Artist Michael Gresalfi explores the history of protest posters and their use for International Mother Earth Day (22nd April) through his own protest painting, “Replenish The Earth”. Michael invites fellow ClimateCultures members to share their Earth Month creations.
820 words: estimated reading time = 3.5 minutes
While Earth Month (and Earth Day) originated in the United States, it has become a massive global phenomenon. Today, it is recognized in over 193 countries, with approximately one billion people participating in environmental actions each April. In 2009, the UN officially designated April 22nd as ‘International Mother Earth Day.’ This solidified the April date as the primary global standard.
Earth Month needs artists like you
Artists of all mediums have engaged in this annual event through many different ways, including designing and then displaying ‘protest posters.’ From the broadsheets of the Reformation to the neon-soaked digital projections of today, protest posters have been used as a visual megaphone, and to get the message out in public forums to the people.
Legend says Martin Luther kicked things off by nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door. Whether he used nails or glue, he effectively used the first ‘protest poster’ to challenge the most powerful institution in Europe, the Catholic Church and its Pope.
The Suffragettes were the first to master protest branding. They realized that for a movement to be taken seriously, it needed a cohesive look. They used purple (dignity), white (purity), and green (hope) on banners and sashes.
A golden age of protest posters
Perhaps the 1960s and 1970s might be considered the golden age of protest posters. Both the civil rights movement, and the anti-Vietnam war movement maximized the use of bold, artistic, and visceral protest posters and other forms of imagery for mass media consumption.
Here is a sample of those vintage environmental protest posters:
Examples of environmental protest posters
The advent of the so called ‘digital revolution’ had a major impact on the universal growth of protest posters. This phenomenon was kick-started by the accessibility of personal computers, affordable color printers, and the Internet.
“Replenish The Earth” – a call to creative action
So, my fellow ClimateCultures members, what are you creating to share during Earth Month? For me, I enjoy creating environmental protest paintings. They tend to look more like posters and typically each one reflects upon a single environmental issue, although I have presented up to a dozen such paintings within a solo gallery show, under the title “Our Changing Planet.” If interested, you can view one of my science-subtitled slide shows on my website.
So, here we are, only a month away from April, and the start of Earth Month. I am busy creating new environmental protest paintings (my painted posters) and looking for opportunities to both share my work and hopefully stimulate others to draw on their own creative muse and engage in this fight for the very survival of our Blue Jewel, planet Earth!
Will you join me and others around the world and create and share your personal protest against one or more of the environmental wounds we humans have caused to our home in the stars?
Here is an Earth Day protest poster that I just completed, entitled “Replenish The Earth.”
This climate-focused protest painting frames the push by Elon Musk to populate Mars as an invasive distraction, arguing that our true mission is not to escape to a dead planet, but to honor and restore the interconnected, breathing cycle of life that flourishes on our home world.
Earth Month runs throughout April. You can read about International Mother Earth Day, 22nd April 2026 at earthday.org, which includes an Earth Hub of resources. The site also covers previous years’ themes and campaigns, including Artists for the Earth last year. The 2025 theme continues this year: “Our Power, Our Planet”.
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'.
Artist-writer Jennifer Leach and ecoscenographer-artist Andrea Carr‘s Earth-arts organisation Outrider Anthems invites us into Bullwoman – a dreaming. Their collaborative Portal Theatre project brings everyday reality into rich contact with deeper worlds, suggesting new myths for our times.
1,600 words: estimated reading time = approximately 6.5 minutes
There is a particular sense of happiness in sharing our latest project, Bullwoman – a Dreaming, on ClimateCultures, as we first met at the 2016 TippingPoint climate change conference Doing Nothing is Not an Option, organised and facilitated by Peter Gingold and Mark Goldthorpe. Many of us who met for the first time at that seminal weekend (TippingPoint’s swansong) have gone on to work richly together. Mark was inspired to create ClimateCultures.
The challenge laid down at the conference was how creatives might change hearts and minds, to help humanity return to occupying a humble and balanced place within the ecosystem. So grand a remit is beyond our ambitions, but in this theatre piece we hope to offer the dreamt possibility of a more holistic, integrated way forward.
We are not suggesting an easy ending of ‘happy ever after’, but we do believe that something new wants to happen, something deep wants to come out and express itself…
A portal to dream abodes & myth lands
We have been working on this theatre piece since 2017, and are happy to say it is coming now to fruition, although there are still challenges to overcome, funding being a central one.
Here, we tell our story so far in images and words, explaining more about the piece, its structure and storyline, and our thinking behind it and many of our visual ideas. If you prefer to scroll a continuous slideshow, we have an online pdf presentation: please dive in.
We would really appreciate the engagement and feedback of fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, and any support you feel you might be able to give. In particular, we are looking for a producer, fundraiser and venues. We would welcome too the encouragement of anyone who is stirred, and who wishes to help bring this big and beautiful piece to fruition.
Our introductory gallery (click to enlarge):
The following are a selection of visual images from our research and development process.
Our cast of characters
In the following galleries we give a taster of the characters and the narrative, without attempting to cover every detail of the script and storyline. We start with the Artists in their Studio…
Bullwoman & the Bullpeople
Portal Theatre
The following gallery unfolds elements of our methodology, thinking, and philosophy, and the impetus behind the work.
If you wish to know more about Portal Theatre, see our manifesto.
Working towards new myths
In grappling with these questions:
We have worked with and used our dreams,
We have worked with chance and meaningful synchronicity,
We have drawn on contemporary events and issues — both personal and collective,
We have engaged our imagination,
We have used storytelling and visual theatricality —
to suggest a new myth.
We are aiming to create a flexible and tourable theatre production that can travel to various venues, increasing its reach. There will be a community aspect to it.
In accordance with our vision of Portal Theatre, this will be sustainably achieved in a budget-conscious and resource-conscious way, through the innovative use of sound, film, voice, projection, and design.
Your support – people, partnerships, crowdfunding
We are seeking people and partnerships:
Performers
Venues
Production team
Fundraisers
Funding in the form of grants, sponsorship, patrons
Enthusiasts who can give of their time, interest and skills
We welcome all support, interest and enquiries to outrideranthems@gmail.com
It takes a diverse, skilled community to create and produce a work of theatre, especially in these challenging times.If you feel you could support this venture financially, we would greatly appreciate that too. Please visit Bullwoman’s Crowdfunder.
Thank you.
Find more
You can find more of Jennifer and Andrea’s work together at Outrider Anthems, as well solo work via their websites in the profile links below.
And Jennifer and Andrea took part with fellow ClimateCultures members in Conversations with Work That Connects, a series of lively and engaging conversations that Julia Marques recorded with artists and researchers to explore their experiences with wide-ranging topics that inform the creative work ClimateCultures celebrates.
A poet, writer, performer and storyteller whose wild work, forged in the fantastical reaches of deep imagination, brings to life new stories for our strange times.
A designer and scenographer, and cofounder of Terabac and of EcoStage Pledge, an online initiative to promote sustainability amongst theatre practitioners.
Playwright Chantal Bilodeau shares Climate Change Theatre Action’s new anthology of short plays on the climate crisis, whose theme of ‘All good things must begin’ takes an imaginative leap through challenging times towards a just and regenerative world.
1,850 words: estimated reading time = 7.5 minutes
As the fifth Climate Change Theatre Action festival (CCTA) unfolded in the fall of 2023, the world broke an unfortunate series of records, with every month in that season becoming the warmest September, October, November, and December ever recorded. Furthermore, the year 2023 as a whole marked the first time global average temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for a twelve-month period. If we needed a reminder of why we were doing what we were doing, it came loud and clear.
At the same time, in December 2023, at the UN Climate Conference in Dubai, thanks to a global Call to Action spearheaded by the Climate Heritage Network and signed by hundreds of arts and cultural organizations worldwide, the United Arab Emirates (hosts of COP28) and Brazil (future hosts of COP30 in 2025) announced the launch of the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action. An international coalition of UN Member States, the Group of Friends’ stated goal is to build “political momentum for the recognition of culture as a uniquely powerful force in climate change policy.” It remains to be seen how much influence this group will have and how this influence will translate into meaningful policies, but, at the very least, it confirms what many artists and cultural workers have known for years: There can be no transition to a more just and regenerative world without culture as a key driver.
Countless arts and cultural organizations are already working to address climate challenges with and within their community, capitalizing on the strength of cultural networks and the power of creativity and imagination. But we need more. As we know all too well, if we wait for change to come from the top, we will be waiting for a long time. The more we organize within our communities and work to dream up and implement the changes we want to see, the better prepared we will be to face the challenges ahead of us. In storytelling terms, this means we, artists, must be modern Jules Vernes and imagine not just the technology but also the systems – economic, social, environmental, educational, moral, etc. – of tomorrow, the systems that will support the lives of nine billion people on a finite Earth.
‘All Good Things Must Begin,’ edited by Chantal Bilodeau and published by the Arts & Climate Initiative and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (2024), features 50 short plays and six essays by writers from around the world.
Climate Change Theatre Action
Inaugurated in 2015 and hosted biennially, CCTA is a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis, presented to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conferences. It is spearheaded by the Arts & Climate Initiative in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, and aims to bring communities together and inspire them to take action on climate. It represents the busiest and most exciting part of our year, the one time when we get to feel, at least for a few months, that we do (maybe?) have a tangible impact.
For every festival, we commission fifty playwrights, representing every inhabited continent, to write a five-minute play about an aspect of the climate crisis based on a prompt. Then, we make this collection of plays available to anyone interested in presenting an event in their community during a three-month window in the fall. Events can range from readings to fully produced performances and from podcasts to film adaptations. Organizers are encouraged to design their event to reflect their own aesthetic and the needs of their community, and to include additional material by local artists.
Monica Sanborn in ‘Actors Ready’ by Ethan King. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri.
To emphasize the ‘Action’ part of Climate Change Theatre Action, we also invite organizers to think about an action – educational, social, or political – that can be incorporated into their event. These actions may involve collaborations with the scientific community or local environmental organizations, or they may take the form of donations or protests. In the past, organizers have pledged to reduce consumption and adopt plant-based diets, raised money for hurricane relief and tree-planting efforts, cleaned rivers, donated to food banks, and written letters to legislators to demand policy change.
The five-minute format of the CCTA plays is not accidental. We want the plays to be as user-friendly as possible so they can be presented in different contexts by people with varying levels of experience and accommodate a wide range of budgets, including no budget at all. And while the short format may sound innocuous, five minutes pack a surprising punch, reliably bringing audiences to tears, generating laughter, and providing serious fodder for reflection. The plays can be performed individually as part of larger events – such as conferences and festivals – or grouped together in any number to create an evening of theatre.
All Good Things Must Begin
CCTA 2023 took place from September 17 to December 23, 2023. Once we had selected our fifty playwrights, we offered the following prompt:
Our theme this year, ‘All Good Things Must Begin,’ is inspired by the journal entry of American science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Butler was determined to be a best-selling author. By setting intentions and visualizing this positive outcome, she defied the odds and became the author of many celebrated novels, winning each of science fiction’s highest honors. She was also incredibly prescient, writing about extremism, racial justice, and climate change some thirty years ago. While the worlds of her novels depict the violent challenges of today’s interlocking crises, her protagonists remain devoted to thriving, to achieving survival beyond the destructive and oppressive societies they come from.
The climate crisis demands the same kind of imaginative leap: We will create a just and regenerative world only if we dare to imagine it first and use that vision to guide us through the difficulties. We invite you to be solarpunks and envision radical pluralistic futures where nature and community thrive, and where we reject the apocalypse and embrace counterculture, post-capitalism, and decolonization. This doesn’t necessarily translate into utopias but into worlds where successes and failures exist side by side, and where hope, courage, and grief overlap.
All Good Things Must Begin: Short Plays Imagining the Future is the response to this prompt. Playwrights share their vision of what the future may hold with humor, poetry, playfulness, hope, courage, and sometimes grief and pain. They tackle topics such as intolerance, civic action, cultural heritage, interspecies relationships, and Indigenous knowledge in a variety of styles and approaches that provide as many entry points into a complex conversation. The book was released this past October and is available on Lulu Press in paperback and ebook, or from your domestic online bookstore.
Scott Redmond in ‘The Polar Bears’ by Nicolas Billon. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri.
Our goal with this publication is to make the fifty plays of CCTA 2023 available to as many people as possible so they can be studied, read, performed, and inspire the kinds of dreams that empower us to make bold changes. In addition to the plays, the book features six essays by members of the greater CCTA family: Himali Kothari, Elspeth Tilley, Mark Wallace, Clare Preuss, Ian Garrett, and GiGi Buddie. These essays provide insights on various aspects of the project, ranging from working with students to hosting events in areas dominated by the oil industry, and from exploring ecoscenography to understanding one’s role in protecting the planet. One of the essays also crunches down the numbers to evaluate the festival’s impact.
Climate anxiety and climate distress are on the rise, especially among the younger generation. While these feelings are healthy responses to the existential challenges we face, for any action to be possible, let alone sustainable, they must be addressed – and harnessed toward positive transformation. A way in which this can happen is through keeping a sense of possibility alive. By reminding ourselves that ‘good things’ don’t appear fully formed but must begin somewhere, and what we aspire to can be put in motion anytime, we can hopefully keep despair at bay. After all, beginnings are always acts of faith. So, whether you are an artist, an activist, an educator, or a student, we encourage you to get your own copy and use the plays to foster generative conversations and – hopefully – joyful action.
Find more
All Good Things Must Begin: Short Plays Imagining the Future, edited by Chantal Bilodeau (2024), is published by Lulu, and available in paperback or ebook.
In February 2024, European science agency Copernicus announced that, for the first time ever, global average heating exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius, on average, for a 12-month period during 2023. Dr. Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a UCS statement “This data doesn’t mean the primary goal of the Paris climate agreement has been breached, as nations committed to limiting global average temperatures over the long-term—typically considered 20 to 30 years—rather than tying their efforts to a day, month, or year-long anomaly. That said, world leaders should take serious heed of Copernicus’ latest finding by quickening their current snail’s pace to slash heat-trapping emissions and helping to safeguard communities and ecosystems from unavoidable climate impacts. The latest IPCC report found that the planet will likely breach the 1.5-degree-Celsius mark within the next 11 years unless global heat-trapping emissions peak by 2025.”
A playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change, and co-organizer of Climate Change Theatre Action ...
Practical activist and artist Nicky Saunter revisits the Hope Tales project, with its fourth event and chapbook exploring ‘Fire’ themes in the Celtic winter Samhain festival, shared learning from other cultures and creatures, live music, poems and stories.
1,010 words: estimated reading time = 4 minutes
When I first studied applied photography and monochrome printing under the eccentric, brilliant West Country teacher Ron Frampton, I was puzzled by his warning “beware the new” each time we gathered to view our work from the previous week. Wise words indeed; each new image laid on the table for viewing brought “ooh”s and “aahh”s, apparently better than what we had already done. Yet this happened each week and we weren’t improving that quickly! There was something in the very newness of each image being seen for the first time; it was exciting, thrilling — and faded quickly.
I always think it is strange that funders prefer to put their money into new, riskier initiatives rather than supporting things that already work well. Perhaps the draw of the new is inevitable for us humans; shiny new tech, something different to wear, a book still to read — we draw excitement from anticipation itself. Perhaps this is why our project Hope Tales still retains the thrill, excitement and ability to surprise. Even calling it a project seems falsely formal because this series of happenings has been remarkably organic, changing each time to reflect its location and participants, repeating a tried and tested pattern, and yet being new each time.
Hope Tales events — the magic of the mix
The concept is simple: gather a bunch of creative people in a room for a couple of hours and ask them to share something on a theme with the rest of the room. Supply some food and drink, some fairy lights and some music. Gather up the songs, poems, bits of writing and drawings afterwards and make them into a pocket book. Repeat. And it is never the same.
In my first piece about Hope Tales for ClimateCultures, I wrote about our first three events, which were held in London, Somerset and Essex on the themes of Air, Land and Water respectively. Last autumn on a drizzly dark Hallowe’en (or All Souls’ Night), we held Hope Tales event number four on the theme of Fire at the wonderful Margate School by the sea. The magic happened again, with pieces about learning from other cultures and creatures, the Celtic winter festival of Samhain, and live music from the Swedish folk band Tree Oh! We welcomed Henry Coleman and Eva Badola for the first time.
Our hosts for the night was an independent not-for-profit postgraduate liberal arts school right in the heart of Margate, run by artist and educator Uwe Derksen, whose giant crow you can see below. What a presence to have looking over our shoulders as we performed!
The Margate School is based in a former Woolworths building that had stood empty since 2008 and has played an influential part in the story of Margate’s regeneration. We had help from local sound technicians to ensure the music worked, because Tree Oh! were performing songs specially written in collaboration with poet-economist, Andrew Simms, to celebrate London’s green spaces. They have since launched an EP.
The Fire chapbook we made from the contributions on this night is now available to download, along with the previous chapbooks. And our next Hope Tales event — the last in this series — will be at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill, London on 30th May from 7-9pm, so please do get in touch if you would like to be a contributor. The theme is Love (in a hopeful light), which seems apt as it feels like we could particularly do with some more love in the world at the moment.
Surely there is nothing new to say about love, I hear you say. And yet I know that once again people will gather, share what has come into and then out of their individual creative minds and by collaborating will make together something much bigger than the sum of its parts.
The Hope Tales project has been a joy to participate in, maybe because it has been so light touch and unconstrained. A perfectly timed piece of funding from the University of Essex provided the fuel for us to maintain our campfire, and our team of collaborators have come together each time with enthusiasm, creativity and laughter. It is of course endlessly expandable — and was designed to be so. A Hope Tales event could be put on in any place with any group of creative people. It could be done on a very small budget or none at all, so do get in touch if you are interested in doing one yourself.
Working in the field of sustainability can be a grim slog at times and this way of approaching the unknown through hope and fundamental themes has proven uplifting. The role of hope, imagination and story in facing climate change is a slim but strong lifeline into the future.
Find more
You can read Nicky’s previous post on the Hope Tales project from the Rapid Transition Alliance, the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement at the University of Essex and the New Weather Institute, Hope Tales – Stories for Change. And all four chapbooks are available to download from the Rapid Transition Alliance. To find out about the Hope Tales: Love event at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill, London on 30th May, contact nicky@newweather.org
You can hear Tree Oh!‘s EP Our Urban Nature, songs with Andrew Simms here.
The Margate School, where the Hope Tales: Fire event took place, is an independent not-for-profit postgraduate liberal arts school and creative community hub inspired by making a positive difference to our communities and environment.
A practical activist, campaigner, social entrepreneur and artist with a particular focus on communication, between people and between humans and the rest of the natural world.
Writer and filmmaker James Murray-White visited the Planet Local Summit, finding in its examples of urgent work around the world to foster being and acting locally a cultural turning towards nature as antidote to climate and ecological breakdown.
1,800 words: estimated reading time = 7 minutes
Once in a while I’m fortunate to attend a gathering — truly in this case an in-gathering of a community — that is so warm and focused that my intuitive heart knows that this is a real crystallisation of the worldwide urgent work going on, and that this will be a big impetus for it to flourish, broaden and deepen.
Helena Norberg-Hodge, inspirational founder of Local Futures, the organising NGO, spoke in her opening address of the Planet Local Summit of all attendees being part of the ‘bacterial mycelia’ seeding the crucialness of acknowledging our local belonging. This felt a deep truth and, as I write and reflect, still feels the best take-home gift. I left Bristol feeling energised to return home (currently Cambridge) with many gifts, new and old connections made and refreshed, and a strong motivation to keep working at a local level. I returned specifically to co-host a public engagement event called Dear River, of which more later.
Helena set the term ‘localisation’ as the antidote to the twin threats of climate and ecological breakdown, happening at speed now in every corner and continent of our planet, and the death march of the industrial/economic system that capitalism has wrought upon the human world. By acknowledging, being and acting locally — in terms of fostering community, emphasising well-being, local food growing, and community care — including finance staying within our local systems, Local Futures describes localisation through these actions as “a cultural turning towards nature” and “an expression of our need for connection — both to others and to all living beings.”
This was the first post-pandemic gathering for me that I felt called to, due to both the high-profile speakers in-person and the sessions sharing case studies of specific local actions and issues. From Helena, Bayo Akomolafe, Morag Gamble, Iain McGilchrist and Charles Eisenstein to many other brilliant engagers, thinkers and philosophers, pragmatists, growers and weavers, the hall at St George’s, associated spin-off rooms — including the cafe/bar, and various rooms at the nearby Folk House venue, and The Tobacco Factory arts centre to which the summit relocated on day three — were all humming with conversations and ideas brewing and being dissected and unpicked.
The big evening conversation on the Friday, a much-hyped conversation between XR co-founder Roger Hallam and ex-Government Minister Zac Goldsmith felt almost a dampening of the enthusiasm during the day: neither seemed to absorb the energy of the gathering, and while they found a kind of middle ground around failures of policy, and the potential of coming bloody revolutions (and the history of previous ones), neither could really offer any threads to hold hope upon.
The community-building that XR and Just Stop Oil has created is hugely commendable and needs anchors and deep seeding across all levels of our societies. I recently heard about an elderly couple who watched Chris Packham’s incisive and timely documentary struggling with his conscience about being arrested for activism and using his powerful voice; and they are now inspired to act, in whatever local way they are able.
On the other hand, Goldsmith’s tale of woe and pressure from lobbyists, including in one notable case the National Farmers Union, against plans for environmental support he was proposing is simply insane, and needs calling out. This is the industrial death machine of chemicals, vested interest, power; the insecurity of the human mind, tragically, that has created this huge schism in a world with so much staggering beauty, potential, and constant flux and change. The next day, Charles Eisenstein’s words — “The idea that the change can happen with the right person in charge is inherently wrong” — reminded me of Goldsmith and Hallam, and also the pedestals and stages we create for leaders to stand on (and fall or get kicked off, because we’re fallible humans!).
It was a joy to hear philosopher Iain McGilchrist reflect upon the theme, both alone and in conversation with Bayo Akomalafe and then Helena. I’m struck by his phrase:
“We are here to respond to the values of the universe, both in belonging ourselves and as part of the human community; to develop and expand our relationship to the natural world, and, partly as a result of these two practices, to live within divinity.”
A one-to-one conversation with Iain became a beautiful engagement around the theme of grace, which is an enduring talisman for me to hold. I recommend Iain’s The Master & His Emissary for an erudite scientific dissection of the schism in our body-brain and how this permeates across human history.
Food and farming, and the systems that support them, was a key theme of the Summit. With another hat on, I’m a member of the team making Six Inches Of Soil, a new documentary on regenerative agriculture and new entrant farmers, which will be premiered at the Oxford Real Farming Conference early in 2024, so I’ve an interest here, as I hope we all have. It’s increasingly clear that knowing our local farmers and buying direct or from local farmers’ markets, with local supply chains, is vital to planetary health and soil-human survival and potential thriving.
Chris Smaje, smallholder, writer and food activist, based outside Frome, and Jyoti Fernandez, farmer, activist, and co-founder of the Landworker’s Alliance, are tremendous forces for good in this sphere. Both are making change, standing strong against big farm companies and food/meat manipulation and galvanising opinion.
It was refreshing to hear from Nelson Mudzingwa, a Zimbabwean farmer who has struggled to gather seed sovereignty and organic certification across his land and the African continent. By open source seed saving, his collective is developing crop resilience to climate change in their region. Words of hope from a country known for bitter political struggle. Farmer, former head of the Soil Association and now founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, Patrick Holden chaired this session with passion and aplomb, though I found his constant allusions to connections across the CEO worlds, including Bill Gates, distracting and pretty irrelevant given the brilliance within this audience and panel.
Speaking from a new story
A day and a half in, however, I was chomping at the bit for news from really local actions, initiatives and community building from these isles. As a former Bristol resident, I know that this city is bursting with creative social enterprise and strong community efforts, particularly around peri-urban food growing and combatting poverty. It’s a gritty sprawl of communities, and I sadly heard there had been a stabbing that led to a fatality in a neighbourhood nearby on Friday.
I had expected to meet the Street Goat Project bringing their furry troupe up the steps of St George’s to engage with us all. However I found the answer in a brilliant presentation from three members of Frocal in the village of Forest Row, Sussex: in a nutshell, asking themselves “what it might be like if we all lived and acted more locally?” They gave examples of their success and failures and acknowledged that it was a work in progress, albeit a vital effort for these times. I will visit friends there and investigate shortly. Frocal feels like a really valuable and catalysing project.
Other takeaways for me include the theme of colonisation of the mind as well as land and countries and continents: Vandana Shiva in her pre-recorded video highlighted this, reminding us that just 600 men created the East India Company treaty (that our monarch signed and sealed) to sail off and colonise that part of the world. Anthropologist Darcia Narvaez picked up on this with her fascinating presentation on her work on Nestedness, agreeing “we are all colonised”, and how might we respond to that knowing? Her thesis continues in the knowledge of our connectedness to, and acceptance of, our heritage.
Keynote speaker Charles Eisenstein delivered a meandering wander through his response to the topic — “ I trust the deployment of the intelligence that my gifts will be useful for” — and concurred with the broader theme that we “need to speak to people from a new story”. He brings a wisdom to our human need to really acknowledge that “technology is reaching deeper and deeper into the core of what it means to be human” and that our “common goal is to rekindle our connections”.
Sadly, I had to leave after two days, and the third and final day of the summit relocated to another Bristol venue, and I suspect drilled down more into very local UK and Bristolian specifics.
What called me very strongly back to my locale was an event I co-hosted to celebrate water and river systems at this time of waking up to the sorry state most rivers are in, and specifically how they are being abstracted from, and our human sewage dumped within. Dear River was a locally-organised gift to our community, to meet the issue with creativity, grief, and space — space to gather, to listen, to respond, and to ask “what can we do?” After two days of deep stimulation at Planet Local and then this event, I suspect that asking this question is our fullest human response.
Find more
The Planet Local Summit took place from 29th September to 1st October 2023, in Bristol, UK. You can find the full programme, find about the speakers and watch the livestream recording on the Local Futures website.
James highlights Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master & His Emissary (2009). You can find out more at Channel McGilchrist, and James shares his experiences taking part in and filming a retreat with Iain in a post for James’s Finding Blake project on William Blake: Exploring the Divided Brain.
And Six Inches of Soil is the film James has been working on: “the inspiring story of British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food — to heal the soil, benefit our health and provide for local communities.”
And here on ClimateCultures, you will find many other pieces by James, including his review of fellow member Susan Holliday’s book, Hidden Wonders of the Human Heart.
Artist Michael Gresalfi explores the history of protest posters and their use for International Mother Earth Day (22nd April) through his own protest painting, “Replenish The Earth”. Michael invites fellow ClimateCultures members to share their Earth Month creations.
Artist-writer 
