla@littleweed-music.org if you’re interested in the Cockroach Cabaret — and find out more at The Cockroach 2026, looking for friendly spaces.

You can listen to Camilla’s song ‘Complaint of the Cockroach’ and her Songs for Interesting Times album on Bandcamp.

archy and mehitabel, by Don Marquis, was first published in 1927 and is published by Penguin (1987).

Cockroach (Animal), by Marion Copeland, is published by Reaktion Books (2003).

***

From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say something about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

Camilla – “In my favourite line of work/play — which is live performance — I find no use for AI. I got taken to Gifford’s circus this year — a family outing on a very hot day. It’s commercial theatre that relies on ticket sales, and not cheap, but it was great to see circus again and experience the high energy of it all (I have run away to the circus a few times). Acrobatics and balancing acts, live music, cues — all rely on trust. As does theatre, even without acrobatics. I don’t think I could ever trust AI. I have used it occasionally as an editing tool but am not interested in its creative possibilities. I’m not in the film industry or a commercial field of music threatened by AI — that I leave to others. The military aspects of AI are of course terrifying, but until we humans have taken the Cockroach’s advice, it looks as if we’re going to carry on with war and violence. All we as artists can do is use our creativity to try to move things in a different direction with whatever tools we feel comfortable using.”

Camilla Cancantata

A composer, improviser and performer, currently working on Dancing Dark Matter and Food! a family-friendly musical on the growing resistance to the corporate takeover of food.

Flora-Persona: “We are all related”

Artist Michael Gresalfi shares new artworks using leaves, seeds and other natural materials to produce zoomorphic or anthropomorphic masks and sculptures that echo our early ancestors and an approach to the world that recognises, “We are all related.”

1,560 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes

I am excited by an artistic theme I have been pursuing these past months. I have named the series ‘Flora-Persona.’

Using only natural materials, including plants, trees and associated leaves and seeds, and avoiding the use of any manmade materials during the creative process (such as paints, adhesives, and dyes), I purposefully manipulate plants and other flora in a zoomorphic or anthropomorphic manner.

Relying solely on Nature’s bounty is an artistic departure for me in some ways, yet a continuum of my focus on addressing the rising environmental damage, including climate-related disruptions, which our industrialized world has wrought.

Inspired by my research in support of my painting entitled ‘Wood-Wide Web’ (which I previously presented on ClimateCultures in my post with Eva Strautmann), I became acutely aware of the ability of various tree and plant species, along with fungi, to communicate and share resources with one another in a symbiotic manner.

Showing ‘Wood-Wide Web’: 24″ x 30”, mixed media on used, repurposed canvas – oils, acrylics and melted wax. Artist: Michael Gresalfi © 2025 — ‘Wood-Wide Web’: 24″ x 30”, mixed media on used, repurposed canvas – oils, acrylics and melted wax. Artist: Michael Gresalfi © 2025

‘Wood-Wide Web’ portrays a forest, field, or meadow not merely as a collection of competing individuals in a shared location, but rather as an interconnected community where resource sharing and communication play a significant role in the health and resilience of the entire ecosystem.

Mitakuye Oyasin: we are all related

My research led me to read about the Mother Tree Project. This large-scale, decade-long research effort led by Dr. Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia, revealed that neighboring trees and plants are in communication with one another via an underground network of fungi that resembles the neural networks in our brains.

I was astonished to learn that in one study, Simard documented that a Douglas fir tree that was injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a Ponderosa pine tree growing nearby. The pine tree then produced enzymes to protect itself against the nearby insect invasion.

To me, a form of collective consciousness was in play within the web of life, across at least two Kingdoms. In biological taxonomy, life forms are organized into hierarchical groups: Kingdoms are at the top, with phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species being progressively lower tiers. Fungi are in a separate Kingdom from trees and plants, yet they support one another in a mutually beneficial way.

Not so with respect to humanity, the alpha species in the Kingdom of Animalia. I began to see more clearly that we don’t support the interconnected web of life, and in fact we continue to disrupt the very symbiotic fabric that the wood-wide web illustrates.

During my daily walk in the woods behind my home, I began to consider more thoughtfully how alienated we all are from the natural world, and I began to ponder how a conscious wood-wide web of interconnected life that surrounds me might view humankind. Yes, not a comforting thought.

We are all related. Showing leaf art by Michael Gresalfi, 2026. — Art: Michael Gresalfi © 2026. A note on captions: I really hadn’t thought of specific captions for images of these works, seeing them more like an anthropological or archaeological ‘find’, where present-day humans have to surmise the intention of long-ago peoples when assessing disjointed remains of their social and cultural mores and beliefs.

The artistic concept of ‘Flora Persona’ formed slowly. My evolving viewpoint was also informed by a Lakota phrase, “Mitakuye Oyasin” (“We are all related”). The phrase expresses the idea that every living entity shares the same divine origin and life force, and that humanity is part of a complex reciprocal web of existence, rather than separate from, or superior to, nature.

My artistic interest was thus stimulated by both non-Western and ancient beliefs concerning the shared web of life and by my newfound understanding that plants and trees have some form of elementary consciousness, as demonstrated by their ability to communicate across species, genus, families, and all the way up the hierarchical groups, to include across the two noted Kingdoms.

Reaching back to our roots in art

Both climate and human culture, including artistic expression, have intersected in many ways throughout our species’ course of time. In this evolving series, I delve deeply into our ancient past for artistic inspiration. I suggest that we have been creating art across the various climate epochs we have inhabited, since times immemorial. I believe that both the flora and fauna available in long-ago times provided source materials used to create art, back into earlier hominin eras.

It is reasonable to assume that humans have been making art from biodegradable materials, including masks, figurines, and sculptures, for more than one hundred thousand years.

Masks and sculptures have been my primary focus to date. My artistic goal is to present man-manipulated natural elements in a manner that harkens back to our early ancestors.

With respect to cave paintings, the earliest known artistic expressions for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, consisting of non-figurative symbolic markings, are more than 70,000 years old. They are still in existence today, due to their isolation and protection from the weathering elements. Other art, made from natural materials and not contained within caves, clearly has not been preserved.

One of my flora-persona series interests is using burdock (Arctium lappa) seed heads to create extinct local animals that were plentiful in my region of Maryland, USA during the Woodland and Archaic Periods — such as the wooly mammoth and the cave bear. It is my contention that such natural materials were used to create art by these ancient native ancestors, and indeed perhaps as far back as our early hominin ancestors.

Burdock plant and collected seed heads, as well as a few examples of my ‘Burr Art ‘, are presented below:

Collected burdock seed heads. Photograph: Michael Gresalfi © 2026

We are all related. Showing burr art by Michael Gresalfi, 2026. — All art: Michael Gresalfi © 2026. See note above on captions.

Plant masks: viewing how our relatives might see us

With respect to making human-like faces from plant leaves, I was inspired to begin this Flora-Persona series when pondering the wood-wide web and, particularly, the nascent consciousness documented via chemical communication networks formed between fungi, plants, and trees.

These leaf masks are not necessarily made to be worn. Rather, they are meant to present these wonders of nature as a member of our distant family, aligned with the Lakota phrase “Mitakuye Oyasin”: we are all related.

I continue to experiment with different plants, seeds, leaves, and tree bark, all picked up along my daily walks in my neighboring Black Hill Park. I find myself drawn to creating leaf masks that present the viewer with an unsettled view of how we humans might be viewed by our distant plant relatives, such as displaying sorrow, shock, disappointment, and anger. These sentiments seem very proper to me, considering the continuing harm we cause to the interconnected web of life.

Below are three photos. The first shows how I applied juice to several of my leaf masks, a natural dye from ripe purple pokeweed berries that I had gathered.

American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is natively established in Maryland, and its berry juice served as a primary source of makeshift ink during the American Civil War. Art: Michael Gresalfi © 2026

The next is a photo of one of my framed leaf masks:

All art: Michael Gresalfi © 2026. See note above on captions

The final photos show a large 36” x 36” canvas I painted and then displayed, with four of my leaf masks within its four quadrants, followed by close-ups of the masks.

We are all related: Showing a36” x 36” canvas with four leaf masks. Art by Michael Gresalfi, 2026 — 36” x 36” canvas with four leaf masks. All art: Michael Gresalfi © 2026. See note above on captions.

Find more

From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

Michael — “I used Gemini AI as a background search tool — looking for other examples of both my ‘burr art’ and ‘leaf art.’ Frankly, not much out there — at least from my initial research.”

***

Michael adds: “A young friend from Scotland, after looking at my burr art, brought to my attention the annual ancient event called the ‘Burryman,’ which happened to occur mid-August. The Burryman is a centuries-old Scottish folk tradition where a local man is covered head-to-toe in thousands of sticky burdock burrs and paraded through the area.” Find more at Wikipedia.

You can see Michael’s work with fellow ClimateCultures member, artist Eva Strautmann, in their post The Wood Wide Web – Fruitful Collaboration, which features both artists’ paintings on the topic.

This piece for the Ecological Disciple by Lenore Three Stars, The Way Forward: Mitakuye Oyasi — A Worldview (11/6/26) explores the value of an approach to our shared world that starts from the position that “We are all related” (Mitakuye Oyasi can also mean “All my relations.”)

More on the Mother Tree Project, founded by Dr. Suzanne Simard, can be found at The Mother Tree Project & Program, a research and outreach initiative housed in UBC’s Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, rooted in the idea that forests are deeply interconnected systems, not just collections of individual trees.

Michael Gresalfi

An artist who seeks to incorporate art with climate change data, and whose work in encaustic medium, glass paint, oils and acrylics includes 'Our Changing Planet'.

Dark in Nature – Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Eco-artist and designer Ife Abhulimen‘s sculpture, Dark in Nature, explores persistence by holding an object in place long enough to be noticed. Emerging from the space between appearance and disappearance, it questions our notions of ‘waste’ and ‘away’.

960 words: estimated reading time = approximately 4 minutes

Often times, the moment something becomes ‘waste,’ it also becomes easy to forget.

And then, once it leaves our hands, we move on. We carry on with our day as usual and rarely stop to wonder where it ends up.

Every year, we discard hundreds of millions of tons of plastic. Most of it slips quietly out of view into landfills, oceans, into places we don’t have to look at. And once it’s gone from sight, it becomes easier to believe it’s gone altogether.

Out of sight, out of mind.

But some things don’t often follow that saying.

What we choose not to see

Most of what we throw away is designed to leave us quickly. A bottle is used for minutes. Packaging is torn open and discarded without a second thought. These objects pass through our hands so briefly; it almost feels like they were never really there to begin with.

And yet, they remain, just not where we can see them. That absence creates a kind of comfort. If it’s no longer in front of us, it no longer belongs to us. It becomes someone else’s problem. Somewhere else’s reality.

But that distance is thin. Almost imaginary.

It didn’t start as art

Dark in Nature, one of the pieces from my recent solo exhibition, Delicate Resilience, began in that space between presence and disappearance. It is made from reclaimed plastic bottles, wire, textile scraps. Materials that were once held, used, and then set aside. Things that had already reached what we might call their end but in my mind still had potential to become a conversation piece. At the centre, a darkened organic-looking structure holds fragments within it, bits of colour and texture held in another bottle that feel like remnants of something that hasn’t fully let go. Around it, the forms extend outward. Bottles bend and stretch, no longer functioning as they once did, but not erased either.

They linger, outliving us by generations.

Dark Nature: Showing: 'Dark in Nature', by Ife Abhulimen, 2026: Plastic bottles, garden wire, textile scraps. — ‘Dark in Nature’ (Ife Abhulimen, 2026). Plastic bottles, garden wire, textile scraps. Photograph: Ife Abhulimen

Something is still happening

There’s a sense of movement in this piece of work. The wire reaches outward, almost searching, almost restless. The forms resist stillness. They push past the boundaries that try to contain them.

And then, unexpectedly, there are the yellow elements. They resemble flowers; small, delicate, almost hopeful. For a moment, they suggest something familiar. Something natural. Something alive.

But they are not what they seem.

They are constructed, like everything else in this piece. Placed there, not grown there. These ‘flowers’ hint at nature’s persistence, its quiet way of pushing against human interference, always trying to find a way to thrive.

The illusion of growth

That’s where the tension sits. Dark in Nature holds that contradiction quietly. It looks like growth, but it isn’t the kind we understand. These materials do not return to the earth. They do not follow the cycles we associate with life.

They stay, they break, they shift, they scatter but they remain part of the world, whether we see them or not.

So what we are looking at isn’t growth in the traditional sense. It’s persistence taking on the shape of something we recognise.

Showing 'Dark in Nature' (Ife Abhulimen, 2026). Plastic bottles, garden wire, textile scraps. Photograph: Ife Abhulimen — ‘Dark in Nature’ (Ife Abhulimen, 2026). Plastic bottles, garden wire, textile scraps. Photograph: Ife Abhulimen

What happens after we look away?

When we throw something away, we rarely imagine its future. We don’t picture where it settles. How long it stays. What it becomes over time. But that doesn’t mean it disappears. It simply moves beyond the edges of our attention. This piece brings it back from that distance. It gathers what was scattered. It places it in front of us again, not as it was, but as something we can’t ignore quite as easily.

Not gone, just repositioned

Nothing here is new.

Every part of it has existed before, used differently, for an original purpose. All that has changed is the context. The way it is seen after some artistic manipulation. The fact that it is being looked at again. And maybe that’s enough to unsettle something. Because if these materials were never truly gone, just relocated, reshaped, reassembled, then the idea of ‘away’ starts to feel uncertain.

Dark in Nature – a small shift

This work doesn’t offer answers.

It doesn’t tell you what to do or how to respond.

It simply holds something in place long enough for it to be noticed.

And sometimes, that’s where change begins, not in immediate action, but first in awareness.

Because once you begin to notice what doesn’t disappear, it becomes harder to believe in the idea of ‘away’. And maybe ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was never the full story.

Maybe it’s just the part we chose to accept.

Find more

You can find more on the recent exhibition of Ife’s work, which included Dark in Nature, in our Creative Showcase piece, Delicate Resilience: Where Nature Refuses to Give Up.

Elsewhere on our blog, in Starting to See Waste as Art and Heritage, curator Veronica Sekules introduces her special essay for our Longer feature, using an exhibition at GroundWork Gallery to explore artists’ roles in helping change how we value what we discard.

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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

Ife – “I use AI to create mockups and nice backgrounds for my art pieces, which has been very helpful especially when I want to showcase work in a different setting. In addition, I use AI to do research as it helps me filter all the fluff, in contrast to Google search, and it gives relevant information. I also use it to search for opportunities in the sustainable art space. I try not to use it a lot because I think it’s robbing us of our capacity to think as intelligent humans. For this post, I have used AI to help with grammar corrections.”

Ifeoluwa Abhulimen

A self-taught eco-artist and designer who explores themes of consumption, sustainability, and environmental responsibility, inviting audiences to discover beauty and value in what is often overlooked.

Heritage, Art and Community Collaboration

Artist Julien Masson shares a recent community collaboration with artists, residents and businesses, which uses recycled garden furniture, instruments and miscellaneous timber found locally to create public art that reflects a mix of cultures and transform public spaces.

900 words: estimated reading time = 3.5 minutes

This series of bespoke artworks — a site-specific mural community collaboration, created in partnership with a cafe, a group of artists and local residents — creates a prominent terrace space in Southampton’s city centre. Our design and construction process is rooted in sustainability and inclusivity.

I worked on this as part of a core team, including fellow artist David McDiarmid, and in partnership with Mettricks café, to transform what was a blank canvas. Our aim was to turn a highly visible but rather bland area into a dynamic and creative focal point.

Community collaboration: showing public art using recycled furniture and piano parts with paint, Mettricks cafe, Southampton's cultural quarter — ‘Music in the city’: recycled furniture and piano parts with paint, Mettricks cafe, Southampton’s cultural quarter

The murals feature a bold, contemporary design using vibrant cut-out letters and abstract shapes. These aren’t new materials; they are recycled pieces of timber found locally and donated by residents.

We consciously take materials that might have been tossed aside — from broken garden furniture and instruments to miscellaneous timber — and turn them into something special. This encourages everyone to think creatively about waste and promotes recycling.

A collaborative community process

Working on these collaborative projects often starts with initiating a conversation with local businesses and, often facilitated by their staff, we typically send out a call for material donations.

The community’s response is usually incredibly generous: local people donate wood and domestic items that would otherwise be destined for the skip or the bonfire. Our goal is always to keep these materials as local as possible, like a neighbourhood contemporary survey.

Community collaboration - showing artists in action. — Community collaboration – artists in action

The donations we receive are very varied: chairs, an old table, piano keys, shelves, a chimney surround, clocks, barometers, garden fences, and coat hangers, just to name a few. These pieces are not just raw material, they fundamentally dictate the form and character of the final artwork. I see it as a positive challenge to weave as many of these disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

We generally favour solid timber and plywood for durability, and what is interesting is that each donated item brings its own story to the final work. This presents a unique challenge, especially when trying to preserve wood that may have been exposed to the elements or damaged before being painted or varnished. Navigating these imperfections, however, adds a rich layer of authenticity, ensuring the work is genuinely true to the place where it is created.

Essentially, nothing goes to waste. Even the smallest off-cuts are saved and will find their way into future artworks.

Beyond the materials, the community shapes the ideas. I also run public consultation sessions where local residents and business staff offer input and suggestions. While it’s rarely possible to include every idea, I genuinely love the notion of people discovering their own small suggestions or personal memories hidden inside the finished piece, like a secret message hidden in the work.

The collaborative process is, of course, a mixed bag of challenges, with the back-and-forth dialogue of working with others being as challenging as it is rewarding. That said, I believe this partnership approach forces everyone involved to maintain a generous and open-minded stance, encouraging a less controlled, more spontaneous way of working. It’s a wonderful way to keep the individual ego in check and the creativity flowing.

Community spirit & public art

‘Bigging up Southampton’: upcycled timber and paint, Southampton’s Guildhall Square.

The bright colour palette is a direct reflection of the rich mix of cultures in the neighbourhood, while the design subtly integrates local heritage elements. Making the artwork accessible is important to us. Each piece is modular and tactile, incorporating varied textures and depth. This ensures the piece is readable by touch, a feature supported by a team member who organises touch tours for the partially sighted.

The artwork turns an otherwise bland space into an eye-catching feature that offers interest both at a distance and up close.

‘Land Ahoy’, upcycled timber, furniture and paint. Southampton Forward commission in collaboration with the Community of RedBridge and the Ship Inn.

Like our previous public pieces, this mural is modular and easy to repair, ensuring its longevity. We hope to continue this organic growth by adding more layers in the coming months, allowing the artwork to develop its own unique identity. Our team, primarily composed of dedicated members from The Keepers Artists Collective, alongside supportive local businesses, proves that with a little investment and community spirit, ambitious public art is entirely achievable.

We look forward to bringing similar work — giving locals something they can truly be proud of — to more neighbourhoods across the city.

Find more

The Keepers Artist Collective is a non-profit group of artists based in the city of Southampton, Hampshire, including Julien Masson and David McDiarmid. The 8 artists come from different backgrounds and disciplines, and share an interest in creating art, community-based art projects, and supporting other artist networks.

Julien’s previous posts for ClimateCultures include The Call of the Forest, which describes a residency in the New Forest, an environment that juxtaposes natural and human worlds, and Julien’s choice there of a physical paint medium to represent the digital realm that often distances us from the natural.

Julien Masson

An artist whose works are all, in some way, related to technology and our relation with it and wishes to expand notions of what is art.

Finding the Tipping Points with Thrutopian Fiction

Sustainability researcher and writer Denise Baden discusses the challenges of thrutopian fiction — writing stories to entertain, raise awareness of effective climate action and inspire sustainable behaviours — and her latest thrutopian novel, The Philosopher and the Assassin.

1,645 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

In his recent ClimateCultures post, Rod Raglin casts doubt on the claims of thrutopian fiction to set out a roadmap to a better future — “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations”, as thrutopian champion Manda Scott puts it. In his article Rod sets out the practical, political and economic realities that would need to be addressed before we have any chance of a better future. Many of these seem intractable and the charge levelled at the thrutopian fiction produced so far is that it fails to address these. Another charge is that when it tries to, it comes across as “more didactic than entertaining.”

Rod is right that it is very difficult to write fiction that is both entertaining and will raise awareness of climate policies that are likely to work and/or inspire more sustainable behaviours. I know because I have tried it.

Showing the cover of 'Habitat Man', a novel by Denise Baden. — ‘Habitat Man’, by Denise Baden (2021)

Thrutopian fiction — changing behaviours

The first draft of my novel Habitat Man was appalling — everything I wanted the reader to know went in and it was didactic and clunky. I needed to write it then edit it out, just to get it out of my system. But by the final draft, I believe I pulled it off. An award-winning radio drama writer liked it so much she asked to put it in for a BBC Radio 4 adaptation and it got to the final round. It was the best seller in my bookshop for two years and reviews on Amazon are genuine and enthusiastic. In terms of behaviour change, research found that of 50 readers surveyed one month after finishing the book, 98% had adopted more pro-environmental attitudes and 60% had adopted at least one of the green alternatives mentioned in the book. These ranged from simple things like home composting and wildlife-friendly gardening, to campaigning. You can see the results in a link in the notes below.

Another novel, Visco, winner of the 2020 Green Stories novel competition sets out a quite plausible means by which a new society emerges from an old one. David Fell, himself a sustainability consultant, tells the story of a music festival on a small island within the UK that sets up a side festival for those who need care and their carers as part of an inclusivity drive. When the music ends, no one wants to go home and so they don’t. Step by step and overcoming one challenge after another, a more sustainable community based on the values of care emerges, attracting even the wealthy and powerful to its cause. Importantly, it’s also a damn good read!

I would claim that every story in the anthology No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet is thrutopian fiction. Several have been expanded into other forms. For example, one story imagined the ocean being given nation status and was developed into the novel Fairhaven, written by chemical engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. This sets out in fiction form a roadmap to how Malaysia could mitigate and adapt with respect to climate change.

The Philosopher and the Assassin: the evolution of a work

Another short story in the anthology was written as a standalone novella The Assassin, which is available also an audio book and as a play, Murder in the Citizens’ Jury. It imagines eight people in a citizens’ assembly debating climate solutions. The whodunnit element provides the drama and mystery. The context raises awareness of this emerging form of participative democracy, which I believe is an essential first step to real change. It also allows climate policies to be explored from the perspective of a variety of people, each of whom relates to them in different ways. Murder in the Citizens’ Jury was performed in 2024 in a sellout run, and later, a school put on an abridged one-hour version. It was interactive and the audience voted for their favourite climate policies. The director told me people were still debating the ideas days later. You can see reviews, details and feedback at the Green Stories link in the notes below.

Professional theatre companies can access it via Lazybee scripts, but it’s available royalty-free for any school/college drama groups and amateur theatre companies to stage if they approach me direct.

Thrutopian fiction: showing the cover of 'The Philosopher and the Assassin', a novel by Denise Baden (2025)

Inspired by the success of the theatre production, and wanting to reach a larger audience, I’ve included the ideas from the play as a story within a story in a novel, which was published by Habitat Press on 1^st October: The Philosopher and the Assassin. A script version won the 2024 Writing Climate Pitchfest, and it is literary fiction: think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets murder mystery! The goal is thrutopian — it aims to entertain and suggest some of the key leverage points that could tip us in the direction of a sustainable future. Here is a brief description:

There’s no more important job in the world than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical — a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

Reviews so far have been reassuringly positive:

“At once a commentary on the looming responsibility of the climate crisis and our ever-shrinking opportunity to enact meaningful change, and a far from conventional whodunnit, the book plays with the notion of what is moral and what is right. Complicit in the book’s central sprawling philosophical dilemma, the reader finds themselves judge, jury and executioner in the case of the century. While the novel tackles prescient and troubling themes and poses difficult questions (how far should we go for the greater good?), it does so with a sense of dry humour and a delightful eye for the absurd. Above all, the warmth and resilience of its ineffable protagonist suffuses the narrative and, as the story ends, we struggle to leave her behind. Not only is this a timely, thought-provoking and essential story in an age of urgent, innovative climate action that demands the attention of us all, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Funny, memorable, characterful and original.”

— The Literary Studio

“Denise Baden’s campus novel/whodunnit is so much more than just an up-to-the-minute academic locked-door mystery, it’s a philosophical treatise wrapped in an exposition of the polycrisis, embedded in a love story, threaded through with alternative democracy and grounded in explorations of grief, motivation and drive. Full of sharp ideas, subtle humour and grounded in the harsh realities of our world, you’ll come away with a whole new understanding of our world and what it takes to change it!”

— Manda Scott, author of Any Human Power and Boudica series.

“If facts are ignored, fiction may be our next best hope. With its story-within-a-story, The Philosopher and the Assassin cranks up the dramatic tension around whether we will achieve the carbon transition, or not. Ultimately, a surprisingly hopeful read.”

— John Elkington, author of Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability

“A sharp, witty take on the climate crisis – from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

— Wren James, founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League

Rod, I welcome your feedback!

I’d love to meet some fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, so if you’d like to come to the The Philosopher and the Assassin book launch in Winchester, UK on 11^th October, you will find details below.

Find more

Denise’s novel The Philosopher and the Assassin was published on 1st October. The book launch is on 11th October in Winchester, UK: details and booking here.

Denise mentions Manda Scott, whose novel Any Human Power (2025) is published by September Books. Manda discussed thrutopian fiction and more in a recent episode of the Life Itself podcast, and she and Faith Tilleray run the Accidental Gods podcast and programme “exploring how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come.”

You can find thrutopian stories and features at Bending The Arc — “towards a thriving future on Earth”, and Green Stories runs a series of writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like.

Denise’s novel Habitat Man (2021) and her novella The Assassin are published by Habitat Press and are available in paperback and as ausiobooks amd eBooks on all major platforms, including Amazon (where you will find the reviews Denise mentions). Denise summarises the research into readers’ responses in Habitat Man in Research on her website.

Visco by David Fell, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save our Planet (edited by Denise Baden and Steve Willis), and Fairhaven by Steve Willis and Jane Lee, are also available on all major platforms. You can find reviews and information about the performances of the play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury here.

In his ClimateCultures post, Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?, fellow writer Rod Raglin asks if thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges: how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

Denise Baden

A professor of sustainability and a writer, who founded the Green Stories project to create a cultural body of work that entertains, informs and inspires transformation ...