Citizen artist Yky challenges fellow artists to consider their roles and responsibilities, alongside those of scientific experts, in how their art engages audiences and other citizens to overcome linear thinking in questions of urban resilience and social complexity.
1,110 words: estimated reading time = approximately 4.5 minutes
When Mr. Jones realised what time it was, he knew he would be late for the opening of his exhibition. He spent the journey thinking up excuses he could give. But none of them seemed very credible, and he arrived at the gallery feeling somewhat apprehensive.
Upon arrival, he found the atmosphere rather festive and wasn’t sure whether to feel offended or comforted by the fact that no one seemed to care about his tardiness. In one room of the gallery, a guest was looking at one of his works with a puzzled expression. The owner of the premises seemed to be ignoring him, so Mr. Jones felt obliged to introduce himself and was then asked the question we have heard so often: «But what did you mean by this work?» Mr. Jones replied with something we have also heard so often: “My goodness, it’s certainly not up to me to tell you what to think. Everyone is entitled to feel what they want.”
The art & the message
Dear readers of ClimateCultures, rest assured, Mr. Jones — who could just as easily have been called Monsieur Dupont or Herr Schmidt — serves only to make us reflect on the paradox of certain artists who consider that their work must be sociologically significant while refusing to consider the objective dimension necessary for understanding their message. For if there is one point on which everyone should agree, it is on the growing complexity of the social model we all wish for.
Let us be clear. Feelings, emotions, and everything that words cannot express obviously contribute to the very essence of the artistic process. And nothing should prevent or challenge this. But if an artist wishes to use his or her talent to work on complex subjects such as sustainability or urban resilience, then they acquire, whether they like it or not, a responsibility towards the community. From that point on, understanding the message that accompanies the artistic process becomes all the more important. And to paraphrase Emmanuel Levinas in his wonderful concept of alterity, “When the Other looks at my work, whether I like it or not, whether I want it or not, the simple fact that He looks at my work makes me accountable to Him.”
During the ‘Art of Resilience’ exhibition at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. [1], I reiterated in one of the opening speeches the importance of our responsibility in addressing the challenges we face, and considered how we can facilitate dialogue between artists, scientists and ‘non-expert citizens’. In this regard, a fictional narrative can be a powerful tool for sharing ideas and connecting with urban citizens while contextualising the pedagogical process.
Those who are interested can find more information in a previous post I published on ClimateCultures — see the note below.
Resilience & the problem of linear thinking
Beyond the concept of resilience thinking [2], what is striking is the gap between the interest that many artists have in topics such as sustainability or urban resilience and their understanding of what defines these topics. It is almost as if this interest were sufficient in itself. But understanding why and how linear thinking impacts our ability to invent a more resilient way of life is essential.
Rooted in the legacy of the Enlightenment, linear thinking has enabled a scientific revolution that we benefit from today. But at the same time, this rationality, this thinking based on the idea that the world is governed by universal laws and that nature is only meant to be domesticated, hinders our ability to develop unconventional societal models. So how can we move from ‘bouncing back’ to ‘bouncing forward,’ a key condition for urban resilience?
In the recent history of scientific research, one of the most important advances in breaking free from linear thinking was proposed by C.S. Holling [3], one of the founders of ecological resilience. With his theory of panarchy, he introduced the idea that not only are social and ecological systems interconnected, but they also restructure and renew themselves in response to their environment.
That said, I can already hear the arguments of some artists who believe that scientists are responsible for getting the message across. But many scientists do recognise that they are unable to communicate effectively to ‘non-expert citizens’ and that art is a powerful vehicle for communication. It is up to artists and scientists to leave their comfort zones in view of their collective responsibility.
Interestingly, challenging linear thinking is not solely a scientific endeavour. Isn’t that what Kandinsky did with his early compositions, introducing lines and colours with intrinsic value rather than mere representations of external forms? [4]
As Mr. Jones made his way back home, he reflected on the recent conversation he had had. He had no reason to feel uncomfortable, and yet a sense of helplessness overwhelmed him. The idea that a neo-liberal environment could affect our sociability suddenly frightened him. He wished he could help to promote new behaviours built on the sense of care. He wondered whether his artistic skill could, in some way, contribute to improving our well-being. Without really understanding why, Mr. Jones was overcome by a feeling of vulnerability. He would have liked to discuss it with other artists.
Yky adds: I hope this post can lead to challenging talks with other artists on ‘our’ collective responsibility and the way it should be implemented, along with scientists. A good example of bouncing forward and non-linear thinking.
You can read Yky’s earlier ClimateCultures post, Urban Resilience? Art, the Missing Link, where he shares Shakes, his work featured in the World Bank’s The Art of Resilience exhibition, and a fictional encounter between the artist, a resilience expert and two citizens to discuss the role of artist and scientist. And in The Art of Reimagining Managed Retreat, he shares ideas and artworks he presented to an international conference addressing scientific, social, and governance issues around ‘managed retreat’.
A citizen artist exploring urban resilience whose photographic works use silver paper's response to light to highlight the challenges raised by climate hazards in urban spaces.
Writer Rod Raglin asks if Thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges. How to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?
1,180 words: Estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes
Thrutopian is described as literature that avoids the pitfalls of both dystopian – paralyzing by depicting bleak futures – and utopian narratives – disconnected from the realities of current challenges. Instead, thrutopian stories are rooted in plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.
But do these thrutopian stories take into consideration economic realities, political expedience and an electorate that only considers their immediate needs? Do they address the reality of climate change that is already having a devastating effect on many parts of the planet?
Facing up to power …
For years, Canada has been struggling to meet the commitments it made in the 2016 Paris Agreement, involving reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The major policy initiative of federal government was to implement a carbon tax, a mechanism that puts a price on carbon emissions, aiming to encourage individuals and businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. A charge is levied on fuels like gasoline, diesel, and natural gas, increasing their cost to consumers to incentivize fuel efficiency and the use of lower-carbon alternatives.
In addition, it responded to public pressure about the environmental hazards of pipelines and introduced a strict environmental review process that discouraged further expansions.
That was until Donald Trump got elected and declared economic war on his neighbour.
In response to Trump’s tariffs and the impact on the Canadian economy, the first piece of legislation passed by newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was to eliminate the carbon tax. His rationale for axing the tax was to “make sure our companies are competitive, and the country moves forward … it’s focused on building this economy.”
Also being reviewed (and likely modified), is the government’s policy to have all Canadian car sales powered by a battery, fuel cell or plug-in hybrid system by 2035.
In addition, old plans to build other energy projects are being revived by giving provincial governments “the environmental authority to approve pipelines”.
Before you could say “what the frack!”, the BC provincial government had passed The Infrastructure Projects Act, giving itself broad powers to override existing environmental regulations and authorities and expedite approval of major projects, public and private.“We’re not in the business of turning away investment in British Columbia,” said the premier of the province, David Eby.
Just to make sure no investment is being turned away, The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions is undergoing a review of the policies and programs of CleanBC, the province’s climate strategy.
How do environmental principles stack up against economic realities? They don’t.
Nearly three-quarters of Canadians supported getting rid of the carbon tax and the renewal of pipeline projects. Apparently, the threat of becoming the ’51st state’ far exceeds that of a climate catastrophe.
… and climate realities
Though wildfires are a natural part of the Canadian boreal forest life cycle, higher temperatures and drier conditions, caused by climate change have resulted in more frequent and severe fires and a longer fire season.
This year’s fire season — the second worst since 2023 — has seen 3,092 wildfires that have consumed 5.17 million hectares (as of July 12, 2025). Officials with Public Safety Canada say the greatest fire danger is still to come and expected to be in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and southern British Columbia.
I live on the west coast, and regularly wildfire smoke drifts in from the interior, making the sun appear as an orange ball and creating a haze that burns the eyes and throat. On some days, the air quality in Vancouver is the worst on the planet, and we’re advised to close windows and stay indoors. For inland communities, it’s far worse.
While Canadians worry about how tariffs will impact our economy generally, and their livelihood specifically, it’s not an existential threat, like having breathable air.
Like alcoholics, who must hit bottom before they’re motivated to sober up, Canada appears to not be there yet – environmentally speaking. As the results of our last federal election proved, we are still a society that prefers to pay less to fill up the family SUV than contribute to the mitigation of global warming.
Writing towards a better future
In the midst of this ‘reset’ of environmental priorities has emerged thrutopian literature with its “plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.”
A quick look at a few of the titles suggests that other than the name there’s little difference between this genre and eco-fi or cli-fi – other designations that have emerged for environmental fiction since I began writing it in 2010.
The difference between my books and these newer ones appears to be issues of subtlety and practicality. In my novels, environmental issues are not in the forefront but presented only as a subplot that must eventually be addressed in practical ways for the protagonist to achieve their goal. The few thrutopian titles I’ve reviewed flip this around, presenting the environmental problem foremost and the characterisation secondary. In my opinion, this approach makes the narrative more didactic than entertaining – usually a turnoff for the reader, though time will tell.
And though this new fictional category attempts to present possible solutions to mitigate the environmental crisis, I saw no evidence it addresses how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices necessary to implement them.
This was the issue I set out to answer when researching my novel, The Triumvirate – Love for Power, Love of Power, the Power of Love. What I discovered was it’s a lot harder to create a better future than envision one – human beings notwithstanding. Political and economic issues take precedence over the environment, and it is only when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”*, do we realize we’ve made the wrong choice.
I’m sure this new sub-genre will thrive. Who doesn’t want to choose hope over despair, the positive over the negative, delusion over reality? It’s easier to suggest that we still have time to prevent the worst-case scenario even while that scenario is playing out in front of us.
This is the reality of thousands of wildfire evacuees every Canadian summer (actually, fire season is now April through October, depending on where you live) as they idle away the hours in evacuation centres worrying if they’ll have a home, or for that matter, a community to return to.
Rod writes about his novel The Triumvirate in his previous ClimateCultures post, Power, Love, Religion & Climate Fiction: Life Imitating Art, discussing how a story about power, love and religion finds echoes in our unfolding climate crisis and how we try to come to grips with a hostile and uncertain future.
A journalist, publisher of an online community newspaper, photographer and writer of novels, plays and short stories that address the human condition and serious environmental issues ...
Poet and artist-book maker Sarah Hymas looks ahead to the Imaginarium ‘Worlds in Progress’ retreat she is running for a second year, an open, fluid, multi-layered spacetime for writers to sow and care for the seeds of imagination.
1,225 words: estimate reading time = 5 minutes
For fourteen years I ran a residential writing course, Write Like Nobody’s Watching, in South West France. After the pandemic, my enjoyment of it had changed. Even though I had, for the previous few years, been travelling down and back by train — a two day journey from Lancashire I loved — I found being part of a process that invited people to fly (no one else came overland) for five days of writing that had very little to do with the region where often people didn’t even leave the villa increasingly problematic.
The heat in the last couple of years compounded my unease. Some years it was too hot even at 10.00 am to cross the patio to reach our outdoor workshop. We had to set up under trees and I remember even having some of the one-to-ones in the swimming pool, it was hot. I needed more and more time to retreat from the retreat everyone else was taking. So I found someone else to run the week and stepped back.
Worlds in progress: creative building & building creativity
I didn’t want to stop facilitating the space for people (and often myself) to write and dream. I loved the process of building that spacetime. I just wanted to do it closer to home, in a place that was more accessible, less expensive. I wanted the place we were in to have more of an impact on those of us visiting it. I wanted more community, less alcohol (yes, my 40-year-old self, I’m looking at you), more stillness. So when I was on a residency with Settle Stories in January 2024 in an old mansion in Giggleswick, working on their Storyful Way, I knew I’d found the place I wanted to trial a new Imaginarium retreat. One that would be more collaborative in its approach, inviting a creative investment from those coming to help build the space more explicitly than simply participating in a week of writing workshops.
I also knew I didn’t want to run it solo. Increasingly, I want to work with others, to share the stresses and joys of any project. Someone to plan with. Someone to talk candidly to. I had already run an Ancestral Imaginarium with Katherine Zeserson and knew she had experience of running residential retreats so she was the obvious choice. As well as experienced, Katherine is joyful, intuitive, creatively curious and energetic. We came up with the name — Worlds in Progress — to capture our ambition for the week to be an open fluid space of multi-layered worlds: the worlds of our transient community; the worlds we were all writing; and the worlds we would return to after sharing the week — the worlds that were often so tricky for so many of us — the worlds we’d like to nudge into different directions.
Our first Worlds in Progress Retreat ran in January 2025 with ten other people who work, create and play with text somehow. We offered sitting, singing and flexing every morning, for those who wanted. We suggested loose mealtimes to suit however everyone liked to eat — sorting ourselves out for breakfast and lunch — and to fit around whatever was the occupation for people’s days. We invited people to share their creative practice during playshops later in some of the afternoons. These were attended by maybe two thirds of the group, those who wanted a break from their own head, or wanted to explore what they were writing in a different way, or who fancied some playtime. We offered one-to-ones to anyone who wanted to chat about anything they wanted. We had cooking teams for the evening veggie meal and lingered long over them with chat and laughter that often took someone (or two or three) out into the January nights for further exploration of our wider world in progess. We were blessed with an astonishing week of snow and ice (far, far from the temperatures of the last year I was working in France when it reached 55° in the sun).
We wrote and researched. Even I wrote for a couple of hours every afternoon, beginning a new long-form piece that had been cooking in the recesses of my imagination for a while. We made new friends. We found commonalities. We were given space, we gave space. We learnt new words, new ideas, and felt safe enough to share ignorances, unknowns, uncertainties and silly things. In short, we did — for those five days — construct a world we wanted to inhabit and nourish and sustain.
Nurturing the seeds of imagination
Some people came with a sense of fraudulence. The original call out was for ‘text-based artists’ — for anyone whose creative practice worked with text in any form — and the word ‘artist’ triggered people’s doubt they were one — who were they to call themselves such? But the artistry that was seeded and flowered and continues to be shared from that week is clear to me. The careful crafting of love and generosity, the sharing, the giving and receiving of intention, and the relishing of beauty and preciousness in life. That confidence was felt across the board, it seemed. It was such a delight that everything came together to make this new form of Imaginarium such a blissful retreat experience.
It takes time for seeds to germinate. The seeds of our imagination don’t come in packets that explain when or where to sow and how long they’ll take to flower. The seeds of our imagination need various soils and weather conditions to nourish them. Our intuition knows these conditions. And perhaps these seeds aren’t too particular or tender. Perhaps they are. Nothing can tell us how long until harvest. We need to water these seeds with faith (by which I mean the fertile mix of trust and confidence), and a selective choice of positive actions (with a sprinkle of learnings).
And perhaps most importantly we need not to over-tend, not insist on a timeframe. Nor over focus, but to encourage with a light touch, accepting other shoots may grow in the soil we’re feeding, that rogue seeds are already in there. All life begins in the dark. The unexpected is inevitable. As a creative spirit it’s easiest to welcome whatever appears and ask: Who are you? How can I help you grow? How can you help my growth? In what world can we thrive?
If you’d like to know about the next Worlds In Progress Retreat that’s happening in January 2026, then head over to this page. We ask for ‘Expressions of Interest’ (by the end of July) to be sure that what you’re wanting is what we’re offering.
In her previous ClimateCultures post, On a Writer’s Imaginarium, Sarah reflects on the various forms of imaginarium she has created over the years as online or offline cross-genre shared spaces to support creative writing.
A poet, performer and artistbook maker focusing on the sea, its ecosystems and its interdependence with people, and the impacts of climate change and pollution.
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 ...
Visual artist James Aldridge shares his art and research on neuro/queering nature, helping us all to explore how valuing different perspectives and learning from divergent experiences can expand our ways of seeing and being with the natural world.
2,570 words: estimated reading time = 10 minutes
In Spring/Summer 2024 I carried out a residency with SPUD, a New Forest-based arts organisation. SPUD have been supporting residencies by artists who are exploring Queer Ecology in some way, for the last few years, funded through Arts Council England.
In my proposal I wrote:
“I believe that the sensory and systemising differences experienced by Autistic/ADHD people… can provide us with inspirational perspectives and awareness of ecological and social systems, which can be communicated to the wider community through art… I want to promote a valuing of different perspectives and learning from divergent experiences, deconstructing inherited ways of seeing and being with what we have come to call Nature, and developing new models built on dialogue and relationship.”
Titling the residency and the resulting installation Neuro/Queering Nature, I included a forward slash to allow Queer and Neuroqueer to sit together, drawing on both experiences/identities in my research, and in my work with LGBTQAI+ and autistic young people.
This work with SPUD forms part of my emerging Neuroqueer Ecologies research, which in turn grew out of the Queer River research project, set up in 2020, and about which I’ve written for ClimateCultures in the past.
Neuroqueer Ecologies is a term I coined and an area of research that I have continued to develop, starting with my own experience of places as a neuroqueer person, and drawing on the ways that I experience places and make sense of the resulting sensory information, using my arts practice to map and share my relationship with other beings. In this I draw on the writing of Nick Walker:
“I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory; I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms…”
Neuroqueer: An Introduction – Nick Walker
Neuro/Queering nature to open up experiences of place
For the Neuro/Queering Nature residency, I wanted to take the trappings of Natural History study and layer them with neuroqueer experience, Neuroqueering the concept of Nature as something that we name, classify, collect, and experience as separate to ‘us’ (us being those humans viewing the world through a Eurocentric lens).
While at SPUD I walked with a river called Avon Water, including the bogs and mires that feed into it, and the marshes that it flows into as it reaches the coast. I drew and wrote with collected clays, recorded sound and video, and set up a camera trap for animals to record themselves.
“Unsurprisingly there are many different types of wetland in Britain. As with the apocryphal fifty words for snow, the lines of differentiation are considerably blurred. Marsh, bog, swamp, mire, fen, carr… The kind for which the New Forest is most famous are known as lowland acidic valley mires… Cranes Moor, Duck Hole and the wonderfully named Slap Bottom: there are hundreds.”
Goshawk Summer, James Aldred
Whilst following the passage of water through these wetlands, I also wrote, drew and applied collected materials onto natural history illustrations taken from books bought in charity shops, layering the ‘official’ images and descriptions with my own immediate response to water, heather, curlew, clay.
Working with the Together, Make Art group (the young people that I mentioned above), and artist Hannah Buckingham, I supported the young artists to explore their embodied experiences of the Forest, and their identities as human animals, through collage, mapping and wearable artwork.
Neuro/Queering Nature was about opening up space to facilitate and communicate different experiences of place, and of what we have come to call Nature, through playful and experimental processes. It definitely wasn’t about swapping one set of rules and classifications for another. I also wasn’t originally planning on working with another river, but water is such a good teacher when it comes to blurring boundaries and cutting across binaries. It refuses to be contained.
In between walking and making, I read a lot, and three books stand out as having informed my thinking and my experience of the New Forest:
Goshawk Summer by James Aldred – I was so inspired by James’s descriptions of time spent in the Forest, the exploration of language used to name its different parts, and the way he writes about the Forest as a place that is wild, protected and man-made all at the same time.
Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice by Cleo Woelfle-Hazard – I kept returning to passages of this book that looked at rivers from both a queer and indigenous perspective, and from the perspective of beavers or salmon as well as humans.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Champion – a brilliant book which makes so much sense, essentially (this my take on it) looking at the development of the concept of normality, in relationship to human difference, and the impact of models of work and education that prioritise productivity and profit, over wellbeing and creativity.
One paragraph in particular from Robert Champion’s book has stayed with me:
“A radical politics of neurodivergent conservation is also consistent with a radical politics of environmental conservation. After all, it has been the same logics, the same system, that has ravaged the biodiversity of the planet as has sought to eliminate the neurological diversity of humanity…”
Empire of Normality, Robert Chapman
What insights is our society missing from ignoring the voices of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people?
What if we extend our sense of what is normal and desirable to include sensory and processing differences that might provide us with an expanded awareness of our relationship with non-humans?
Focusing on ‘normal’ ways of seeing and being with the world, that fit within what is understood to be acceptable human behaviour, whilst affirming the human/nature binary, and increasing economic growth no matter what the cost to both human and ecological wellbeing, hasn’t done us any favours so far. In fact I’d say that the inability to directly perceive ourselves as interconnected with the rest of the world is what prevents us from seeing the damage that we are doing until it’s too late.
Holotropism — an experience of oneness
So what can someone like me offer? I’m poking my head up above the parapet a bit here. I’m not claiming that autistic people are the saviour of humanity, or aligning myself with the idea of neurodivergence as a superpower, just that we might bring a different awareness of the place of human bodies and actions within the wider web of life.
Autistic people are often described as being disordered (i.e., not normal). Our differences are medicalised, our abilities pathologised. My experience is that I build up a sense of the world and the relationship of its parts, through being extremely sensitive to sensory information, and by focusing on particular areas in depth. I don’t tend to trust inherited models of understanding the world, and prefer to construct my own from the bottom up. I am also very sensitive to other people’s emotions and intentions, contrary to many people’s preconceptions of what autism looks like.
This ability to focus intently on one subject or one element of experience is sometimes called ‘monotropism’. In addition, artist Hendl Helen Mirra offers up the term ‘holotropism’ to describe an experience of oneness. A sensitivity to everything around you that can be a bit of a nightmare (for me) in a crowded room or shopping centre, but can offer a sense of belonging and a dissolution of boundaries in a less human-dominated environment (e.g., the bogs and marshes mentioned earlier).
“Synthesising monotropic theory with deep ecology and holistic anatomy, we feel we have found a multi-dimensional, spacious, edgeless terrain under the monotropism map. We are calling it holotropism. This perspective may elucidate the high co-occurrences of synaesthesia, mirror-touch, dyspraxia, and hypermobility among us autistic people.
“To be holotropic is to have wide open sensory gates. To participate in/as the immense world without becoming overwhelmed, we holotropes have two central methods: in, by hyperfocusing our attention on one sensory or cognitive path, and as, through synthesising our experience into coherence. A sense of wholeness occurs through both of these processes — less consciously in hyper focus, more consciously in coherence.”
Holotropism: a multi-dimensional, spacious, edgeless terrain, Hendl Helen Mirra
More-than-human collaborations for neuro/queering nature
Since my time at SPUD I’ve moved on to new places and opportunities, including a residency with Groundwork Gallery, as one of almost 20 artists taking part in the Ground Up extraction-themed programme this Summer, and now exhibiting at the Ground Up exhibition in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.
In Norfolk I continued to focus on wetlands, this time looking at the impact of the extraction of animal bodies from wetland and marine environments (through whaling, the hunting of beavers for fur, meat and castoreum, and wetland birds for ‘sport’, feathers and taxidermy).
To make sense of the human impact on wetlands, and how we might collaborate with other animals to reverse some of the damage, I’m currently considering what Neuroqueer Ecologies can bring to inter-species collaboration, how it’s done and what might emerge out of it, in this time of climate breakdown. I’m taken by the term ‘collaborative survival’ used by Anna Tsing, and the potential within ‘passionate immersion’:
“Passionate immersion can take many forms. At its core it involves attentive interactions with diverse lifeways. Beyond viewing other creatures as mere symbols, resources, or background for the lives of humans…
“Artists have also become core participants in scholarly projects that question conventional approaches to speaking for Nature, exploring opportunities for immersion in the lives of others…”
Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness, Eben Kirksey
Through my Neuroqueer Ecologies research, and inspired by the work of other neuroqueer artists and researchers such as Kai Syng Tan, I’m starting to explore what happens when neurodivergence is decolonised and valued, and in turn impacts upon how we perceive and place ourselves within multi-species communities.
As Joris Lechêne writes in Decolonising Autism:
“The emergence of the conceptualisation of autism (and Aspergers) is ‘rooted in socially constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, disability and productivity, and those notions are connected to the colonial ideas of anti-Blackness, patriarchy, and capitalism’ (Lewis, 2021)…. Furthermore, Quijano (2007) specifies that decoloniality can be understood as the struggle for liberation from all forms of oppressive power that leads to inequality, discrimination, exploitation and domination.”
At the moment I’m exploring how human-beaver collaborations can enable humans to learn from the indigenous, pre-colonial knowledge of beavers, previously hunted to extinction and now being reintroduced to the UK, either unofficially through ‘beaver bombing’or within enclosures, waiting for the government go-ahead to set them free.
Whilst in Norfolk we visited Wild Ken Hill’s beaver enclosure, and I followed that up with a visit to the Norfolk Rivers Trust beaver site at the headwaters of the River Glaven. I’ve since tracked down my own local Wiltshire beavers, living wild in and around the Bristol Avon, and have been looking at the intersection of human and beaver infrastructure, as beavers re-make places through dam and canal building and the incorporation of man-made structures and materials.
Dams and lodges in Norfolk included a brick and a Muntjac deer skull, and incorporated the ruins of a WW2 sewage treatment facility, whilst those in Wiltshire included a wooden pallet and a warning sign from a nearby construction site. Beavers don’t recognise the perceptual barriers and boundaries that humans often use to divide, order and classify, and as a neuroqueer maker, I feel a real kinship with, and a desire to learn from them.
My work in the Ground Up exhibition represents the beginning of this relationship with beavers. Titled ‘The Beaver and the Whale’, it documents my research into some of North Norfolk’s rivers, and their connection to animal extraction/local extinction and reintroduction.
It’s not the first time I’ve sought to collaborate with non-humans, and considered the threshold at which such work might appropriately be called collaboration. My photographic series ‘The Ash Looks Back’ for example, informed by research into Ash Die Back Disease, considered the tree’s perspective by strapping camera traps onto ash trees and allowing their community of life to document themselves.
Similarly, my installation at SPUD brought together photographs of animal footprints and camera trap footage of deer, ponies and foxes, with birdsong and river clays, to give a voice to the network of human and non-human inhabitants that makes up the Forest.
“Thinking with beavers and rivers and mountains and salmon, out in the watershed commons, I have sketched a way to transfigure what anthropologist Anna Tsing calls ‘capitalist ruins’ into substrates for new models of life. Practices of world-making with beavers and salmon unveil the multi species commons that is always-already there, in the land, ready for human acknowledgement and recognition.”
Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice, Cleo Woelfle Hazard
Find more
This short video shows James’s Neuro/Queering Nature exhibition from his SPUD residency in the New Forest:
And you can explore more at Queer River, James’s practice-led research project, and his website. His previous ClimateCultures posts include A Queer Path to Wellbeing, and he also reviewed for usCreative Engagements with Ecologies of Place, the book co-authored by fellow member Iain Biggs.
James is showing work as part of the ‘Ground Up’ exhibition until 14th December at GroundWork Gallery, King’s Lynn, England. ‘Ground Up’ is the first of two exhibitions formed out of works of art made in response to a GroundWork residency with the underlying theme of Extraction. A second exhibition, ‘Ground Water’, will run from July to September 2025.
In this January 2024 post for The British Psychological Society, Decolonising Autism, Joris Lechêne offers advice for research and practice drawing on his experience as a trainer in anti-racism, bias, and decoloniality who has lived experience of autism and ADHD.
Nick Walker’s post (2015, updated 2021) Neuroqueer: an introduction describes how the concept of neuroqueering came to inform her thinking, embodiment, and approach to life.
Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness is a 2016 research paper by Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey & Ursula Münster (Environmental Humanities 8 (1): 1–23) that explores “the cultivation of ‘arts of attentiveness’: modes of both paying attention to others and crafting meaningful response.”
You can explore the work of SPUD, the arts and education charity where James undertook his New Forest Neuro/Queering Nature residency and which creates opportunities for people to engage with art, architecture, design and the environment; also, the Norfolk Rivers Trust’s The Beaver Project.
You can find more on Kai Syng Tan, the artist and researcher James mentions has inspired his exploration of decolonising of neurodivergence, at her website.
A visual artist working with people and places, whose individual and participatory practices generate practice-led research into the value of artful, embodied and place-based learning ...
Citizen artist Yky challenges fellow artists to consider their roles and responsibilities, alongside those of scientific experts, in how their art engages audiences and other citizens to overcome linear thinking in questions of urban resilience and social complexity. 
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