Hope Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

Standing in Relationship with Land

Artist Jennifer Leach offers a ‘case study with no answers’; how (and whether) to engage with issues of right land relationship with resistance but not aggression: pausing, listening, acting with integrity, and being at peace with our choices.

2,270 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes

How to be in this world right now, how to act, how best to use our creative gifts, and what voice to speak out with – a case study with no answers.

There is a strong argument growing right now, that engaging oppositionally with systemic injustice only serves to fuel polarities and division within a system that is heading for collapse. The advocates of this argument, many of them community leaders engaged in stunning endeavours of nurture and growth, are encouraging us to transfer our energies into laying fresh foundations for a more loving, more equitable world. I, like many activists, artists, and people with heart, find myself caught deep in this place of ‘no longer and not yet’. And I personally have been deeply impacted by the Walk for Peace monks in the USA, who have so visibly demonstrated radical change through embodied non-engagement with any political landscape. I find myself arriving in an internal place of peace beyond conflict, whose rules of reflection in the outer world I do not yet understand. I am unsure whether there remains any useful place, for me, for protest and challenge. Others of you may feel the same, and I share here a case study that illustrates this dilemma.

Standing tall with the more-than-human

In 2023, our community fought hard to prevent a local golf course, a major green lung of Reading, from being swallowed up by naked greed in the form of a large deluxe housing estate. In the history of planning in the UK, there had never been any application with a greater number of objections, over 4,000. Planning was denied twice, but on the third time of asking (like a bad fairytale), the Council voted in favour of the scheme. We, the community, gasped, we shouted, we cried, we were reprimanded for bad behaviour in the Council chamber. The scheme rolled inexorably ahead.

It felt important to bear witness to this swallowing of the land, in particular to the 112 trees that were to be felled. With Andrea Carr, friend and fellow ClimateCultures member, we came together with the community to do just this. We bound each doomed tree with a white band of muslin, photographed and honoured it. I had already spent months with the trees, photographing and recording each one of them, and I believe they reciprocated by revealing to me their unique energies in the photographs I took. Our project, Standing Tall, can be seen on the Outrider Anthems website.

Land relationship: Showing trees destined to be felled bound with white muslin to honour them. Photograph by Jennifer Leach. — Honouring the trees to be felled. Photograph: Jennifer Leach © 2022

The trees were felled, the deluxe detached houses are being built, with a token number of ‘affordable’ terraced houses (costing £500,000+) available through shared ownership with housing associations. And with the cement mixers still churning, the developers moved on to Phase II.

How then to participate in this second phase of landgrab within my community? By the time it raised its head, I was shifting further away from resistance, to focus more on the resolution of inner conflict and division, learning to be more humble in my judgement of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Concentrating on becoming the peace I wish to see in the world. And yet, the land, the beautiful land! How could I not help defend it?

I felt that using my creativity to reflect a changed dialogue might be the most helpful course of action, and so I made two small physical books, one called Standing Tall, the other The Land in Relationship. These small books are things of beauty, and in their own quiet way, radical. Standing Tall is a portrait of the land and the trees, a record of the art intervention led by Andrea and myself, and a pictorial record of the land during and after building. The loss of habitat is quietly evidenced. When the huge ‘protected’ oak sheds a limb through stress, it reads like a climactic moment in a story of loss. The book concludes with the words: “Fairfax Ltd is now submitting applications to build on the remaining golf course land. We dream that they may not succeed. We dream of a world where housing is no longer built for excessive profit and gain. Where housing is not seen as an investment. Where people own only the one home they live in. We dream of a time when, in the making of all decisions, the land, the community, and the more-than-human will, at last, be honoured again.”

Land relationship: Showing trees where only houses now stand. Photograph: Jennifer Leach © 2022 — Houses now, where these trees stood. Photograph: Jennifer Leach © 2022

The second book, The Land in Relationship, maps out the reality of inappropriate, insensitive planning actions, by placing the proposed site (always so prettily coloured in the application paperwork) within its landscape, naming all that is bound in relationship to it – the land surrounding it, the fauna and flora, the community, the ecosystem, the planet. It ends with the text: “It is time – long past time – to move back into right relationship with the land. There is no greater priority.”

Showing a Trapped tree, isolated in the new development. Photograph byJennifer Leach 2026 — Trapped tree: isolated in the new development. Photograph: Jennifer Leach © 2026

These books are intended to re-establish contact with a truth nearly always crushed by the language and aggression of planning.

Creativity and witnessing for land relationship

Having completed the books, and not sure how best to share them, I was invited to speak at the government inquiry that was set up to decide on the Phase II planning application once South Oxfordshire District Council had turned it down and the planners had put in their inevitable appeal. And in this forum came the greatest ethical and spiritual rub for me. I did not know what I should say, nor what voice to use. I did not know how to use my creativity in the best interests of the land and the community, in a system that is inherently undemocratic and whose language is strident and disassociated. Should I be poetic, sharp, gentle, visionary, forceful?

After much thought, I wrote a story, The Oligopoly, using the language of my profession as artist and storyteller. I took three small oak trees up to the stand with me, and I shared my story. It was a tale that took no prisoners, and which, according to my own truth, laid bare the underlying narrative of bullying, greed and systematic aggression that underpins the highway to societal and environmental collapse. It ended with a provocation: “Change must start here, now, in rooms such as these. With acts of principled wisdom and clear thinking, based on necessity. If not for [the people] themselves, then for their children, and the children of all species.”

Showing: Stencil graffiti by Edward von Lõngus, Tallinn (removed by the authorities) — Stencil graffiti by Edward von Lõngus, Tallinn (removed by the authorities)

You can listen to my recording of The Oligopoly here:

Throughout my delivery, I could see the developers squirming. What was worse, I could feel the whole room squirming. At the end of my tale, I gave the inspector, and the developers, a copy each of the government’s 2026 Joint Committee of Intelligence National Security Report, and a copy of my two small books; they were filed under evidence.

I returned to my seat, feeling the intense discomfort not only of the developers, but of ‘my side’ too. I felt deeply uncomfortable. Exposed. I felt confrontational. Had I overstepped the mark? Had I alienated the inspector? Had I imposed my own act of hostility, and furthered rigidity and conflict, with a horrible sense of moral superiority, through the telling of my story? Could I have told a different story or used a different voice? Reader, I do not know.

What I do know is that local naturalists spoke knowledgably and movingly about the bats and the wildlife and the ancient wonder of the local Cucumber Wood, and conscientious volunteers and low-paid councillors from local neighbourhood groups and parish councils, who had spent months preparing a case to save the land, committed to five full days of the excruciating minutiae and scrutiny of planning-speak. And what I also know is that the inspector, when visiting the site itself, spent longer there, and walked further, than in any other site visit the lawyers could recall.

A few days ago, against all the odds, against all the predictions, the planning application was turned down. The inspector’s report was attentive and balanced; he had recognised the beyond-monetary value of the land, he had recognised the land in relationship, and he had honoured it.

I wonder still about my role, and inner conflict remains. Did I ‘grab the burning rope’ of resistance, and fight against a development that may indeed need to happen, before something better is born? Am I guilty of delaying the inevitable death of a system, I who believe so strongly in allowing the natural arrival of endings? Are acerbic acts of truthtelling helpful, or are they simply aggressive? Do they belong to the old adversarial system, or can they be supportive because they are ultimately rooted in acceptance rather than in conflict and anger? Perhaps in this instance the creative shake up was necessary, so that the inspector could see and listen differently. Perhaps it allowed the pleas of the community to be heard, and the quieter voice of the books to seed better. Perhaps it had no impact whatever. Who knows?

As a codicil to the story, Fairfax Housing and Reading Golf Club have just put in an appeal to the High Court, citing injustice and unfairness in the inspector’s report. Should the High Court accept their appeal, a different inspector will be appointed and the inquiry will begin all over again. The unremitting process continues. In light of this, I feel happier that I named and framed the developers’ merciless persistence within the context of a process that masquerades as democratic.

And so, for now, the case study ends. What is my conclusion? All I can really say, after much consideration, is this: in an extremely difficult time of shift, flux and changing systems, as we are compelled to face with renewed honesty our own individual approaches, pausing long, listening deeply and acting authentically are the best yardsticks, perhaps the only yardsticks, we have. And if we act so, we should then accept that we have then done our best, made the best decisions we could, and have acted with integrity. And that we should be at peace with our choices.

Find more

You can find more on Outrider Anthems’ Standing Tall project — along with digital flipbooks of the two books Jennifer presented to the council meeting — here on the OA website, and in Jennifer’s piece for our Creative Showcase: Standing Tall, 2022.

Jennifer has shared the text of her story, The Oligopoly, on her new Substack: “This substack space is going to be a mixture of myself and the organisation I founded in 2011 – Outrider Anthems. I am an artist, writer, advocate for the Earth, and a fan of life cycles and endings rather than exponential growth curves. I believe we as a global society have entered the ragged space between ‘the no longer and the not yet’, and we will need to work hard and listen well to find a new way forward in community. This is what I will be exploring here, hopefully in conversation with others.”

As reported by the CIEEM (Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management) and The Guardian, the UK’s Joint Committee of Intelligence report, National security assessment on global ecosystems, was published in January 2026 “with no press briefing, headlines or apparent ministerial comment, the report has landed amid a news cycle dominated by the World Economic Forum in Davos. Yet its conclusions are stark and far-reaching, with profound implications for environmental policy, planning and public investment in nature.” The CIIEM continues: “Of particular concern is the report’s conclusion that, if current trends continue, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse, and that ecosystem collapse is highly likely to drive national security risk.”

The Walk for Peace, led by Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, is a journey dedicated to raising awareness of peace, loving-kindness, compassion, and unity. This historic journey began at the Hương Đạo Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and travelled over 2,300 miles to reach its destination in Washington, D.C.

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

Jennifer – “The question of AI? Intrinsically I do not like it. I do not like who has inputted the data, how the data has been sourced, its internal biases, and who is seeking to make money, and gain power, from its use. I do not like how it has become our path, without debate and without consensus. I do not like how it replaces human effort and makes it easy to relieve ourselves of critical thinking. I do not like the cheesy, saccharine images that are its representation of spirituality, nor the ‘wonders of nature’ that it seeks to fabricate and enhance, as if they are not naturally wonderful enough. To the new parameters of ‘perfection’ it sets, I find myself responding with more mess, more spontaneity, more deliberate ‘imperfection’. This I like. I do confess to using it to cheat at Wordle, and my Spanish and elementary Zulu have been made possible through the AI owl service that is Duolingo.”

Jennifer Leach

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.

Our Anthropocene Museum — A Curator Conversation On Our First Four Years

As our online Anthropocene museum approaches its fifth year of student entries, UEA’s Martin Mahony and GroundWork Gallery’s Veronica Sekules discuss the collection through a professional curator’s perspective and how it enhances our understanding of our planetary age.

3,380 words: estimated reading time = 13 minutes

ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe sets the context for this conversational post from Martin and Veronica.

We launched our online Museum of the Anthropocene in 2022, drawing directly on Dr Martin Mahony‘s work since 2018 with 3rd-year undergraduate students on his ‘Human Geography in the Anthropocene’ course at the University of East Anglia. Each year, the current cohort has submitted short essays on objects or entities that speak to some aspect of the nature of this new planetary age and our own species’ role in shaping it. Alongside each year’s selection for the ClimateCultures Museum of the Anthropocene, Martin has written an introductory post for us, reflecting on the ideas that emerge from the students’ pieces.

As we approach publication of our fifth set of contributions — coming soon to ClimateCultures — Martin and I discussed how we might draw out some of the themes and topics that have emerged so far from the series. We quickly settled on the notion of bringing in a professional curator’s voice and were delighted that Veronica Sekules generously took up the challenge. Not only is Veronica the founder and director of the GroundWork Gallery, where she has been responsible for showcasing the work of a great many artists and researchers who bring unique perspectives to the critical issues of the Anthropocene, but her background in education — and with the Sainsbury Centre in particular — brings significant experience to the notion of a collection such as this. And, of course, Veronica has contributed her own object-based insights into our planetary age for ClimateCultures, through her writing on three objects for our series, A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects. So it’s a great pleasure to host this conversation between Veronica as our ‘guest curator’ and Martin as instigator of the Museum of the Anthropocene.

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Seeing beyond the strata

Veronica: I have been thinking about the Museum of the Anthropocene for a few days now. I must at first say thank you — yes — it is wonderful and so rich in its approach and the range of its content. Congratulations on putting together such a very thought-provoking and original collection of ideas and discussions. Before I read it, I must say that I had been thinking about the Anthropocene — tutored, as it were, by Colin Waters who gave a talk about it at one of our GroundWork events — as a geological phenomenon. What stuck in my mind rather persistently after his talk was that we were creating a geological layer, including increasing quantities of giant chicken bones and tungsten from ball-point pen points, and of course, plastics. So it is utterly refreshing that you have opened up the subject so much, to be very much more cultural and, indeed, historical.

Showing: 'Cloud of Thorns' by Chris Drury, shown in Nature's Mysterious Networks exhibition at GroundWork Gallery, 2021. Photo: GroundWork Gallery — ‘Cloud of Thorns’ by Chris Drury, shown in Nature’s Mysterious Networks exhibition at GroundWork Gallery, 2021. Photo: GroundWork Gallery © 2021

Martin: Thanks so much Veronica! It’s really lovely to hear such a positive response from a bona fide curator, arts practitioner and museum educator. And yes, that ‘geological’ version of the Anthropocene has become a dominant story which is told, and it is a striking and compelling one. Geologists like Colin have done amazing work in quantifying the sheer amount of stuff that we’re leaving behind and which will be our record in the rocks for millennia to come. But geologists as a whole have a tricky relationship to the notion of the Anthropocene, embodied most clearly perhaps in the recent decision of the International Commission on Stratigraphy not to confirm the Anthropocene as an official geological epoch. The reasons for that are many and interesting, but does it represent the death of the Anthropocene as a useful concept? I don’t think so. The term originated not in geology but in Earth System Science — not the people concerned with our record in the rocks, but the people concerned with how humanity is perturbing things like the climate and the biosphere. In recent years it’s become more common to think of the Anthropocene not as a geological age or epoch, but as an event, and a process. As process, it is something which is unfolding unevenly across space and time. As event, it is something which could, on geological timescales, be relatively fleeting. Which is quite a hopeful way to think about things! Either way, this new way of thinking scientifically about the Anthropocene sits much more comfortably with how social scientists, historians, artists and others like to think about it — as a set of processes with some coherence, perhaps with an identifiable beginning and hopefully an end, but which is highly geographically uneven. It’s not all ‘we’ and ‘us’, but some people, some systems, some ways of doing things which are powerful, but not unmovable.

Veronica: Indeed. As your defining terms in your very useful glossary, and several of the museum exhibit entries suggest, it is not just the Great Acceleration we need to concentrate on as the main culpable era, but that the beginning of the Anthropocene can arguably be traced back — as in the so-called Columbian Exchange — to the first expansionist, colonialist ventures, prospecting for more plants, land and resources. I think in fact it goes potentially much further, and your texts lead the way to thinking very much more broadly than previously, not only about the origins and conditioning factors for the Anthropocene, but about how it is defined. The medieval map and the Santa Maria replica ship both highlight those issues.

Martin: Absolutely, and that’s something we spend time talking quite a lot about. While the stratigraphers wanted an easily identifiable, globally synchronous ‘big bang’ moment they could point to as the start of the Anthropocene, historians, geographers and the like are more interested in tracing root causes of change, which might mean thinking about how the transformations of the Great Acceleration had their roots in early European colonial expansion or, as you suggest, perhaps even further back, in moments like the rise of settled agricultural communities, or in the emergence of particular attitudes to the natural world.

Showing: UEA Museum of the Anthropocene exhibition 2024. Photo by Daniel Lightening (Lightening Photography) — UEA Museum of the Anthropocene exhibition 2024. Photo: Daniel Lightening (Lightening Photography) © 2024

Veronica: Exactly — as the authors and you frequently suggest, there is also the whole persistent question about nature and humans’ attitude to it, and what role that is playing in, not so much the current concerns with mass extinctions, but exploitation and the wielding of power. There are moral nature-culture questions about the canary, the pigeon, the rat and the beaver, but also in different ways for plant species — the suburban lawn, the Christmas tree and Sweetgrass. There seems to be a persistent tension between the human desire for control as exploitation and the exertion of power, and for its more apparently benign purpose to create order. Time and again, while reading the museum entries, I was thrown back on thinking not only that everything is connected in complex ways, but that the earth is riddled with, as you put it Martin, ‘unequal geographies’.

Showing: A film work by Jane Ivimey about eroding cliffs at Happisburgh (Norfolk, England), shown in 'On the Edge' at GroundWork Gallery, 2019. Jane Ivimey © 2019 — A film work by Jane Ivimey about eroding cliffs at Happisburgh (Norfolk, England), shown in ‘On the Edge’ at GroundWork Gallery, 2019. Jane Ivimey © 2019

Martin: I think that’s really key. And we can trace the origins of those unequal geographies both in material processes of transformation (e.g. in the economic contributions of the transatlantic slave trade to the rise of industrialism in Great Britain), and in moments of ‘geo-cultural’ change, as Jason W. Moore puts it. That’s what I think is so fascinating about the whole debate around the Anthropocene. Suddenly we’ve got historians and ethicists talking to earth system scientists and geologists about human-nonhuman relationships in a profoundly generative way, in a manner which didn’t really happen when we were ‘just’ talking about climate change, air pollution, or other environmental crises that have now been bracketed together under the term ‘the Anthropocene’. That bracketing can be problematic as it leads to abstractions and blindspots. But it also draws attention to some big, consequential questions about our relationship to nature, the legacies of empire-building, about cultural change, and so on.

Our planetary age through objects and processes

Veronica: In fact, I think, the kinds of exhibits and concerns brought to light in the museum are leading me to think that we need a whole new definition of the idea of the Anthropocene, beyond geology and what we are physically laying down and altering on the globe. For much of what is being discussed is not so much about what the world is becoming physically, but by what moral, ethical and economic forces it is being, and has been influenced and shaped.

Take for example the Mirror — one of the artefacts of earliest origin — which highlights the problems of self-regard, vanity, narcissism and the confusion of nature-culture that we see or don’t see in our reflections. That author suggests that the Mirror-cene could be a relevant concept. That entry, and quite a few others touch on aspects of the original sins — pride, vanity, greed. Also, the Lawn, Fast Fashion, the Diamond Ring, Banana, the Pocahontas costume — but in each case, go much further to illuminate the subtleties of exploitation, appropriation of identity, commerce, corruption and consumerism, and the special poisons of corporate greed that have increased the scale of the problems these artefacts represent. But for all the evils of their proliferation, it also struck me forcibly when reading these, that the fact remains that humans are vulnerable to being exploited on a mass scale and to that end, culpable as consumers, not quite equally, but not without power as such, to change things — in either direction.

Showing: 'The Art of Waste' exhibition at GroundWork Gallery, 2023, with works by Jeremy Butler, Jan Eric Visser, Liz Elton.jpg — ‘The Art of Waste’ exhibition at GroundWork Gallery, 2023 – showing works by Jeremy Butler, Jan Eric Visser, Liz Elton. Photo: GroundWork Gallery © 2023

Martin: You’ve touched on a really tricky and fascinating point which is shot through all of this — how to talk about things like cultural values, norms, behaviours etc. in a way which prompts new forms of reflection, but which also doesn’t lay the blame for what’s going on at the feet of individuals? There have been a few occasions where students have chosen an object which connects to something they love — like a hobby or a sport they’re keen participants of — and then when they start to unpick all the ‘Anthropocene’ aspects of it, they’re left feeling their object is a Bad Thing. I warn them about the risks of that at the outset, but also try to emphasise that the world, our systems of production, our shared values and so on are determined to a large extent by forces outside of our control. We can change them, but not just by being better consumers, or by no longer taking joy from the plastic Christmas tree or enjoying a picnic on a manicured lawn. Again, history is powerful here, because it shows how contingent things are. Our rapacious version of consumer capitalism wasn’t inevitable — it was very deliberately engineered as a way of dealing with a crisis of overproduction following World War II. That’s what the archives show, and industries like marketing and PR developed precisely to get that new consumer economy going. Once one knows that, it’s possible to see how things could be otherwise. And that’s about collective action, political work, and imagination work. And on the latter is where the arts and museums can be so important.

Learning from the Anthropocene museum

Veronica: That leads me to think more about the state and status of the museum currently — it is a wonderful collection of stories as well as artefacts, and stories which manage at the same time to be quite depressing as a collection of observations about the harm we have done to the Earth, and enlightening in unpicking the forces and circumstances that led us there. There are plenty of positive statements too, about the desire for care for nature and nature as a refuge, and how this sometimes develops in surprising ways, as in the story of Pikachu, or more straightforwardly, Sweetgrass and the tribute to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s famous book. I also very much liked the positive reframing of the Witch as a bringer of ecological wisdom, as a counter to her conventional portrayal as a frightening practitioner in black magic and as a force to be reckoned with against the patriarchal and colonial creators of the Anthropocene’s problems. I also liked the ones that took us above and beyond Earth into space — as indeed that exploitation is going to be the next goal for the greedy prospectors — you just need to look at who the main ones are…

The museum educator in me began thinking about how the museum could be further activated educationally. Of course, it was created with an educational purpose, which in itself is extremely interesting. Conventionally the museum curator is the one who selects and essentialises the stories, whittling down to the uber-story that the display elucidates. When I worked as a museum educator, I always maintained that it was then our job to re-assemble the rich detail that lay at the heart of those distilled curated stories and then from there to explore the wider field that had provided the context — which embedded the story potentially much more deeply again and led to wider areas to discover. That in a sense is what your exhibitors have already done. However, I think there could be an interesting metacognitive exercise to re-dissect their themes, pick up on their keywords, to examine each aspect of their detail, and then to see where the further connections and alliances are between the different exhibits. Where, for example does ‘ecological wisdom’ occur — perhaps between the Witch, Sweetgrass and Pikachu? I am not entirely sure where this would lead, but it might be fun to do. And it might be a way to think about the cumulative effects of the phenomena you are faced with, and maybe come closer to thinking about how to address some of those thorny issues of inequality, resource exploitation, geographical power imbalance. For I do feel that you and the students are onto something in terms of reframing the debates around the Anthropocene and potentially coming up with some positive proposals to counter them.

I know you have frequently started your conversations with the Sainsbury Collection, and I used to have a whole repertoire of workshops whereby we would have a deck of words or phrases on card — which might have come from either a random source or a specific one and we would place them near an object with which we thought there might be some kind of connection. It wasn’t always enlightening in terms of being true to the cultures of origin of some of the artefacts, but always led somewhere interesting because of peoples’ desire to make new sense of things, and was a way to open up new questions… I always found the Sainsbury Collection tremendously valuable in encouraging questioning and I am sure that, plus its global range and variety of kinds of artefact, made it an ideal starting point for you and the students.

Martin: It’s really interesting that you say that. In Week 1 of the module we do an exercise with some ‘keywords’, to prompt some discussions of what the Anthropocene ‘means’ and what it ‘demands’. This always yields really interesting insights into how the students feel about environmental change and, essentially, what appetite for revolution they have! Revolution of various kinds — economic, cultural, technological… Bringing some of our previous museum entries into that conversation could be really generative too. I’ve learned so much from the education team at the Sainsbury Centre about how to do good object-based learning, and getting students thinking in those terms right from the get-go could have some interesting implications for the kinds of objects and entities they ultimately chose to focus on.

Veronica: I was wondering what difference it might have made had you begun with a more conventional museum, the kind that claims to provide answers and ‘factual’ information and a more taxonomic approach to its collecting. Perhaps you might have got a more conventional range of essays…

Martin: Quite possibly! Via the wonders of YouTube we engage with how other museums around the world have engaged with the Anthropocene, like the Deutsches Museum in Munich or the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. In both cases I think the notion of the Anthropocene has challenged their curatorial practices, whether that’s poking the notion of natural history or challenging the boundaries of a museum focused on human technology — the type of museum that tended (until recently!) to tell a rather celebratory story of technological change. I think there’s something interesting about curating as a geographer rather than a historian too — I try to get them to think about difference, inequality, about what Anna Tsing calls the ‘patchy Anthropocene’. I think that leads to some differences of emphasis, as well as an always-fascinating range from the mundane and the everyday to the spectacular and the unique. But a perennial challenge is to find the grounds for hope in all of this — via these objects to identify historical contingency, to spot those spaces where different worlds are being built and ultimately, I hope, to help students discover their own agency in all this — not as self-flagellating, guilt-ridden consumers who must make better choices, but as agents of collective change equipped, I hope, with some useful knowledge and, more importantly, with persuasive stories to tell.

Anthropocene Museum: Showing Museum of the Anthropocene entries - the first four years, 2022-25. — Museum of the Anthropocene entries – the first four years, 2022-25

Find more

You can explore all 24 student entries over our first four years of our Museum of the Anthropocene, Inside the Museum. And Martin’s essays accompanying each new cohort are:

The Museum also has a small Anthropocene Glossary, briefly exploring some of the terms introduced in the students’ essay, with links to further reading: Coloniality, The Columbian Exchange, Epistemic communities, The Great Acceleration, The Malthusian Hypothesis, Technofossil, The Technosphere, The Tragedy of the Commons.

GroundWork Gallery in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, is all about art and environment. As well as a full programme of exhibitions, events and residencies, their site has an extensive collection of resources: “writing linked to, or inspired by our campaigns. All of them have been connected with exhibitions and/or with artists’ work. Everything that GroundWork Gallery displays or exhibits aims to connect with a particular environmental message and these resources are grouped into themes, which have emerged through our discussions.”

You can read Veronica’s previous ClimateCultures posts, including her three chosen objects for our series A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects: A Personal Anthropocene History #6: ‘Cosmic Man’, TE20 Tractor, Loch Hourn Stone, and her essay for our Longer feature: The Art and Heritage of Waste.

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Veronica — “I use AI sometimes almost inadvertently (in that Google offers it automatically) to gather information and make lists of issues to follow up for further investigation. I only use it purposefully to adapt and/or shorten the long texts I write for exhibitions, mostly to produce press releases — which AI does admirably and I hate to do, so for that function I am grateful. It produces very odd press contact lists, though! And it is completely hopeless at producing blurbs for events etc — it makes anything sound utterly cheesy and gushing.”

Martin — “I occasionally find AI useful for doing things like identifying key literature on new topics I’m interested in, but have so far shied away from using it in my writing. I’ve experimented with talking to an AI about an idea I had for a book and it was very complimentary and encouraging, which was nice, but I’m aware that that might be a deliberate design feature!”

Veronica Sekules

An art curator, educator and writer with a background in the environmental movement, who has created GroundWork Gallery to showcase art and campaign for the environment.

Martin Mahony

A human geographer interested in the politics of the Anthropocene, historical development of environmental sciences and technologies, and how futures are imagined, constructed, represented and contested.

Hey! Earthlings! A Field Guide to Connecting

Artist Andrew Howe shares a collaborative project with fellow artists and migrants to bring together creativity, community and heritage, building trust, reframing narratives in an era of climate crisis and showing we are all earthlings, connected with nature.

2,230 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes

At a time when the ground beneath us is shifting — politically, ecologically, socially — what does it mean to belong?

Environmental crises are intensifying and so is human movement — quietly, unevenly, and often without recognition. Creative practice has a vital role to play in response: not simply to draw attention to change, but to hold space for connection, dignity, and shared experience.

Hey! Earthlings! emerged from this context as both a project and a provocation — an invitation to rethink how we connect across difference, and how art might help cultivate belonging in an age of displacement.

Beginnings — from idea to collective action

This project began as an idea some years ago to invite people who have moved across borders, or with connections to other places through family and heritage, to join with us and share stories, sounds, and creative responses through walks and making. A simple idea, but multi-layered and rich with potential to help participants build stronger connections to local nature and heritage and, perhaps, find a new sense of place and belonging in Shropshire.

As conversations developed, a core team formed: myself, as an artist working in sound, painting, printmaking, and other media; Jill Impey – an artist working in video, sound and printmaking; and Jean Atkin – a poet and writer. Together, under Participate Contemporary Artspace CIC (now Participate Co-labs), we shaped the project and secured funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in Summer 2024. After a period of careful planning, our activities got underway during Spring/Summer 2025.

Hey! Earthlings! unfolded amid increasing social division in the UK and growing hostility toward migrants and refugees. Against this background, the project took on a deeper significance: to offer a counter-narrative grounded in generosity, creativity, and welcome.

“The project challenged the idea that we live in a world of ‘not enough’. In reality, the Earth is abundant, and people naturally want to contribute meaningfully to the places they live and without the negative narrative and fear-based leadership in the world, humans would naturally share without fear.”
— Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees

Climate Change and the movement of people

Practitioners engaging with climate themes cannot ignore migration.

The relationship between climate change and migration is complex, but the global effects of both phenomena are undeniable. Extreme weather events — floods, storms, droughts — are already forcing millions to move. Slower environmental changes, such as desertification or rising sea levels, impact on livelihoods too. The frequency and severity of these events are increasing.

UNHCR estimates indicate that tens of millions of people are displaced each year by sudden environmental events, while projections produced by the World Bank indicate that by 2050, hundreds of millions could be internally displaced due to long-term climate impacts.

These figures reduce human lives to statistics and do not capture the lived experience of losing home, identity, culture, agency, assets and dignity and the search for belonging.

This is where art has a humanising role to hold spaces where people can speak, create, and connect.

Walking as method: reconnecting through landscape

We held three Hey! Earthlings! creative events at each of two pairs of locations in Shropshire, offering important natural and historic heritage to explore by walking together:

Old Oswestry Iron Age Hill Fort and Oswestry Memorial Hall
Doctor’s Field countryside site and Darwin House, The Mount, Shrewsbury (Charles Darwin’s birthplace and childhood home).

These are all located within or very close to the towns of Oswestry and Shrewsbury, and so were relatively easily accessible, with the potential for participants to return again in future.

Each of the events comprised an artist-led walk followed by a creative workshop.

We were inspired by artist Henna Asikainen and her use of walks in projects with refugees and migrants. Walking offers a shared rhythm. It dissolves hierarchies. It allows for informal conversation, chance encounters, quiet reflection and freedom to explore the surrounding landscape.

The group bonded through creativity and shared experience, taking opportunities to translate for each other and share food and song whilst gathered around a fire.

Showing Hey! Earthlings! participants listening to the river. Photo: by Anna Martin 2025. Project by Andrew Howe. — Hey! Earthlings! listening to the river. Photo: Anna Martin © 2025

Each walk started with a grounding meditation. We then listened to the river and trees, we foraged, shared stories and words about nature, and played parachute games. The group(s) learned about local history and nature, sharing oral histories, making films and co-creating art.

After scrambling over steep ramparts to the top of the Old Oswestry Hillfort, we used a compass at this 360-degree viewpoint to orient ourselves to local landmarks and distant homelands.

These multi-sensory walks enabled people to compare common or shared experiences from other places, and find meaning, empathy and compassion.

“Being in nature evokes a sense of home and belonging (the trees are not lost): the wind is the wind, the rain is the rain, the sun rises for all the stars and moon are the same ones their families see across the world. This reinforced the idea that humans are children of the Earth and of the stars. The Earth has no borders; birds and fish do not need passports.”
— Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees

Hey! Earthlings! Expressing belonging through creativity

Following the walks we returned to workshop venues to respond creatively.

The approach was intentionally open, flexible and welcoming. We offered printmaking, drawing, writing, small book-making, and other collaborative activities, allowing participants of all ages and abilities to engage in ways that felt comfortable, safe and meaningful.

The workshops were not set up as places of instruction, but as opportunities for exchange. Participants brought their own knowledge, skills, and creative traditions. It was a delight when two young Ukrainian participants asked if they could lead some creative sessions during the workshops — an offer we embraced and celebrated.

The shift from facilitator to co-creator crucially challenges the notion of participants as recipients and instead recognises them as contributors and artists with knowledge to share.

Showing Hey! Earthlings! participants preparing cyanotype prints. Photo: Andrew Howe Project by Andrew Howe. — Hey! Earthlings! participants preparing cyanotype prints. Photo: Andrew Howe © 2025

The resulting artworks were vibrant, layered, and deeply personal. They spoke of journeys, memories, loss, resilience, and joy. They reflected not only the challenges of displacement, but also the richness that diverse communities bring to local contexts.

Building trust: the role of an ethical framework

Underpinning the whole of our project was an ethical framework devised by Jill Impey. This guided our delivery to ensure everyone involved felt safe and welcome, providing a reference or set of prompts to guide actions and relationships throughout from beginning to end.

The ethical framework aims to embed respect, honesty and understanding in working with participants, with our supporting organisations and with each other. When working with people who may have experienced trauma, displacement, or marginalisation, the stakes are high.

Showing the Hey! Earthlings! Ethical Framework. — Hey! Earthlings! Ethical Framework.

The framework emphasises:

Empathy and compassion as foundational values, cultivating a culture of care
Inclusion and accessibility to remove barriers to participation
Respect and honesty in all interactions
Agency and consent, ensuring participants retained control over their stories and contributions
Reciprocity, recognising that exchange must be mutual, not extractive.

This framework was not simply theoretical. It informed practical decisions — from how we structured workshops, to how we developed relationships with partner organisations, to how we shared outcomes.

It also provided a crucial anchor for the team, offering a shared language and set of principles to navigate complex situations.

Partnership and participation

The project was made possible through a network of partnerships, including community organisations, cultural institutions, and local authorities.

Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds: young people from Bulgarian schools, asylum seekers from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Sierra Leone and Vietnam, newly settled Ukrainians, and individuals connected through refugee support networks and community groups. Each event was tailored towards the particular group attending.

We were very fortunate to be able to appoint two experienced community co-ordinators, Anna Martin and Marina Churm. During project planning, we consulted with various community groups to gauge interest and shape the activities for the events.

Both Anna and Marian proved invaluable to the project as they engaged so positively with groups they had existing connections with and with other community leaders who could help link to a wider network and invite people to work with us. Building trust takes time, sensitivity, and existing relationships. Their work ensured that participants felt welcomed, informed, and supported throughout the process.

The team were supported by local artists, Jamila Walker Thomas and Niki Holmes, and project evaluator and mentor, Cerin Mills.

Meaningful engagement cannot be rushed or assumed. It requires investment in relationships, and often collaboration with those who already hold trust within communities.

Sharing responses: rethinking the ‘Cabinet’

We showed the work made at the events in a travelling cabinet at exhibitions in local libraries and museums. These took place at Oswestry Library; Gateway Arts and Education Centre, Shrewsbury Library and Shropshire Archives. The mobile cabinet is made with reclaimed furniture and is able to host and display a range of materials, sounds and video. Its many drawers, compartments and fold-out doors invite visitors to interact with the cabinet and explore for themselves.

Showing the Hey! Earthlings! cabinet in Shrewsbury library. Photo: Andrew Howe 2025. Project by Andrew Howe. — Hey! Earthlings! cabinet in Shrewsbury library. Photo: Andrew Howe © 2025

Cabinets like this one have long been used to collect and display objects deemed unfamiliar, unusual or exotic — often telling stories about people rather than with them. We aimed to do things differently by inviting the participants to have a stake in curating the exhibition and deciding how to present their work on their own terms.

Rather than turning lives into curiosities, this Cabinet asks us to be curious with empathy — and to reflect on how we might tell richer, more respectful stories in the future.

Shared responses also included a series of collaborative poems edited by Jean Atkin, a short film edited by Jill Impey and a series of soundscapes of stories, reflections and field recordings edited by me. The soundscapes were installed as audio trails at Old Oswestry Hillfort and at Doctor’s Field in Shrewsbury, and can also be streamed from the Participate website.

A Field Guide to Connecting

Towards the end of the project, we prepared a Field Guide to Connecting: a resource for sharing our experience to help other practitioners deliver multi-cultural community arts and heritage projects effectively.

The Guide is aimed towards:

Artist peers/creative practitioners
Community workers and organisations
Fundraisers seeking funding for similar projects

The Guide provides some key reference sheets, such as the Ethical Framework and Ingredients for Success, which include prompts and practical advice. This is supplemented by information from our Hey! Earthlings! project describing our approach, supported by sample documents.

The document is designed not as a fixed methodology, but as a flexible, adaptable resource — something that can be used, questioned, and reshaped. It moves beyond theory into practice, offering grounded insights into what works, what challenges arise, and how they might be navigated.

Showing the Hey! Earthlings! Field Guide to Connecting — Hey! Earthlings! Field Guide to Connecting

Reframing migration: from crisis to contribution

One of the most powerful shifts within Hey! Earthlings! is its reframing of migration.

“Many displaced people are treated as passive objects, moved like pieces on a chessboard. Used for political games and leverage and discarded when no more use. This results in adding to their deep grief, a sense of betrayal, and a loss of agency. It can feel as traumatising for them as the reason why they are here — just in a different way. Reframing migrants as contributors, creators, and community members is vital for their healing and for the communities that receive them.”
— Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees

Too often, migrants and displaced people are positioned as problems to be solved, burdens to be managed, or victims to be pitied. This narrative not only dehumanises individuals but also obscures their agency, creativity, and potential contributions.

By contrast, Hey! Earthlings! foregrounds participants as creators, collaborators, and community members, and aims to foster more inclusive communities. Our project offered alternative narratives to dominant, often divisive discourses and engaged with global issues through local, embodied experience.

Hey! Earthlings! offers an invitation to recognise ourselves as Earthlings – a condition we share with every living organism inhabiting and depending on a single, fragile planet.

Find more

The projections Andrew gives on displaced people due to long-term climate impacts are from Climate change-induced migration: UK collaboration with international partners by Thomas Weston (September 2023).

You can explore Hey! Earthlings! at the project pages on the Participate Co-labs website — including a download of A Field Guide to Connecting, an 8-minute video, a guided grounding meditation and two audio trails of Old Oswestry Hillfort and Doctor’s Field, consisting of collaborative poems performed by Jean Atkin, shared stories and reflections on the events at the Hillfort, and a soundscape of an imagined Iron Age village. This series of soundscapes was edited by Andrew Howe using field recordings made at the Hillfort, and poems created using words by participants at events and edited by Jean Atkin.

Participate Co-labs (formerly Participate Contemporary Artspace) is an artist-run community interest company, set up in 2015 by Jill Impey, Elizabeth Turner and Keith Ashford to create space for artists to work and exhibit in Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Shropshire Supports Refugees was established in 2016 to bring relief and support to vulnerable families displaced by unrest in their home countries relocating to Shropshire.

***

Andrew – “I occasionally use AI for some functional, time-saving tasks like transcribing spoken word recordings or helping to reduce word count in written drafts before I re-edit into my own style. It can be useful to provide simple, clear summaries or comparisons between options when I have gathered and checked material myself, as I don’t fully trust AI with factual research. In my artist practice, I often move between analogue and digital processes, which I control, but I don’t like the aesthetics of AI-generated imagery and I don’t find it very effective in developing creative ideas.”

Andrew Howe

An interdisciplinary artist and project manager using walking and mapping to explore how people interact with places, drawing attention to human entanglements within a multi-species environment.

Protest Posters for the Earth!

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:

Showing examples of 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.”

Showing "Replenish the Earth", a protext poster paining by Michael Gresalfi (February 2026). Framed Canvas 23" x 17". Medium: Acrylics, melted wax, markers, and paper cut-outs on a used and repurposed canvas. — “Replenish the Earth” (February 2026). Framed Canvas 23″ x 17″. Medium: Acrylics, melted wax, markers, and paper cut-outs on a used and repurposed canvas. Michael Gresalfi © 2026.

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.

Find more

From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack. For this post, Michael did not use AI. See The Wood Wide Web – Fruitful Collaboration for his use of AI in earlier post, and Eternal Forest Sanctuary: Vision to Living Commitment by Evgenia Emets for insights into her use of AI.

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”.

In Pictures: The Defiant Art of the Protest Poster by Figgy Guyver (Frieze, 2019) reviews Joanne Ripon’s book, The Art of Protest (Gemini Books, 2019), published with Amnesty International, and showing how protest posters have changed throughout history. The article is illustrated with several examples. And Orion Magazine’s Posters for the Planet piece (October 2022) features examples from the Princeton Architectural Press book, Posters for the Planet – Tear, Paste, Protest: 50 Reusable and Recyclable Posters.

ClimateCultures featured Michael’s science-subtitled video of “Our Changing Planet”, his exhibition of protest paintings, in our Creative Showcase.

Michael Gresalfi

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

A Strange Country

Psychotherapist Susan Holliday discovers an intricate world of imaginal possibility (a strange country) in an overlooked detail of a familiar landscape. Turning away from global events for a moment reminds us that change often starts with something small.

2,060 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes

It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time, or the traveller who enters a strange country.¹

– Bill Brandt, photographer (Camera in London)

I wake before dawn to the sound of a robin’s song piercing the morning chill. It takes me less than an hour to dress and make my way to the wrought iron gates which mark the entrance to Richmond Park. A heavy dew rests on the still shadowed grass, seeming almost to hover above it like an overnight spell. All around, the bracken is rusting into its autumn glory. I make my way up a gentle slope through a stand of birch, beech and oak trees to reach the crest of the park. Here the sun has just tipped over the horizon and cast every leaf, blade and branch into fine gold. A huddle of deer nuzzle the grass, making the most of the quiet before the weekend cyclists arrive. I must have walked in this park a thousand times and still it takes my breath away.

The park is always a ‘strange country’ to me, a correlation of ever-changing elements, light, season and subjectivity. At first I just see what I have seen before, but with every step my preconceptions fall to the floor. Unclad, my eyes begin to see beyond recognition. What I’ve come to realise, over many encounters with the park, is that as my perception deepens, it moves from the general and the big, to the particular and the small. On this occasion it shifts from the broadbrush palette of grass, tree and sky, to the particular curve of a branch; the tritone beech leaves rustling their blessings over the waking park; and the oceanic wave structure of ageing bark.

Walking for days at a time, nature writer Nan Shepherd notices how her perception deepens gradually, so:

The eye sees what it didn’t see before, or sees in a new way what it has already seen.
So the ear, the other senses.²

This strikes me as a beautiful description of how we come to see more keenly. The word ‘gradual’ refers to something coming into fullness over time (from Latin gradus, meaning ‘step’). Gradually, we see what we ‘didn’t see before’. We begin to see ‘in a new way’.

So it is only on my way back down the slope, as I re-enter the shadows, that I notice the dazzling spiders’ webs which jewel the bracken. They were there all along. I passed them on my way up. I just didn’t have eyes keen enough to see them. Crouching down now, to take a closer look, I see a lattice of tiny pearls, strung together with impossible intricacy. To me, their beauty stems in part from their near perfection (the essential word here being ‘near’). Each little rectangle of negative space is uneven, each one an incomparable structure, building through repetition into something greater than the sum of its parts. These lines have not been measured or calculated. They have been drawn through countless micro movements of the spider’s body.

A strange country. Showing: Jewelled spider's web. Photograph by Susan Holliday 2025 — Jewelled spider’s web. Photograph: Susan Holliday © 2025

A strange country: the gift of intricate hinterlands

Each web is a ‘strange country’ all by itself. The longer I look, the more I feel drawn into this other world. I imagine any one of these webs would be fine enough to grace a noblewoman’s robes in a Tudor court. I find myself wondering what it might be like to shrink down in size, to place my feet on its little ladders, or to hold one of the pearls in my hand. Children quite naturally see this way. The most unremarkable detail becomes an opening onto an intricate hinterland. Through their imagination and the suspension of preconception, these details become enormous. We have only to think of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, or the wardrobe in C.S Lewis’ Narnia adventures to remember the power of this portal vision.

And this brings me to the heart of the matter. For as adults we tend to regard the ‘small’ as lesser, as marginal and of little consequence. This has never been more so than at a time when everything is valued according to quantity and scale. The small can so easily be dismissed as a mere trifle, rather than valued as a coherent whole with its own integrity and particularity.

Indigenous peoples, artists, philosophers and mystics have long held a different view, in which every speck of the whole reveals universal patterns and principles. Fourteenth-century mystic, Julian of Norwich, encapsulated the essential paradox of the ‘great little thing’ in one of her revelations:

He showed me a little thing the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and I thought, ‘What can this be?’

And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made’.³

Four hundred years later, William Blake encouraged us to “see a world in a grain of sand”.⁴ Romantic fancy, some might say. In defence of the small, I could stray into the ways in which quantum mechanics and fractal geometry are opening up our contemporary understanding of the complexity and correspondence of micro and macro dimensions of our world; the profound influence of the minute. But I want to stay with my own experience, to say something about why I believe we need to turn our attention away from the titanic battles, the larger-than-life characters, the numbers, trends and averages, and lean towards the small, the slight and the fleeting.

They say ‘the devil is in the detail’, but maybe the sacred is there too. I don’t mean this in any religious sense, but in the context of everyday experience. We live in an age of distraction and consumption fuelled by fear of boredom and emptiness. As a psychotherapist, this word ‘boredom’ has intrigued me for years. It comes up a lot, either in the sense that life has become ‘boring’, or that a person fears they will be perceived as ‘boring’. It seems to me that ‘boring’ is the state we arrive at when we believe there is ‘nothing much to see here’, or perhaps ‘nothing new’. Boring is the ‘same-old-same-old’. It feasts on abstractions and averages, on preconceptions and generalisations.

‘Boring’ signals I have lost faith that within me, or in front of me, there could be more than meets the eye. More to be discovered. More strangeness. Perhaps I believe that I’ve seen all there is to be seen, or I’ve seen it all before. So I stop looking, or I start looking elsewhere. This is a bit like looking down from an airplane window on an outstretched continent, and believing it to be boring, simply because at this height (and at this speed) I can’t see the incomparable particularity, the infinitely varied and ever-changing detail of its topography. At close quarters, what I thought was entirely self-evident reveals itself to be a ‘strange country’, full of surprises and unplumbed depths.

Showing: Bark detail. Photograph by Susan Holliday, 2025 — Bark detail. Photograph: Susan Holliday © 2025

Each of us contains an inner landscape. A place, like the park, we may have visited many times. Perhaps we think we have seen it all. Until one day, if we are really paying attention, we notice a slight shift, a little anomaly, an overlooked detail ‘for the first time’. Virginia Woolf suggests these glimpses are “little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark”.⁵ How often we overlook or dismiss these curious intimations. Un-midwifed by our beholding, the inkling moment is stillborn. Yet the moment we start to notice the details of our experience, life no longer seems so boring, so barren.

Just imagine how this simple practice of attending to little daily miracles could change our relationship to each other and to the whole. When every detail (like the jewelled spider’s web) opens a door onto a world of imagination and possibility, life feels rich and vital. Perhaps then we would no longer need to consume our way out of emptiness.

Finding my niche

We differentiate ourselves through our particularity. It is through paying attention to the subtle qualities and slight nuances of character that we start to appreciate we are not just a number, a statistic or a type. Each of us is one of a kind. There is only one of us in all time.

In his 2021 book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, Bill Plotkin articulates the principle that each of us occupies a distinct ‘ecological niche’:

Soul, for me, is an ecological concept, not a psychological one nor a spiritual or religious one. Specifically, by Soul I mean a person or thing’s unique ecological niche in the Earth community.⁶

Hauled into the trawler nets of socio-economic grouping, diagnostic typologies, or target markets, it can feel increasingly challenging to distinguish our authentic singularity, the significance of our particular ecological niche.

Could it be that the current polarisation of society into crude groupings of ideology and identity originates in a deep wound, which is the experience of not mattering in our smallness. If everything around me reinforces the narrative that what I imagine, feel, think and long for is of little importance ‘in the grand scheme of things’; if what I choose to do with my life doesn’t really matter ‘in the end’, then I will find my sense of mattering through identifying with something larger. Through this amalgamation, I lose sight of the details which define my singular significance.

The tragedy is that this obscuring of the little things which make me uniquely ‘me’ robs the wider whole of my particular contribution. Collectively, this self-effacement quickens the degeneration of the planet.

If I am to find my unique ecological niche in the Earth community, I will need to give some time to wandering about the inner ‘park’ of my life, until my eye sees what it didn’t see before, or sees in a new way what it has already seen. Sensing my responsibility to my own particularity, I no longer look to ‘kill time’ (with distraction and consumption), but to realise my life ‘through time’ in all its richness and distinction.

Perhaps the Earth can teach us

Absorbed in the intricacy of the little spider’s web, my eye flickers between the lines and the spaces between them, the negative shapes. I start thinking how the whole structure of the web depends on these little spaces. I begin to breathe more deeply, as though taking in this airy structure as a blueprint for my own existence. Like most of us, my life is pretty crammed, packed with activity, crowded with ideas, obligations and intentions. Loaded with stuff. Drawn into the ‘strange country’ of the little web, I begin to sense what it might be like to live a more spacious life.

It occurs to me then, perhaps the Earth can teach us. Perhaps the small, the slight and the fleeting, in all their intimate beauty and particular significance, can show us other ways of living. To heed this minute and infinite intelligence, we may need to create little gaps in our lives, tiny spaces. Change starts with something very small. A deep breath, perhaps.

Walking on down the slope, I feel a little lighter.

Susan’s references

Bill Brandt, Camera in London (Focal, 1948)
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Canongate Books, 2011)
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Classics, 1998)
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, A Choice of Blake’s Verse (Faber and Faber, 1970)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (The Hogarth Press, 1927)
Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation (New World Library, 2021)

Find more

Susan Holliday is a psychotherapist and photographer and you can find more of her writing at her website.

Susan’s book Hidden Wonders of the Human Heart was published by Matador in 2021. You can read James Murray-White‘s review for ClimateCultures, Seeing Nature’s Wonders in the Human Heart.

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 ...