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“Summon the bravery!” Encounters at Small Earth

Filmmaker James Murray-White describes taking part in the Small Earth conference within the stunning beauty of Snape. At this special event, psychotherapists, ecologists, economists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers gathered to address hope for future living within the ecosphere.

1,490 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes

“Get the tools you need to understand where we’re currently living: in the belly of the beast.”

– Alastair McIntosh

The starting question for this powerful converging and sharing of minds in the wonderful location of Snape was “Can we return to living within the terms of Earth’s ecosphere?” And this question was minutely probed and dissected over an intense, sometimes gruelling, sometimes uplifting and ultimately rejuvenating four days. The choice of location was sublime: a place I know well and often regret I don’t spend enough time in — a place of water, reed beds, and the wonderful vast skies with multiple colour gradations to dream within; absolutely a setting to contemplate the miracle of our time on the blue dot of our earth.

Small Earth, big skies at Snape. Photograph by James Murray-White 2018 — Small Earth, big skies at Snape. Photograph: James Murray-White © 2018

A miracle indeed, but a miracle that our human species has been bent on destroying — and this convergence was aimed at therapists and psychologists with a passion to serve the planet through their work.

Here was a chance to listen, to talk and share, and also to grieve for the pain of the world.

Reclaiming what gives life

To start each day, psychotherapist James Barratt offered us all the opportunity to share into a social dreaming matrix: a space to hear and reflect upon each others’ dreams. It feels particularly useful when a group has come together for a few days and is going through a process together, on any level. I found this powerful group process took us very deeply into our collective unconscious, and it was a strong learning to hear dreams and then have the chance to collectively unpick what they might be saying: finding threads and applying our experience to them.

As one of the few non-therapists attending, I dipped deeply in and needed some time to dip out. I found that it touched into lots of the work I’ve done since an MSc in Human Ecology at the (sadly now defunct) Centre for Human Ecology in Edinburgh some years back, and it was an honour to connect again with Gaelic shaman of the CHE and other institutions, Dr Alastair McIntosh — a keynote speaker.

McIntosh’s lecture on Saturday, Reclaiming what gives life, was full of his pain and passion for the human community: quoting psalms, Shakespeare, Gaelic poets; taking us with him on his journey across the island of Harris, and into the dark heart of the world of advertising, particularly the pernicious evil of the tobacco industry.

Drawing on his comments in the film Consumed, which opened the conference, he asked of us to call back the soul, by “looking at the nature of the belly of the beast”, that “the place of our calling is in the belly of the beast — don’t let it take us out of our natural joy.” The way forward is to “open up to that marginal realm where I suggest a healing will come.”

Small Earth, life abundant at Snape. Photograph by James Murray-White 2018 — Small earth, life abundant at Snape. Photograph: James Murray-White © 2018

A highlight of the conference was meeting with naturalist Chris Packham, who shared ways to achieve a different way of thinking about our place within the ecosphere. Ultimately, he said, if we truly tap into our human capacity for altruism, restraint and care, we might survive: “once we recognise that we are just a keystone in our own ecological microsystems.”

Following on from this in a public lecture to four hundred of us, and accompanied by his dog Scratchy, Packham laid it on the line for humanity: “Summon the bravery. Look at it cold hard and in the face. It is an ecological apocalypse. We must act now.”

Other notable speakers included Jungian analyst Andrew Fellows; researcher, writer and transformational coach Mick Collins; novelist Melissa Harrison; and ecopsychologist Mary-Jayne Rust.

Making the Transformocene

Andrew Fellows started by playing us a song of the Earth from a Siberian shaman: calling us into the Earth and reminding us of our belonging. Combining hard fact — that human activity is adding heat to the atmosphere at the rate of four Hiroshima explosions every second, and that two years ago the global human call for air-conditioning overtook our call for heating — with an analyst’s perspective, he said: “We hang (in this ecosphere) by a thin thread, and that thread is man’s psyche”. Fellows spoke passionately to our failings and our human frailties — preparing us perhaps for McIntosh’s attempts to lift us spiritually.

Mick Collins spoke to what he names the Transformocene: that age which transforms and changes within the recent and the new. This draws upon the very necessary shadow work that humanity must undertake, which Collins calls us “to do with depth.” Naming himself a ‘wounded transformer’, speaking with great passion and, as described in conversations afterwards, coming from a rich discursive life of facing inner crises and awakenings, he is emerging as an important figure in our movement for change.

I relished coming back to creativity with writer Melissa Harrison, whose conviction she says comes from being part of “the last generation that was able to play and be outside.” That reminded me of David Bond’s 2013 documentary Project Wild Thing, which uses the diminishing statistic, from his mother’s 80% spent outdoors, his own 50% outdoors playtime, to his inner-City kids’ mere 3%, as the starting place to advertise the joys of being outdoors within the world. I looked after a friend’s kids the night after returning from Small Earth and was shocked that they were up at 6 am, devouring screen time and off in distant virtual lands of warfare and commodity.

Melissa Harrison inspired too: “I can hold both hope and pain at the loss of species and changing climate, but it’s painful. Why not try to hold hope?” She suggested that we all adopt our own home patches to protect and to closely observe, if we are not already in this act of service: “this sense of responsibility implies that we are the main players in this. Keep it cared for and vibrant.”

Small Earth - art, land and sky at Snape Photograph by James Murray-White 2018 — Art, land and sky at Snape Photograph: James Murray-White © 2018

Gaining a calm presence on small Earth

Mary-Jane Rust gave an exemplary presentation that, for me, rounded off the few days and was grounded in doing, reflection and practice. With examples of eco-psychotherapy projects that re-engage folk with the earth, she spoke of “attending to our rage” at what we see and hear in terms of destruction and change and, with this, “becoming aware of our own emotional centre we gain a calm.” That presence, she suggests, “delivers us the present moment, and enables an attitude of reverence, humility, and an apology — to the Earth”.

These talks were followed by a range of follow-up afternoon workshops. I particularly loved the chance to forage for leaves, sticks and objects outside, and return to put them all together within an art-making workshop facilitated by Marion Green.

And I appreciated the buildings and cultural-creative environment of the Maltings, coming back to life after the end of their industrial use. The stunning beauty of Snape: the reeds, absorbing CO₂, the River Alde flowing up to the buildings, and the vast East Anglian sky, all reminded me that we live in a beautiful world. It’s up to each and every one of us to deeply engage, live a life in full service to the ecosphere, as well as to the human population and all other species that inhabit it too.

My thanks to the organisers, presenters, and fellow participants of Small Earth for this opportunity. May these few days enable us to continue to serve, and to quote Mick Collins, to live a life “in discipleship to nature, and to service.”

Find out more

The Small Earth conference took place at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, from 8th to 11th November 2018. It was organised by CONFER, an independent organisation established by psychotherapists in 1998 to provide innovative, challenging and inspiring continuing educational events for psychotherapists, psychologists and other mental health workers.

Mick Collins’ idea of the Transformocene is explored in his book, The Visionary Spirit. In the Spring 2018 Issue of Permaculture magazine, Mick explained: “We’re living in a time when we’re standing at the threshold of the Anthropocene – an era where humans have had an impact on the Earth’s eco-systems. In this way, the Anthropocene reflects the Spirit of the Times (zeitgeist), which highlights the degrading ways we’ve been treating the planet. In contrast, the idea for the Transformocene Age came to me after reading Carl Jung’s Red Book, which chronicles his meetings with the Spirit of the Depths. Therefore, the emergence of the Transformocene is cultivated via a deeper connection to the wisdom from the collective unconscious and through our encounters with the sacred.”

James Murray-White

A writer and filmmaker linking art forms to dialogue around climate issues, whose practice stretches back to theatre-making.

Susan Holliday

A psychotherapist and writer committed to the rewilding of human nature, exploring the correlation between despoiling our natural world and the desolation of the human spirit

A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #9

Poet Nick Drake offers poems of three dark objects that illuminate our world-shifting ways: an emblem of inefficiency, a single-use convenience that will outlast us, and a nightmare taking shape beneath our feet, our streets, our notice, until…

1,080 words: estimated reading time 4.5 minutes

The challenge: the Anthropocene — the suggested Age of Human that our species has initiated — has a complex past, present and future, and there are many versions. What three objects evoke the unfolding of human-caused environmental and climate change for you? View other contributions at A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects.

Nick’s selection coincides with the publication of his new collection, Out of Range — which itself brilliantly explores the strange interconnections and confronting emergencies of our new planetary age.

***

Here are three poems from my new poetry collection about objects which speak to me of the Anthropocene.

Out of Range, by Nick Drake
Cover: Bloodaxe Books

Incandescent lightbulbs are inefficient, and have been phased out around the world. Ubiquitous, cheap, reliable, disposable, their illumination gradually conquered the dark, and lit much of the world for more than a century. This poem is a way to say hail and farewell to them…. and to remember the powers of the dark.

Dark - the Livermore Centennial light bulb — The Livermore Centennial Lightbulb (‘the longest lasting lightbulb in the world’)
Image: Wikipedia / Creative Commons

Chronicle of the Incandescent Lightbulb

You had nothing but the moon,
the guttering candle, and the dish of oil
to thread the eye of a needle, read,
or cast shadows on the walls, until
you created us, the first light
that was constant in the dark –

From a heart-beat twist of tungsten
and a single breath of gas to hold
our whole lives long, you sowed
one idea in our glass skulls;
to shine at your command.

We shed no tears of wax; reliable,
disposable, we lived where you lived,
lit your parties and wars; one by one
we brightened the hill-shanties
and towers of your mega-cities;
when you were lost, we were home
waiting, just a click away
to save you from the small hours’ fears;
when your lives hung by a thread
we stayed as long as necessary;
we shone when you were gone.

And when with a quiet tick
the luminous spell of our filament broke
you cast us off; and now you wish
a light perpetual and free,
your highways and cities radiant
archipelagoes against the dark –

But if the lights go out from time to time,
lie back on the black grass, gaze up
at the banished constellations, take
ancient starlight in, and listen
for the dark song of our source summoning,
on summer nights and winter afternoons,
the antiquated powers of the moon.

Along with chicken bones and radioactivity, plastic bottles are what will survive of us (as Philip Larkin said of love) in the geological record. Nearly 36 million are born every day in this country alone. Less than half make it to recycling. Here’s the story from their point of view.

Plastic water bottles
Image: Public Domain Pictures

Still life: Plastic water bottle (used)

Why did you
Make us in
your image?

Replicants
of the prototype, not
goddesses of strange fertility,
not glass, bone, wood or stone, but
generated from dark matter in a split
second to join the silent masses,
monks, soldiers, clones, waiting
in the moonlight of the fridge
for you to drink down our short
stories of ancient waters and bright
sugars until our emptiness
is complete – but there
we part; cast-off, we colonise
every dominion from the highest peak
to the deepest fathom of the abyss
and though the timeline of the waves
degrades us to nanoparticles, yet
we will survive all the brief histories
of your unsuccessful flesh to abide
in every mortal heart undying…
Now only you can save us from
the doldrums of this everlastingness
if you conceive a new skin of beautiful
mortality that grants us too the strange
sea-change of release
into the mercy of everything
and nothing

The Whitechapel fatberg is the largest ever recorded in London, but it has siblings in every major city. It holds a mirror up to consumption and what we throw or flush away. The Museum of London curator, Vyki Sparkes, noted how samples — viewable online via the fatcam live-feed — fascinated the public; “It’s grand, magnificent, fascinating and disgusting. The perfect museum object.”

Dark monster - the Whitechapel Fatberg — The Whitechapel fatberg
Image: Flickr / Creative Commons

Stranger Thing

(The Whitechapel fatberg, c/o the Museum of London)

Chip fat, cold shits, dead paints, hate mail, grease,
used wet-wipes, condoms, nappies, cotton buds,
paracetamol, toenail-crescents, needles, hair –

the dregs, swill, scum, muck, slop we flush away
are harvest festival for the moony monster
who rules the empire of the upside down

beneath the illusion of floorboards, parks and streets;
stranger thing, behemoth, lonely ogre, shy
Caliban created by our multitudes,

dreaming where the sewers slowly flow
through whispering galleries and gargoyle crypts,
bringing offerings to the awful sanctuary.

We sent our heroes down in hazmat suits
to besiege it; now these abominable lumps
festering in sealed and chilled vitrines

on live-feed for the curiosity of the world
are all that’s left. The glass holds our reflections,
the beautiful ones who love to scare ourselves,

taking selfies with the alien bogey-beast,
our nightmare mirror image even now
regenerating in the dark beneath our feet.

Find out more

Out of Range is Nick Drake’s fourth collection, and is published by Bloodaxe Books (2018). In these poems, he explores the signs, wonders and alarms of the shock and impact of ‘Generation Anthropocene’ on Earth’s climate and ecology. As well as the three poems above, the book includes portraits of ice-core samples, of those living on the margins of the city streets, and of Voyager 1 crossing the threshold of the solar system. Nick’s previous collections include The Farewell Glacier (Bloodaxe 2012), which grew out of a voyage around the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to study climate change. Chronicle of the Incandescent Lightbulb first appeared in the book Energetic: Exploring the past, present and future of energy, produced by the Stories of Change project. I reviewed Energetic for ClimateCultures in August 2018.

For more on the Whitechapel fatberg, see this piece by Vyki Sparkes, the Museum of London’s curator, and this one by Lanes Group plc, the company who worked on behalf of Thames Water to remove the monster from its sewer home… Part of the fatberg is now in the museum’s permanent collection, and footage from the fatcam livefeed Nick mentions is available with this article.

Nick Drake

A poet whose collections 'The Farewell Glacier' and 'Out of Range' explore the Arctic and climate change through human/non-human voices, and the impact of 'Generation Anthropocene'.

Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision

ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe launches a series exploring film and audio that open a space to reflect on change — choosing pieces on how human and non-human animals live, and how processes of time and tide shape our coasts.

1,530 words: estimated reading time 6 minutes + 15 minutes video

The challenge: Are there publicly available video or audio pieces that help us to explore the environmental or climate change issues that most interest us as artists, curators, researchers or activists? They might be documentary, abstract, fictional, natural soundscapes, spoken word, music or anything else which uses the power of film and sound recordings to reveal or create the experience of change, of movement or moment in time, space, place, consciousness, connection, emotion…

***

On human-animal being

Mark Goldthorpe shares 73 Cows (15 mins)

In director Alex Lockwood’s beautifully thoughtful and moving film, 73 Cows (which I discovered via Aeon in October 2018), farmers Jay and Katja Wilde share their journey from raising beef cattle to animal-free farming — and the journey of the animals themselves. It’s an insightful encounter with the realities of one couple’s life on the land, living in close relationship with animals. I find it helpful because of its intensely personal focus cuts through some of the more familiar contest between opinions and the wielding of facts and figures in the debate on how we farm and feed ourselves and what ‘animal rights’ mean. It’s not trying to persuade me of anything, other than of our common ability to feel the weight of our own and others’ circumstances, and the tasks of questioning those circumstances and finding our own better way through them.

As the post at Aeon puts it: “Coming to recognise them as individuals with rich inner lives rather than just ‘units of production’, Wilde eventually found the emotional burden of sending his cattle to the abattoir too crushing to bear … Melancholic yet stirring and gently hopeful, this short documentary … deftly traces the complexities of Wilde’s decisionmaking process. In doing so, it reaches far beyond the English countryside, asking viewers to reckon with the moral intricacies of eating animals.”

Whatever your views on the topics before or after watching the film, I imagine you will find something moving in the experience it brings you.

On coastal change

Mark Goldthorpe shares Appledore Time & Tide Bell (2 mins 40 secs)

People explore the Time and Tide Bell at Appledore in Devon — Appledore Time and Tide Bell
Click image to listen to the audio file

Artist Marcus Vergette has created a series of Time and Tide Bells around the UK, each marking the local high tide. “The rise of the water at high tide moves the clapper to strike the bell. Played by the movement of the waves, the bell creates a varying pattern. As sea level rises the periods of bell strikes become more frequent, and as submerged in the rising water the pitch will vary.”

Five bells have been placed so far, at Appledore (Devon, England), Aberdyfi (Wales), Bosta (Isle of Lewis, Scotland), Trinity Buoy Wharf (London), and Cemaes (Anglesey, Wales). Marcus says of Appledore (where the first bell was installed in May 2009), “this estuary has some of the highest tides in Europe. Here they build ships, fish, trade to the Americas and to Russia. An important and historic port.” Each bell is inscribed with a text chosen by the local community. At Appledore, this is:

In thrall to the moon
rocked by her ebb and flow
I sing of swells beneath the stars
black waves at the storms height
new ships’ rhythmic passage west
seabirds in the dancing wake
all who set sail in sorrow or joy
and all who sleep below

So far, I’ve only visited the Trinity Wharf bell but I hope to experience each one. Trinity Wharf is where lighthouse keepers were trained and navigation buoys were made, so the resonance of its Time and Tide Bell with thoughts of future coastal hazards and adaptations is strong. But I chose the audio clip from Appledore instead because its soundtrack — the bell ringing against the waves — immediately said something to me of a place I’ve not yet been to (though I lived in Devon for a while) but which — like everywhere else — is undergoing change partly as a result of my actions, my existence. And the quiet, contrasting sounds of nature — the waves — and its cultural counterpart — the bell — captures a short moment within a changing relationship.

Time and tide in the more-than-human

Is there a connection between my two selections? Not at first sight maybe, and I certainly didn’t select them with any conscious link in mind. But the same mind chose them … so now I think of the slow-yet-rapid timescales of change on our coasts and of our experience of them, over our lifetimes and in those sudden, dramatic coastal shifts of storm and flood and collapse; and now I think of the ‘bigger picture’ and the longer story behind the Wildes’ story, the currents of change in how humans have understood other animals throughout our history, how each of us chooses to live with the domesticated ones and the wild ones now. And I remember that change is possible, natural, necessary: sometimes it comes one person at a time, sometimes in the movement of the herd. And, as we meet or make these changes, or as we don’t, still the bell chimes. What do we miss when we don’t hear its notes under the noise of everyday life?

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

– William Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar (1599)

“But dreaming builds what dreaming can disown.
Dead fingers stretch themselves to tear it down.
I hear those voices that will not be drowned
Calling, there is no stone
In earth’s thickness to make a home
That you can build with and remain alone.”

– Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes (1945, libretto by Montagu Slater).

***

And, then, after I’d written this post, reading a final BBC piece for the notes below, I discover that “Marcus came up with the Time and Tide idea following the foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 2001. Marcus and his wife Sally lost their stock of Angus cattle and Devon Closewool sheep in the epidemic and they were unable to leave their farm at Highampton because of the restrictions. Marcus’ permanent reminder to the awful events of 2001 is a bell, which hangs beside the village hall in Highampton.”

Time and tide: cows watch the coast in Ireland — Cows watching the coast, Ireland
Photograph: Mark Goldthorpe © 2007

Find out more

I discovered Alex Lockwood’s award-winning 73 Cows through Aeon (October 2018) and posted it to our Views from Elsewhere page (since discontinued) before I realised that my response to this film needed a different space — and then that this space might be useful for others to share their film and audio discoveries. Do check out our Gifts of Sound and Vision page as more offerings appear.

You can discover more of Lockwood’s films at … Lockwood Film. A review at film site Short of the Week says that 73 Cows “captures beautifully a crucible for Jay and Katja, and better than almost any documentary I’ve seen captures the moral weight of its action. Jay is torn by the logistical complexity of the farm’s change, and keenly feels the weight of obligation to his dead father from whom he inherited the farm. Yet, nobly, he is steadfast in his conviction. Agree or disagree with the ethics of animal husbandry, what else but courage do you call it when folks risk everything and defy societal norms to do what they feel is right?”

In an interview ahead of the Raindance Film Festival 2018 (where the film premiered), Alex said “I hope that when people watch 73 Cows that they really relate to Jay and the struggles that a lot of farmers must be secretly facing. Jay managed to completely turn his life around and do what he felt was right despite losing money, turning his back on his tradition and also going against the grain within his local community. So ultimately I see it as a hopeful film. Maybe people will watch it and feel like they can get over their own personal demons in the same way that Jay has gotten over his. That would be nice.” NB: This interview was for The New Current website, but is no longer available.

Sculptor Marcus Vergette discusses his project at Time and Tide Bell as “a permanent installation of bells around the UK rung by the sea at high tide. The Time and Tide Bell has been permanently sited at the high tide mark in five locations.” A new one is planned for Mablethorpe (Lincolnshire, England), with a description at the website of Transition Town Louth (which also has other coastal change related arts, Across the Seas).

In a short piece for the BBC website (3/9/10) for the creation of the Trinity Wharf bell, Marcus says “The Time and Tide Bell creates, celebrates and reinforces connections between our history and our environment … Here at Trinity Buoy Ward in Leamouth, it will serve as a powerful marker of sea level rise at the very heart of our maritime history.”

Mark Goldthorpe

An independent researcher, project and events manager, and writer on environmental and climate change issues - investigating, supporting and delivering cultural and creative responses.

My Voice in the Climate Change Crisis

Poet and artist Salli Hipkiss, in the first of two posts, reflects on how she came to understand the urgent challenges of climate change, and decided to write The Riddle of the Trees, a novel supporting positive change.

1,320 words: estimated reading time 5.5 minutes

It all began in 1999 with ‘A Novel Idea’. Not the idea for a book, but a wonderful bookshop of the same name on a dusty peninsular of the East African town of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Living there as a teacher, a weekend treat was to head to ‘A Novel Idea’ where highly contemporary international new books appeared as if magically in a town where other correspondence from the rest of the world often failed to arrive. One particular Saturday a book found its way into my hands, as ‘just the right book’ seems to do from time to time. It was The Carbon War by Jeremy Leggett.

I read it in a couple of power-rationing interrupted evenings (the irony was not lost on me) and came away knowing I had been introduced to possibly the most serious issue of our time, and one that would become a greater and greater problem and international focus over years to come. The issue in question was, of course, climate change. My immediate action was to apply for a new additional post at the school where I worked, aiming to become ‘Leader for the Environment’. I was given the post and for two years, in addition to my art teaching duties, I was the Environmental Education coordinator for the secondary school. Over this time I tried to introduce some of the urgency I had sensed through the book, including creating a whole school Environmental Charter.

A meaningful contribution

Jump to September 2006. I had left both Tanzania and full-time teaching in 2002 with the intention to retrain and hopefully carve out a new career in one of my other great passions: music, alongside my arts and sustainability commitments. I was living in Cambridge in the UK as a self-employed arts and sustainability practitioner and educator when An Inconvenient Truth hit the cinemas.

Having read The Carbon War I was very aware of Al Gore and his climate change advocacy work, but most people I knew at that time saw him solely as the former US presidential candidate. An Inconvenient Truth changed all that. I went to see the film three times at the cinema and bought the DVD for friends. My passion was renewed and I wondered once again how I could contribute meaningfully to the conversation around climate change and help to turn things around for the better.

Teacher training workshop with Conservation Society of Sierra Leone in Kenema, Sierra Leone, 2006. Photo: Salli Hipkiss — Teacher training workshop with Conservation Society of Sierra Leone in Kenema, Sierra Leone, 2006.
Photo: Salli Hipkiss © 2018 www.sallihipkiss.com

Later that month an opportunity arose to travel to Sierra Leone to help with forest conservation education and my time there helped focus my thoughts. The idea began to form that my personal contribution to the climate change solution could be to write a book that inspired dialogue and change: after all, a book and a bookshop had been my introduction to the issue. Straight away I knew it would be a book for young people, and that the science would be put across through the medium of a magical story. I started to make notes and sketches and by the time I came back from Sierra Leone I had made a firm commitment to write the story.

Vital threads

The advice generally given to writers is to “write what you know”. Although my musical ambitions had suffered many setbacks, music remained a source of great joy and wisdom in my life, and as the idea to write a novel took shape I knew music would be one vital thread through the story. The imperative to help with the climate change challenge formed the other.

I began to read more widely about carbon sequestration and carbon trading and gradually the story began to take shape. It was to be set in a future when ‘carbon balance’ has been achieved through widespread reforestation. A new crisis would then emerge when a mysterious disease befalls one such forest and threatens the others, and therefore puts the carbon balance into peril and the threat of climate change looms again.

My deeper ecological message was to illustrate that in planning for widespread increased sequestration as one solution it is vital that we also keep sight of the need to protect biodiversity and that a healthy planet will only prevail if we seek health on all levels. The other deeper message was that this may only come about if we put aside our cultural differences and work together as one humanity.

The Riddle of the Trees

Characters appeared next: a lonely teenage girl, a shy teenage boy, a Forest Keeper grandfather who is too often absent due to his commitment to the forest, international musicians who carry the sounds of nature and the seeds of culture from all quarters of the world within their music. Other key characters are a heavy-handed Ealdorman who tries to save the forest by imposing greater and greater restrictions, and a reclusive artist living in the forest who provides intuitive wisdom born of her close connection with and immersion in nature. Then the settings emerged: a forest by the sea, a former palace turned cultural centre, a portside town, and a mysterious cottage in the woods with a magical tower and observatory.

I started to write, sitting at a corner desk in my one-bedroom maisonette with a cherry tree just outside the window, or in one of the many cafes in and around Cambridge.

Lino cut illustration for The Riddle of the Trees. Image: Salli Hipkiss — Lino cut illustration for The Riddle of the Trees
Image: Salli Hipkiss © 2018
www.sallihipkiss.com

In 2007 I embarked on a Masters degree in Children’s Book Illustration, envisaging, amongst other outcomes, a beautifully illustrated chapter book of my story, or even an interactive ebook with moving illustrations and strains of music at key moments. The course turned out not to be the right place to nurture the story, and a year in I took a break and a part-time job in a shop aptly named ‘One World is Enough’.

I continued to write. Then after focusing on finishing the MA in 2010, I completed the first draft of the story and The Riddle of the Trees was born.

Since then the story has undergone numerous revisions and attempts at publication while I have also been raising a family. Now, almost twenty years after first reading The Carbon War I feel inspired once again to try to get the story out into the wider world where I hope it will inspire young people and others to care more deeply about climate and biodiversity issues and to take individual and collective action. Perhaps when this happens we will be one small step closer to achieving not only carbon balance but also ‘Carbon Peace’.

***

Salli’s second post in this series is The Riddle of the Trees: A Paean for the Natural World. And her recent poem, Modest Things — asking how English poet, artist and radical William Blake might have responded to climate change and what examples we might take — is published at Finding Blake.

Find out more

Jeremy Leggett’s The Carbon War is no longer in print but you can find second-hand copies online, and you can read a download of his follow up book, The Winning of the Carbon War at JeremyLeggett.net

In An Inconvenient Truth, (2006) by Davis Guggenheim, the film follows former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore on the lecture circuit, raising public awareness of the dangers of global warming. Grist has an interesting behind-the-scenes at how the film came about, An oral history of An Inconvenient Truth.

The 2017 ‘sequel’ film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, follows Gore as he speaks with scientists and leaders, and is featured in this Scientific American (28/7/17) article, Al Gore Returns with an Ever-More Inconvenient Truth.

Salli Hipkiss

A writer, artist and educator, producing picture books, a novel and songs, with a background teaching and facilitating arts and sustainability with schools and communities.

Art, Rise Up!

Artist Ottavia Virzi describes a recent intervention by Art Rise Up, the creative collective bringing art and activism together for environmental protection, in support of the campaign to halt opencast coal mining, using art to engage cultural meaning.

1,010 words: estimated reading time 4 minutes

How to realign our creative practice in support of effective actions, aiming to help achieve some steps in the process leading to a fairer society? As creatives, feeling this need can lead to different paths: paths that can be centred on raising cultural awareness, or be part of a sustainable design process, or can look at the bridges between art and activism. We are interested in testing this last option inside the collective Art Rise Up. Approaching activism can be an uplifting experience for those looking to direct ways to have an impact, overcoming the sense of frustration and disempowerment that is felt by so many citizens today. Our creative intervention in support of the direct occupation of Pont Valley started from this common need we perceived, to use our creative skills to directly support a significant environmental campaign.

A direct occupation of the valley has been taking place from early March until eviction last week, but the campaign is however motivated to stay strong. A campaign lasting decades for some members of the community, trying to stop an invasive open-cast coal mine from opening right in front of the villages of Dipton and Leadgate, County Durham. A campaign felt ever more strongly today, right when England is committed to coal phase-out by 2025, in an areas which has been historically exploited for coal.

Creative intervention

Coal is the symbol of many countries’ slow response in tackling the climate crisis. Moreover, the impact of coal on local community is extremely high, due to coal dust produced through the distressing excavations. A petition signed by 88,000 people regarding the Pont Valley mine was brought to the Home Office in February and ignored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Sajid Javid, the same Tory HCLG Minister — just appointed Home Secretary — who recently denied permission for another mine — at Druridge Bay in Northumberland, on the grounds of climate change and implications on health and wildlife — did not react regarding Pont Valley. The same private energy company, Banks Group, is involved in both mines. This scenario underlines the conflicts between private corporate interest and governments, who are not able to pronounce a complete and definitive “no”. National usage of coal power has diminished in England, amounting to 8% of the energy mix in 2017. But the continued dependency on cheap polluting energy is a direct consequence of our economic system — based on boundless consumerism — and the lack of extensive policies reforming energy usage through real investments in renewables and energy efficiency, and of a brave discourse regarding the need to re-adjust energy demand. This does not mean de-growth seen as a step backwards, but rather as a different growth and a step forward.

"Sajid Javid turns a blind eye to Pont Valley". Image: Art Rise Up — “Sajid Javid turns a blind eye to Pont Valley”
Image: Art Rise Up © 2018

All of these thoughts informed our decision to organise ourselves into a collective which could keep supporting the campaign in London, where our life as creative freelancers often means compromises in a constant search for balance in our actions.

Cultural meaning

The task we gave ourself was to create something simple and efficient, to give a shape to this large amount of information on the issues in the form of an artistic intervention which could also try to help to influence directly. The exercise of art is after all an attempt to condense communication, and give it tangible cultural meaning.

Pont Valley masks. Image: Art Rise Up — Pont Valley masks
Image: Art Rise Up © 2018

With the use of a critical neo-classical bust, we decided to underline the responsibility of governments and power figures in handling the climate crisis. This is a call for politicians to re-think the meaning of providing community welfare beyond exploitative models.

Our installation consisted of a clay bust picturing Sajid Javid — empty black eye cavities, and coal around him — and a plaque referring to his controversial silence regarding the Pont Valley mine. In the plinth, built-in speakers were emitting sounds of birds chirping with overlapping industrial sounds of excavators.

More-than-human community

The statue has been officially unveiled in front of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Direct action and artistic intervention can share with theatre a performative key, which is increasingly used in protests. We decided to unveil the statue in a ceremony with four officiants wearing masks inspired by Pont Valley wildlife – Skylark, Crested Newt, Pont Burn River, and Gorse Bush. These masks to represent a wider community of people and living beings behind our actions. Mining and burning coal harms the smaller creatures in our ecosystems as much as human communities worldwide.

Our intervention didn’t manage to change Sajid Javid’s mind. The Pont Valley Protection Camp was evicted last week. Banks Group are even planning to appeal against the Druridge Bay decision. What this little journey helped us discover though, is how committed and motivated is the movement behind environmental campaigns. How a small example such as a coal mine in County Durham and a larger perspective necessarily live together. How the journey will still be long, with countless the campaigns to fight. How important it is for all to embark on this journey to adjust the system, from politicians to countryside dwellers, to city workers and artists together, committing to spread awareness and give shape to a real plea for change.

Find out more

Art Rise Up has a Facebook page and intends to promote and share contents about Art and Activism.

You can learn more about the open cast coal mine at Pont Valley and the campaigns to prevent it at Coal Action UK and in these articles from The Ecologist, BBC News and Chronicle Live: Protecting Pont Valley: meet the protesters fighting a new coal mine (28/3/18); Dipton opencast mine protesters in underground tunnels (20/4/18); All the opencast campaigners kicked out of protest camp after 33 hour stand off with bailiffs (20/4/18).

Ottavia Virzi

A set and costume designer focusing on sustainability, heritage crafts and social history, and associate artist with Art Rise Up, a group merging art and activism.