The ClimateCultures blog is a rich and diverse collection of original posts exclusively from our Members — sharing text, images, sound or video on their work, interests, ideas or questions on any aspect of creative responses to environmental or climate change or the Anthropocene. The more voices and perspectives we can share, the more fruitful and rewarding the conversation.
Here’s the short guide to who, what and how we publish:
- Creative responses to our topics
- from ClimateCultures Members
- using original text, with images, video, audio
- usually between 1,000 and 2,000 words
- curated by our friendly editor!
The longer version:
Who can publish on the ClimateCultures blog?
Any Member, either alone or in collaboration with other Members (and we also feature other collaborative activities between our Members in our new portfolio feature, unsurprisingly called Creative Collaborations).
If you want to collaborate with non-Members on a post, we will of course credit them too and link to them in the Find out More notes at the end, but only Members can be listed as ClimateCultures Authors in the post introduction and on our sidebar, with a link to their Directory entry.
What type of content do we publish?
ClimateCultures wants to share work that offers a creative voice, whether through text, images, video, audio or a combination:
- With a predominantly non-textual post, we do like to have at least some original text to accompany your image gallery, video or audio.
- And it’s always good to have a few images to accompany any predominantly textual post. We usually aim for about three per post, which can include images from third parties — where there’s no restrictions on using them, and where we can provide a credit for the photographer or artist and, ideally, a link too. And while we’re on copyright, here’s our copyright statement.
Your post might be:
- Creative work: a story, poem, film, visual art or other.
- Extracts from a new publication of creative, curatorial, research or cultural activist work.
- Insights into your creative processes as an artist, curator or researcher.
- Reviews of someone else’s work.
- Explorations of environmental or climate risks, opportunities or questions.
- A contribution to one of our own creative series, A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects, Signals from the Edge, or Gifts of Sound and Vision.
We’re looking for pretty much anything that relates to our concern for creative conversations around environmental and climate change or what we mean by ‘The Anthropocene’. However, bear in mind that we do focus on creative or cultural responses, rather than ‘how to’ guides for consumers or adopters of particular technologies. We receive many interesting offers from non-Members with suggested articles on cutting down on one utility bill or another, or technologies for improving flood protection — all of which are really important topics but which aren’t for us, as there are plenty of great sites for such pieces.
And when it comes to our language around the topics … ‘environmental or climate change’ can be seen through whatever frame you wish to use: breakdown, change, crisis, disruption, emergency, global heating / warming / shitstorm, or other; ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are both highly complex and interconnected concepts that you might want to break out of their simple labels; and the ‘Anthropocene’ is much debated, advocated and resisted as the appropriate lens for the times we are in, with all its contested recent, ancient and future history, and many interesting contenders for alternative language to better capture its meaning. So send us content that reflects the way you see all this, and be prepared for others to come to it with different eyes.
What do we mean by ‘original’ content?
‘Original’ means text that hasn’t appeared elsewhere online. However, you might adapt or include short extracts of some previous online text as part of a larger, original piece. And if the text is something you’ve used as a talk, but it hasn’t previously appeared online, then we’re excited to share that.
On the other hand, your images, video or audio works can be materials you’ve shared online before, but we would like some original text to accompany and expand on this. That could be a short essay, a few words on each image, a reflection on the creative process or inspiration behind the work, a conversation you had with someone about the work … you get the picture!
The main reason for seeking original content is simply to add something to our conversation that didn’t exist before. It’s also because we want ClimateCultures to spark creativity as well as reflect it. And then there’s the dull necessity for those search engines to find new content rather than duplication. (But let’s not diss the algorithms too much; humans are also search engines, and we too like new things!)
If you want to post your new ClimateCultures content on another site, that’s excellent of course. Please republish once we’ve published here, with an acknowledgement and link to ClimateCultures as the first sharer of your work. Better yet, publish an extract and link to us for the full piece, so those search engines don’t choke… Plus, it’s really good to have people click through to ClimateCultures and discover more of what we do!
How long do we like posts to be?
Our posts tend to be 1,000 – 2,000 words. But some are a bit shorter, others a little longer. What do you need? Much longer posts may work as two or more parts, but we’ll discuss this with you. And we’re always open to the idea of a series on your favourite topic.
What’s our publication process?
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe is looking for new content all year round. He’s happy to receive fully-formed drafts, intermediate drafts, proposals and tentative ideas: just email him. And he enjoys working with our new and returning authors to get the best content online each time. If you like a deadline to work to, he’ll set one!
Mark will discuss any edits where needed, add a title and headings, and write the 38-word intro that we use within the post and to list it elsewhere on the site. He’ll also create a ‘Find out more’ section at the end of each post, which is where he’ll share any notes and links you’d like to include as well any other relevant links he thinks readers might enjoy exploring. All of this is agreed with you beforehand, and you receive a final proof to review before we publish. Here’s the copyright note again. Why not check out our disclaimer while you’re at it?
Do we pay?
Sadly not! It’s all for the love of creativity, the warm glow of community, the urgency of getting our Anthropocene thoughts, our feelings, our actions and our questions out there and into the conversation, and for the curiosity to see what and who comes along next.