During ClimateCultures’ first year, we published a ‘creative question’ at the end of most Members’ posts. Here, we’ve gathered together the full collection of 29 prompts for curious minds. Scribble your quick responses on scraps of paper and keep them in your pocket, or share your thoughts with us via the Contact Form, in a Tweet to @ClimateCultures or on our ClimateCultures Facebook page – or just scratch your head and think about the day or night ahead in a slightly altered light…
Questioning the frame? Space for creative thinking... Consider a specific frame - whether a structure or a concept - that contains, sets apart or maybe makes ready for investigation some cultural representation of an aspect of environmental change. How is the frame sometimes visible, or sometimes not, and does this change your understanding of the change?
This question first appeared with Mary Eighteen’s post The Ocean as Abject: Painting as Installation in April 2018
Questioning dependency? Space for creative thinking...
What cultural patterns are we over-dependent on as we face an uncertain future? How do you feel implicated in these patterns - sustained by them, helping to recreate them for future generations, at risk from their possible failure, trying to reimagine them? Think of our dependency as a path being uncovered in a future archaeological landscape; how would you look for clues of alternative paths we might have taken?
This question first appeared with Lisa Lucero’s post Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Maya Kings in March 2018.
Questioning distance? Space for creative thinking... Perceptions of 'near' and 'far' can trick us, misdirect our attention and our conversations. What new patterns in familiar surroundings would you look for - or create - to bring your own focus to an overlooked environmental change?
This question first appeared with Rebecca Chesney’s post Near / Far in February 2018.
Questioning the COPs? Space for creative thinking...
Bali, Berlin, Bonn, Buenos Aires, Cancun, Copenhagen, Doha, Durban, Geneva, The Hague, Kyoto, Lima, Marrakech, Milan, Montreal, Nairobi, New Delhi, Paris, Poznan, Warsaw... We've had 23 'Conferences of the Parties', with next year's in Katowice, Poland. Where, when and how would you hold the COP where the world celebrates delivering on 'Paris 2015'? Why there? Sketch out a 'creative timeline', mapping out how you think we might get there...
This question first appeared with Paul Allen’s post The Beating Heart of COP24 in December 2017.
Questioning power? Space for creative thinking...
'A thing of beauty and an object of power' is how James refers to the embodiment of energy in ice and fire and clay on show here, and our connections through art to planet, culture to nature. How might human and more-than-human powers play out for you in a creative response to our energy concerns?
This question first appeared with James Murray-White’s post Of Fire, Ice and Earth in November 2017.
Questioning genre? Space for creative thinking...
David suggests that 'cli-fi' is a theme, not a genre; many genres might address climate change. What genres do you think might do this in unexpected ways - and what cliches might it either avoid or exploit to novel effect?
This question first appeared with David Thorpe’s post The Rise of Climate Fiction in November 2017.
Questioning extremity? Space for creative thinking...
"Extremity is the point," suggests Martin Dysart - in the world of Normal, where passion is flattened out, made safe, and industrialsed violence against animals (human and non-human) is hidden from sight. Freed from a need for any 'final, coherent explanation', what extremity might your creative practice bring to light?
This question first appeared with my post What Use is Grief to a Horse? in October 2017.
Questioning our conversations? Space for creative thinking...
Julia quotes George Marshall: "The single most powerful thing an individual can do about climate change is to talk about it," and this is the response that ClimateKeys inspires (and ClimateCultures invites). What was the most recent positive conversation you had about climate change, and the most negative? What made the difference? And what can you create with one other person - a story, an image, a sound or song or a setting - to make (both) your conversations more positive?
This question first appeared with Julia Marques’ post Keyboard Conversations Across the World in October 2017.
Questioning an end? Space for creative thinking... "
Adam says of Where’s My Igloo Gone? that the 'performance simply cannot end unless everyone works together." In our changing climate, where is the end of participation - and therefore of performance in your own creative work?
This question first appeared with Adam Ledger’s post Action, Participation, Feeling: Where’s My Igloo Gone? in October 2017.
Questioning the camps? Space for creative thinking...
In Flood, the people divide into three camps - faith, law and violence. Snaking your way between these camps and more, belonging to none, what tangible things would you kayak between them to show each a broader way?
This question first appeared with James Murray-White’s post Water’s Rising, at Their Ankles Now… in October 2017.
Questioning boundaries? Space for creative thinking... Nick ends his series of excerpts with thoughts about changes in Europe's winds - and the 'infinitely porous' boundary between weather and mood. How might we construct maps of a future Europe illustrated not by our natural or political boundaries changing with its climate but by the altered moods of its peoples and places'?
This question first appeared with Nick Hunt’s post Walking the Winds: Mistral in October 2017.
Questioning immediacy? Space for creative thinking... How do you find or create space to help you or others to resist the 'pressure to make an immediate decision' on difficult questions? How would bring a predicament like 'climate change' into this space?
This question first appeared with Julia Marques’ post Space for Thought in September 2017.
Questioning what sustains? Space for creative thinking...
James' post ends with an image of a stranded lighthouse and a note on faith. For you, what sustains your engagement with 'the reality of change, in the midst of doing other things'?
This question first appeared with James Murray-White’s post Necessity and Urgency – Summer of Learning in September 2017.
Questioning old senses? Space for creative thinking...
Don't fancy donning your tralfamidoriscope headset with enhanced story-radar earbuds? What technology or ability would you invent - or do you already possess - to reveal the whirls and flows that will help us navigate the Anthropocene?
This question first appeared with my post The Words That Make Our Stories… in August 2017.
Questioning technology? Space for creative thinking...
Picking up on Suzi Gablik's observation, how do you feel your own experience of technology disrupts your view of what is real? How, instead, can technology act as your 'conveyance to ... distant situations' and direct experience, as Greg Child suggests?
This question first appeared with Oliver Raymond-Barker’s post Beyond Tongues: Into the Animist Language of Stone in August 2017.
Questioning what lies beneath? Space for creative thinking...
When you walk across a field or through woods, or travel on the sea, do you think about what, and who, might have been there before you? When you pause to listen, what do you hear from those who are still there, beneath?
This question first appeared with Justina Hart’s post Doggerland Rising #1: Walking Across the North Sea in August 2017, and her follow-on Doggerland Rising #2: Sinking Into the North Sea in November 2017
Questioning a word? Space for creative thinking...
One of the entries in Anticipatory history is Enclosure. What does this word mean to you, in the conext of environmental change and how we imagine and discuss pasts, places and futures?
This question first appeared with my post Anticipatory History in August 2017.
Questioning symbols? Space for creative thinking...
How do objects obtain their symbolic power and what role can this play in orientating us toward hopeful futures?
This question first appeared with Mary Eighteen’s post On Symbols of Hope for the Future in July 2017.
Questioning problems & predicaments? Space for creative thinking...
For you, is climate change a problem or a predicament? How would your creative response change if you swapped these frames? How would you talk differently about it with others?
This question first appeared with my post The Stories We Live By in July 2017.
Questioning prayer? Space for creative thinking...
This post is framed, in part, as a response to Kathleen Jamie's rhetorical question 'Whom do you pray to?'. What notion of prayer, if any, bears on your own approach to the predicament of the Anthropocene, the large-scale changes that human activity has set in motion? Does prayer have a place in articulating a response to anthropogenic calamities? And what bearing, if any, does all this have on your approach to creative practice?
This question first appeared with Mat Osmond’s post Meinrad Craighead and the Animal Face of God in July 2017.
Questioning Deep Time? Space for creative thinking...
For you, how is Deep Time revealed most clearly in the human body - your body? Through its interactions with the physical world - moving, breathing, sensing? Through its development over your lifetime, or its prehistory (and future history) across generations? Through its consciousness, and the dreams and visions you create with it?
This question first appeared with my post Taking the World for a Walk in July 2017.
Questioning plastics? Space for creative thinking...
In what hidden ways does plastic connect your local community to the nearest sea and the most distant ocean? How can art help reveal and break the chains of pollution?
This question first appeared with Linda Gordon’s post ‘A Plastic Ocean’ at North Devon Arts in July 2017.
Questioning discourse? Space for creative thinking...
The way we speak about the world helps shape how we - and others - think about it. And what we don't say can be as powerful as what we do. How do you read the presence of climate change in some of your favourite fiction or plays, even if it seems to be absent? Does it inform the story, regardless?
This question first appeared with Julia Marques’ post It Begins… in June 2017.
Questioning representation? Space for creative thinking...
What is the soundtrack you'd like make to 'capture' something about climate change, and what technologies and sounds would you use? How would you acknowledge the 'missing voices' you'd have to omit?
This question first appeared with my post The Art of Noise in June 2017.
Questioning origins? Space for creative thinking...
Where does being human begin for you - whether in a life, within the web of life, or in deep time?
This question first appeared with my post A People of the Fall in May 2017.
Questioning energy? Space for creative thinking...
Unsurprisingly, our main creative thinking space this time is made over to My Friend Jules - so get over there and post your story! But I also found this excellent suggestion at World Without Oil (a quote from Stephanie Olsen, author of the CNET article mentioned): “If you want to change the future, play with it first.” What do you think? What would you play with to help create a different path into the future?
This question first appeared with Ken Eklund’s post The Anthropocene Writ Small: My Friend Jules in May 2017.
Questioning loss? Space for creative thinking...
What do our experiences of loss - of place, objects, relationships - mean for our understanding of environmental or climate change?
This question first appeared with Sarah Thomas and Jon Randall’s post Óshlið: River Mouth \\ Slope in May 2017.
Questioning Utopia? Space for creative thinking...
What do you think are the best ways of reaching people who don't normally think about climate change? Does Utopian thinking help or hinder? How about humour, or other ways of bypassing the usual cognitive filters to touch our emotions?
This question first appeared with David Thorpe’s post Utopia and Its Discontents in May 2017.
Counter-factual questions: Space for creative thinking...
What historical event would you change, and what specific ways do you imagine this altering the present world that we know? Would the alternative 'Now' be unambiguously better, or might it bring new complications?
This question first appeared with Deborah Mason’s post Generating Counter-Factual Worlds in April 2017