Art, Climate, Transition (ACT) Symposium

Arrivals: tea, coffee and sign-ups, 10am-11am, Artsadmin Canteen 

Impact Radio Hour with Arie Lengkeek and Jacco van Uden, 10am–11am and 2pm–3pm. Palace Radio 

Arie and Jacco will be taking over the Palace Radio (part of the The People’s Palace of Possibility) to broadcast interviews and reflections about the Art Climate Transition programme across Mallon Gardens. Pull up a chair and listen in as they question the impact and role of artistic practice within a transition to an environmentally just society. Featuring conversations with a range of artists from across Europe. 

Democracy, Environment, and Artistic Practice, 11am-12.30pm, Steve Whitson Studio 

This panel discussion brings together a group of artists, activists, and academics to question the role artistic practice within movements towards environmental justice. Chair by Dr Marit Hammond, the panel begins with the assertion that democracy is an important part of just transitions towards a more sustainable society. With this in mind, what role might artistic practice play? This panel will offer both conceptual and practical responses to this question. This panel will include Julian Maynard Smith (Station House Opera), Ellie Harrison, Katy Rubin, and Zamzam Ibrahim.  

I walked for too long and I became a landscape, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska and Tery Žežel, 11am-12pm & 3-4.30pm, Allen Gardens (meeting point Artsadmin Box Office) (20 spaces)

Have you ever been to the woods?  

Now, I can imagine, you’re smiling gently, but not without a hint of sarcasm.  

“Of course” you say to yourself. “What kind of question is that?!”  

But have you really? Have you been to a real forest? The one that makes you pay the price for entering it?  

Walking is never innocent. It shapes the landscape as we go. It indulges the gaze.  

Walking is political. It creates realities, depending on where we go, with whom, when, on the weather, clothes, thoughts, feelings, health conditions, terrains, shapes, plants, types of the ground, moisture of the soil and any other element that you can think of.  

I lost myself in the woods. Come walk through me!  

I walked too long and I became a landscape is a 45 minute audio performance and walk. 

Access info: This performance involves a 30 minute walk on an accessible walking route. Participants need to have their own headphones, smartphones and access to data. We will prep some headphones/MP3 players but cannot provide a pair per each audience member.  

Environmental Justice Questions with Harun Morrison, 12pm-1.30pm, Fire Room (24 spaces)

A compilation of questions for discussion and debate. Harun has invited a range of people including activists, writers, artworkers, theorists, architects, chefs, natural historians and horticulturalists to propose a question relating to environmental justice that can stimulate conversation. The workshop will involve a series of small-group discussions around chosen questions followed by a larger group discussion. Featuring special guest, community gardener, multimedia artist and spoken word poet Maymana Arefin

The Enmessing Table with Becky Lyon, 11.30am – 1.30pm, The People’s Palace of Possibility 

A pop-up installation for thought-full making and metabolising-with materials together. Participants are invited to drop in and join the circle at any time.   We will be engaging with clay – a rich, ancestral material that can unlock new ways of think-feeling our way back to earth. Clay is a generous, flexible, shapeable, potent medium for highlighting the connection and lineage between the flesh of the Earth and the flesh of our-cellves. We’ll respond to prompts engaging in part ritual, part healing exercise and part collective installation. 

Anti-Oppression Circle: Creative Writing for System Change with Aanka Batta and Liba Ravindran, 11.30am – 12.00pm, Court Room (25 spaces)

Through this writing workshop, we will explore poetry from different cultures and contexts that is speaking to this purpose to help us apply the practices ourselves. We will share, reflect and build empathy around poetic expressions of political revolution in history and how we can organise going forwards to shift the narrative of our current systems.  It will be interactive and participatory. There will be a grounding meditation at the beginning and some time to share deeply and listen reflectively before going into the writing practice. The aim is to co-create in a community context to help with the liberation work. 

Potato Today, Potato Tomorrow: Envisioning a just food future through the potato with Dora Taylor and Zarina Ahmad, 12.30pm – 2pm, House of Annetta (12 spaces)

Come dine with us and envision a just food future through the potato. Join us for a collective meal to creatively envision the future of our food system over a shared, “co-created” meal starring the universally consumed and very versatile potato. Participants will be invited to share a potato-based recipe ahead of the workshop, which will be incorporated into a meal that we will eat together. Whilst we plate up, set our table, and sit down to eat, we will reflect on the stories behind each recipe, and our responses to the food.  

Aided by a visioning exercise, we will then project ourselves into the future, allowing the potato to lead us – in 50, 80 or 100 years’ time, where might this potato be grown? Who will be growing it? What will we be using to cook it with? Will this recipe still be around?  What price will potatoes be? Who will be eating them? Where will we be buying them from?  By creating space for bringing our rich diversity of cultures, interests, experiences and knowledge around our food system, we will facilitate a conversation around environmental justice. How other social inequalities interplay and intersect with climate change will help bring about a collective vision for a better world we can all build together.  

This will be an expanding and exploratory session, where we will not be trying to find answers, but rather thinking about how different futures might feel, who might benefit and lose out, and what our roles could be in manifesting a better food system together. 

Access info: This event is not wheelchair accessible.

Lunch, provided by Caffé Genco, 1-2pm, Artsadmin Canteen 

Land Connection Practices with Hiatus, 2pm – 3.30pm, Allen Gardens (meeting point Artsadmin Box Office) (20 spaces)

Land Connection Practice guide outdoor movement-based practices to help us nourish our senses and our shared environment. We create time for physical play and moments of active urban meditation, to reconnect to our bodies and to our surroundings inside the space of a park. A park is a human-cultivated place, but also a place that responds to a basic human need to connect with the more-than-human, with green grass and blue sky and the wild beings that fly above and burrow below. We stand, walk, listen, talk, and move together to inhabit a place in the here and now, with our full bodies and our open attention.   

Each Land Connection Practice session begins at a central meeting point. After a brief historical inquiry aimed towards building a sense of place, the participants are invited to join a silent walk to tune in into the sensual textures and sounds of the world around them. In a circle a sense of collective care and connectivity is cultivated through physical practices and breathwork. The circle opens up organically into movement-based games and guided improvisations. Each session is unique and responsive to the energy of the participants and the location. Through the power of dance and embodied practice, this immersive public art ritual helps form the base for new friends and site-specific memories, activating a sense of belonging and a renewed capacity for care.   

Access info: Land Connection Practice’s sessions are accessible for everybody, no dance experience necessary, artists or non-artists and activists alike. 

Legislative Theatre Workshop with Katy Rubin, 2pm – 3.30pm, Court Room (Legislative Theatre: Creative & Participatory Policy Change for Climate Justice) (30 spaces)

“Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a challenge participating in democracy? If you’ve been impacted by an unjust rule or policy? If you’ve wanted to influence local and national climate policy but it all seems to happen behind the scenes?”  

In Legislative Theatre, audiences and policymakers watch a play based on the community actors’ experiences with oppressive policies and practices. Then, audiences act onstage to rehearse ways to confront the problems presented, and test new policies in real time. Actors and audiences propose ideas for new laws, rules, and policies to address the problems, working together with advocates, organizers, and government representatives. Finally, we vote on new rules, and policymakers commit to immediate actions. In this workshop, we will use games and exercises to create an original Legislative Theatre play, incorporating political analysis and participatory policy research, addressing a climate justice issue that affects the group. Then we will work through a mock Legislative Theatre session that flips the power dynamics between policymakers and communities. Finally, we will brainstorm new elements for uncovering hidden stakeholders in climate conversations and pitching and refining policies towards implementation!  

We’ll also investigate recent case studies, challenges and successes, including the Glasgow Youth-Led Climate project: In the lead up to the COP26 Conference in Glasgow in November 2021, Glasgow City Council commissioned a youth-led climate Legislative Theatre. The Gulbenkian Foundation conducted an independent evaluation on public engagement with climate issues, which found that this initiative led directly to young people’s participation in COP26, and increased their confidence and motivation to engage with policymakers.

Access info: This workshop involves movement, with no experience necessary. If someone books who has specific access needs, this workshop can be adapted to meet their needs. Let us know at access@artsadmin.co.uk

Cards On The Table – Degrowth with Henry Mulhall, 3.30pm – 5pm, Fire Room (10 spaces)

Participants are invited to take part in a game of Cards On The Table*, centred around degrowth within socially engaged art projects. Degrowth encourages environmental responsibility and moves towards de-coupling success from financial metrics. It rethinks how the practices of governance could become more democratic and seek to make more resources common.   

Players will be encouraged to draw on specific personal experiences in order to think about new possibilities for democratising culture and forming new metrics for the success of cultural projects. Throughout the game, participants are encouraged to listen closely to others, noting particularly salient quotes they feel reflect the themes of the conversation. At the end of the game, we will choose quotes to add to the pack of cards, making it a document of the symposium and a useful tool for others to think about degrowth.   

* Cards on the Table is a game that helps people think and talk critically about a specific project that they are all working on as a group. 

Speculative Futures and Environmental Justice, 3.30pm – 5pm, Steve Whitson Studio 

To move towards an environmentally just future we first must imagine it. This panel discussion brings together a range of activists and artists from across Europe to considers the role of science fiction, afro-futurism, speculative fictions, and games within environmental movements. How can speculative fictions help us to re-imagine our relationships with the planet? This panel will include theoretical and practical examples of this work, and maybe even a morsel of bread created with ancient ancestors.  

It will include contributions from Zarina Ahmad, Sophie Williamson, Mathieu Charles, and Kika Kyriakakou. 

Closing Gathering with Malaika Cunningham, Sheila Ghelani, and Zoë Laureen Palmer 5pm – 6pm, Whitson Studio 

Artists Sheila Ghelani, Zoe Palmer and Malaika Cunningham will lead a closing session to conclude the symposium. Together we will reflect on the big ideas and small moments of the Symposium, create herbal mocktails for nourishment, and offer toasts to the land, the future and absent friends.  

Drinks Reception, 6pm – 8pm, Artsadmin Canteen