Podcasts about creative carbon scotland

Our Story Weaver, Kaska, talks to Everyday Changemaker Simone Stewart at the Barn's “Plenty?” Festival in Banchory last October. They discuss degrowth and snails, storm Frank's influence on the Barn's creative direction, and the value of improvisation and community in an emergency. One year on, they also reflect on the impact of last year's flooding which interrupted the festival.   This is the first in a short series focusing on flooding and adaptation stories this month.   Credits Recording, interview and sound production: Kaska Hempel   Resources Storm Babet Stories from Angus https://sccan.scot/blog/storm-babet-a-watershed-moment-for-angus/ The Barn https://www.thebarnarts.co.uk/  Newton Harrison's The Deep Wealth of This Nation, Scotland https://www.thebarnarts.co.uk/artist/newton-harrison Becoming Earthly at the Barn https://www.thebarnarts.co.uk/article/becoming-earthly-at-the-barn  Far Orchard Network at the Barn https://www.thebarnarts.co.uk/article/the-far-orchard  Manfred Max-Neef's fundamental human needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max-Neef%27s_Fundamental_human_needs  What is degrowth? A beginners guide by Eilidh Connolly The Barn blog ttps://www.thebarnarts.co.uk/article/what-is-degrowth-a-beginners-guide  Degrowth reading list from Creative Carbon Scotland https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/springboard-2023/reading-list/ Degrowth in Scotland on We Talk podcast (early 2022) https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nico-ndlovu

In this Edinburgh Fringe special, Kaska speaks to Lewis Coenen-Rowe about the trees and myths that inspired his deforestation opera STUMPED, becoming an artist activist, and about the importance of coming together for storytelling like this to help us imagine a better future and take collective action.  STUMPED is showing at the Scottish Storytelling Centre starting this week and each performance ends with a short reflection from a different invited expert or community group involved in caring for trees and forests.  Transcript  See our website: https://sccan.scot/blog/stumped-at-the-fringe-stories-trees-and-collective-action/ Credits Interview and production: Kaska Hempel Music: Exerpts from STUMPED by Lewis Coenen-Rowe, performed Resources: Lewis' website https://www.lewiscoenen-rowe.com/  STUMPED opera on Insta https://www.instagram.com/stumpedopera/  STUMPED opera on FB https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557738514898&paipv=0&eav=AfZnr8aawmI-pzLrXUqtBT8rRZPKYyr8XH0MzRopZFZWSG8u_4NpXcaSEijReX9dubs Made in Scotland Showcase https://www.madeinscotlandshowcase.com/  Creative Carbon Scotland https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/  Scottish Storytelling Centre https://www.scottishstorytellingcentre.com/  Alliance for Scotland's Rainforests https://savingscotlandsrainforest.org.uk/

Lewis Coenen-Rowe is a composer and pianist, specializing in opera, vocal music and chamber music. His music is concerned with themes of ecology, memory, time, and the unstable divide between the comic and the serious. He is also an advocate for environmental sustainability in the art and also currently works at environmental arts charity Creative Carbon Scotland. Today we are delighted to be chatting to Lewis about his latest opera STUMPED which is being performed this summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Head on over to the Edinburgh Fringe to see all performance dates and to buy tickets! Ear to the Ground keeps you in the loop with interviews and gig alerts from Scotland's top-notch composers. Hosted by Aileen Sweeney and Ben Eames. Sound edited by Mia Eames. Website Links: https://www.eartothegroundscotland.com/ https://www.lewiscoenen-rowe.com/ https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/stumped

'To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It's about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it's about getting to the truth and facing reality.'Claude Schryer, FKL's Unheard Landscapes Symposium, October 29, 2021 e75 radical listening as climate action is my presentation and Q&A period at the FKL's Unheard Landscapes Symposiumon October 29, 2021 about ‘music as acoustic ecology' and ‘radicality' in the context of listening and the climate emergency, with excerpts from e54 mahtani, é55 trépanier and e22 westerkamp ScriptNote: audio on podcast is slightly different due to improvised elements during the presentation. The question-and-answer period below was transcribed using TEMI and slightly edited for concision.Good morning, Bonjour Welcome to radical listening as climate action.It's 7.35am here in Vancouver on Friday, October 29th, 2021. The sun is just rising here on the west coast of Turtle Island. I know you've already had a long day of presentations and deliberations where you all are in Blois, France so I'll try and be brief in my presentation and get to questions as soon as possible. Je vais parler en anglais mais il me fera plaisir de répondre à vos questions en français aussi. But before I start my presentation, I want to let you know that I'm recording this talk as episode 75 of my conscient podcast, which is a podcast, sometimes in English, des fois en français, that explores art and the ecological crisis. The third season of this podcast is on the theme of radical listening, so I thought it would make sense to include this presentation as an episode. Please let me know if you do not want to be recorded when we get to the question period, ok? I understand that the Symposium is also doing a podcast of this presentation, which is great so there will be 2 versions, I'll be publishing this recording later today. Let me begin by saying that I'm speaking to you from the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. I would like to acknowledge these nations as the traditional keepers of these lands and reiterate my commitment to indigenous people as an ally. Some of you might know that I'm a composer by training and worked in acoustic ecology for most of the 1990s, with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and other similar organizations - before joining the Canada Council for the Arts for 21 years. I retired from the Council in 2020 in order to focus my work on art and the climate emergency through my podcast and a new organization in Canada called SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency: which is an example of a collective action that the Symposium has suggested we undertake. I can talk about that more later if you wish. I was very pleased to see that the Unheard Landscapes Symposium is exploring climate emergency issues, such as changing soundscape of our endangered planet today and, importantly, future soundscapes and thefuture of listeningitself as the climate emergency deepens. And the crisis will unfortunately get much worse as emissions are currently actually rising worldwide in spite of efforts at COP26, which starts in a few days just north of you in Scotland. So big thanks and Graci to Stefano Zorzanello and the FKL Symposium on Soundscapes team for this timely event and for having me here today. I also want to thank you in the audience for taking the time to be here today – I wish I was there with you - and for sharing your thoughts today, and online afterwards if you wish. I'd want to start my presentation with a short story. Now I'm not a storyteller but I like the format as a way to bring information to life. I once upon a time, a composer gave a workshop called Reality, Extinction, Grief and Art at a festivalsomewhere in Europe. The audience was most professors, composers and music students from around the world. The theme of the festival was soundscapes during a pandemic. The composer talked about the issues that kept him up at night, including the deepening climate crisis, the real possibility of civilization collapse, the lack of understanding about ecological grieving and the role of arts and culture in all of this. Now the question-and-answer period was quite intense: one participant asked how to deal with the rise of fascism and war as the climate crisis worsened and resources become scarcer. This person had seen conflict before in her home country.  Another asked how can we address the debilitating sense of sadness that comes from environmental loss? Someone else kindly suggested that we should stop using printed programs for our concerts, which was recognized as a good idea but not nearly enough of a change. Finally, one participant proposed that from now that all music should be considered as acoustic ecology…the workshop leader said ‘now there's a radical idea': all music as acoustic ecology.Now, this is, of course, a true story, though I did dramatize bits here and there for effect. It took place on April 23 of this year at the BEASTFeAST2021: Recalibration festival under the direction of Dr. Annie Mahtani at the University of Birmingham. I gave this workshop because I wanted to raise these issues in my peer community of electroacoustic and soundscape composers and am happy for this opportunity to continue the conversation today and at any time in the future. So, let's dig a bit deeper into this idea of music as acoustic ecology. I realise that it is a provocative proposal. What did this person mean? I'll remind you that acoustic ecology is defined as the ‘relationship, mediated through sound, between all living beings and their environment.' The concept was developed right here in Vancouver at the World Soundscape Project by a composer, R. Murray Schafer and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University. One of their goals was to point out that the world was out of balance and that we needed to listen much more carefully to our environment and to respond to issues through deep listening and heightened environmental awareness. Music, on the other hand, is defined as the ‘art of arranging sounds in time through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre'. No mention of the environment here though it might be implied with the idea of timbre. So, in other words, acoustic ecology is about our relationship to our environment, through sound, whereas music is about organizing sound to make art. What's the connection between these two? How can we consider music as acoustic ecology and why should we?Here's a theory.What I think that person was saying is that music, in the context of the ecological crisis, needs to take place in relation with all living beings and their environments. In other words, music should not be separated from its context. It never should have. For example, if the world is on fire, music and all other art forms for that matter, need to emerge from, and engage with that reality in ways that we have not yet imagined (a form of unheard landscape).I won't get into stories about fiddling while Rome burns… but that's another story.  I'm curious to know what you think about this when we get to the questions period in a few minutes. Let me share my screen now. This is the conscient podcast website. I'd like to play you three excerpts from conversations I had in the second season of the conscient podcast, which was about reality and ecological grief. The first is with Dr. Annie Mahtani from episode 52 :If we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up.Annie's point here is that everything is local and that listening, with our ears and hearts, is how we need to move forward, even if the future looks bleak. Annie reminds us that we should never give up on leaving a livable world for our children and their children. One of the questions raised by the organizers of this Symposium is about collective actions. What kind of collective actions can the soundscape community undertake about something as massive and amorphous - some might say invisible or unheard - as the climate crisis? For example, we could focus on mitigation – which is about raising awareness about imminent threats, many soundscape compositions try to do this – or maybe we put more energy into adaptation – about learning to live our damaged planet and how to listen even more carefully - or maybe we could priorise regeneration – which is about rebuilding and providing a vision for a sustainable future? These are admittedly complex and uncomfortable issues, in part because people do not feel empowered to address them, so most of us live in denial and with deep, repressed sadness, right? Let me tell you another short story. This one is also true.During the fall of 2019, I was at a meeting about how the arts and cultural sector, and in particular the indigenous traditional knowledge community, could play a much larger role in the fight against climate change. We were sitting around a table – remember that this was pre-pandemic times - with each person sharing knowledge and stories. I spoke about how we need to walk our talk in order to be credible with environmental issues. Then, a representative from an indigenous cultural organization said that it would ‘likely take as long to resolve the ecological crisis as it did to create it'. I repeated what he said in my head: ‘take as long to resolve the ecological crisis as it did to create. How is this possible, I asked myself, so I said: ‘but, but we do not have that kind of time'. We all looked at each other in silence. (moment of silence) This is what I mean by ‘radical listening'. To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It's about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it's about getting to the truth and facing reality.(moment of silence) (Share screen) I'll give you another example from season 2 of the conscient podcast. This is Indigenous artist France Trepanier who is a visual artist, curator and researcher of Kanien'kéha:ka and French ancestry. This is from episode 55 and it's in French.Je pense que ce cycle du colonialisme, et de ce que ça a apporté, on est en train d'arriver à la fin de ce cycle là aussi, et avec le recul, on va s'apercevoir que cela a été un tout petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste, et qu'on est en train de retourner à des connaissances très profondes. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de vivre ici sur cette planète? Ce que ça implique comme possibilité, mais comme responsabilité aussi de maintenir les relations harmonieuses? Moi, je dis que la solution à la crise climatique c'est cardiaque. Ça va passer par le cœur. On parle d'amour avec la planète. C'est ça, le travail.What Trépanier is saying here is that she thinks that the 500 plus year cycle of colonialism on Turtle Island is coming to an end and that it's everyone's responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships in their respective communities. She is also saying that we need to fall back in love with our planet in order to save humanity. She said that this is the work that is ahead of us: c'est ca, le travail and I agree.So, let's think about this. How do we maintain harmonious relationships with all living beings as a soundscape community?I'd like to conclude my presentation with a proposal. It's from soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp, who lives here in Vancouver and is a living legend in the soundscape community. This is from conscient podcast episode 22, which was recorded in April of 2020 here in Vancouver. We need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute… If there is any chance to survive, that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.This, to me, is also an example of ‘radical listening as climate action'. I now invite comments or questions. I'll remind you that I'm recording this presentation as episode 75 of the conscient podcast. Merci Stefano et chers collègues. Questions, comments? En anglais ou en français. Question and AnswersStefano Zorzanello  It's quite interesting to think about listening as an action. When we think about listening, we tend to think about a passive kind of action, which is receiving and not really changing anything. It's getting something from the world out there, but we know also from an ecological point of view that listening is an act of selection of messages that is active and not passive. It's a way of taking away something away from too crowded world, which is full of things: full of noise, full of information, full of life. The act of taking something away and making room for other things or maybe nothing at all is in itself a kind of ecological action. I think we should be more careful about this. What do you think? Claude SchryerI'll respond briefly because I'm interested in other thoughts or at least initial reactions, but Stefano, I agree that a lot of what we need to do is to stop the destruction and to take away things that are inhibiting natural processes. And the most obvious is ecological systems. For example, with trees, if we stopped cutting them and polluting their environment, they will flourish and they will bring back life: air and sounds. And so that's something that we don't think of as progress, right? We think of progress as building and new and better and bigger. And we have to find a positive way to get into a subtractive space so that we think of less as more and think of quiet, as an example, in the sound world, but there are so many ways that we could do things less and better for all life forms. That's why I played the example from France Trépanier (é55), who's a senior indigenous artist here in Canada who has a lot to say about indigenous non-indigenous relations and how difficult they have been from the very beginning in Canada because of what the Europeans essentially brought as an ideology. So, there's a conflict of ideology that needs to be resolved here and yet we have so little time to resolve it. That's why I told the story about that indigenous knowledge keeper who said that it's going to take a long time... So, we're facing unthinkable situations and we, as soundscape artists, one of the things we can do, is talk about our profession, because we're professional listeners, we're professional recorders, we're professional analysts of sound and that's why I liked so much the questions that you ask you and your colleagues ask in Unheard Landscapes. You're looking at unknown issues, things that we don't know about yet. I think those are the right questions to ask. Personally, I try to reduce my carbon footprint. I do what I can, but I'm producing podcasts and using energy. I'm aware that everything we do has a footprint at, but to be aware of it is already to start to change. So, listening to me, radical listening, is about listening with the intent of changing, not just the intent of saying, well, that was nice, but it's not going to affect me at all, or that was sort of fun. It's not entertainment. When you receive information, you take it seriously and it challenges your worldview. Then you not only think about it, but you receive it in your body and then you start changing your behavior. And even that's why I put the Annie Mahtani example. Even the smallest things like going into a garden and talking with somebody and planting a seed, those seeds will grow. And if we all do that, and I don't mean to lecture anybody here, I know people are aware about the seriousness of the environmental issues we face, but I do think that we need, as a community, to be much more in climate emergency mode. There's a group here in Canada called the Climate Emergency Unit. I think everybody on the planet in particular, those who have consumed more than their fair share, need to be in climate emergency mode and behave that way. And so, music as acoustic ecology, is an interesting idea, but really what we need is to be in climate emergency mode. Any other thoughts from people in the room? I'd be happy to hear.Olivier GaudinI'm one of the organizers. I work here at this school, and I teach a history of landscapes. So basically, I was wondering about the way you use the adjective radical. Could you make possible connections between radical and indigenous people and whether that makes sense to you, because in France, there is still a discussion about radicality. It's also the way you connected it with emergency that is interesting. I wonder how you manage this possible connection between radicality and indigenous. And I interested in that and why. Claude SchryerWell, there's lots of connections. The word radical can be used in different ways, but it basically means cutting through certain conventions and going to the most basic essential element. In Canada we have about 15,000 years of knowledge in indigenous communities. Colonization was about 500 of those. That's why France Trépanier was saying that the colonization period is starting to end. We use the term reconciliation in Canada, not unlike what happened in South Africa. We had our own a truth and reconciliation process a few years ago, which had some positive outcomes, but we're struggling with the deep, deep issues of how we can share this land because we, the non-indigenous people, have exploited it so much and have lost the trust of indigenous people through treaties that weren't respected. So, there's lots of that kind of talk now talk and action and our government's making, I think, an effort at addressing these issues, but it's not enough. And now the population is rising and starting to demand that of not just governments, but all institutions. So, there's a positive dynamic, or at least a forward motion in Canada around thinking about things in a totally different way in our relations with each other, with the land and the people with a a lot more listening going on with indigenous people, not necessarily dialogue, sometimes it's dialogue, but it's mostly listening. There's are so many interesting initiatives right now, in Canada, I'm thinking of the indigenous climate action network and so many others that are doing great work. So it's really a question of listening.Olivier GaudinThank you for this answer I am interested if to some people to know this attitude that you share with us today is perceived as a counterproductive, meaning that in France, you, if you present yourself radically, you will be told that you lose the majority of the population, you know, too much excitement. Do you manage to frame it differently in Canada? I would be interested to know that. And maybe you can enlighten us a little bit about the differences between Western Canada and Québec. Claude SchryerI can't really speak on behalf radicals in Canada. There are some very politically radical people. I'm not really one of them. I consider myself a progressive, but what I'm talking about is radical listening, which is a process and, and hopefully it leads to radical actions. I use the radical in the sense that the status quo is unlivable. We are living far, far beyond our means. And so, you can't sot of piece meal or go incrementally. If people are uncomfortable with the word radical, you can think of other words, but I'm not talking about only radical political action. I'm talking about radical lifestyle change and of radical rethinking through listening. That's my own personal point of view. Canada is an oil and gas producing country, so we have tremendous challenges with the climate emergency, because a lot of our economy is based on gas and oil. So, we're struggling with that too. We have a new minister of environment and climate change right now. So, there's, there's that that debate is going on. Your other question about Western and Eastern Canada, or in Quebec in particular. There are definitely regional different regional approaches in Canada right now. I'm in Vancouver where there's the David Suzuki Foundation and the World Soundscape Project legacy, and lots of going on on the environmental front, but in Quebec you also have very strong environmental sensitivity. You have it across Canada, but in Quebec, you have street movements, like when the Fridays for Future movement happened in 2019, there were, you 400,000 or 500,000 people in the streets. There is a sense of mobilization and action that we're seeing in Canada and Quebec is very good and strong at that. You're also seeing it also in the arts community. There are all kinds of organizations now that are rethinking how they work, in part because of the COVID crisis, but also because of the climate emergency. I can't get into it too much because I don't think there'll be time, but I mentioned this group, SCALE as an example of a national initiative to bring us all together in Canada to talk about the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and we're working with Julie's Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland and others who are doing similar kinds of work. And I know that there's initiatives in Europe and in France as well. I think that's what we need to do is get out of our little silos of my art form and my interests and think broadly together and create coalitions so that we can identify the things that we want to do together and do them, as your symposium has suggested, as collective actions, because individual actions, while important for the person, are not as effective as collective actions. It's easy to find my email claude@conscient.ca . I think it's an ongoing conversation. Thank you. I know you've had a long day, so I'm going to go have a shower and it's been a lot of fun. I think I appreciate your being there and let's keep in touch.Unheard Landscapes group in Blois, France delivering 'radical listening as climate action' and me on October 29, 2021, Vancouver *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We're going to conclude our case study today of the 2nd season of the conscient podcast.'Claude Schryerou can listen to part one here. This is the conclusion!The setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada'. I want to thank my son Riel for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study' based on the second season of the conscient podcast as part of a class on art in 2021. There are four people in the class: the teacher played by myself, a young male student is played by my son Riel Schryer, a young female student, who is online, is played by my daughter Clara Schryer and a female adult student is played by my wife Sabrina Mathews. I want to thank the cast. A reminder that most of the narration is in English, but there are elements and excerpts of the interviews that are in French and some of the narrations as well. Episode 64 features excerpt from the following episodes in season 2 (in order of appearance):e19 reality (1m05s) (Claude Schryer reading Catherine Ingram)e43 haley (2m29s)e58 huddart (3m55s)e19 reality (5m27s) (Claude Schryer reading Britt Wray)e33 toscano (8m13s)e19 reality (9m53s) (Claude Schryer reading Richard Wagamese)e30m maggs (11m09s)e36 fanconi (13m07s)é37 lebeau (15m08s)e43 haley (16m36s) (second excerpt)e59 pearl (20m00s)e19 reality (21m51s) (Claude Schryer reading Todd Dufresne)e52 mahtani (23m05s)e22 westerkamp (23m58s)e54 garrett (25m19s)e41 rae (27m03s)e67 wanna be an ally (29m47)Screen grab of Reaper software edit of e64Recording cast : Sabrina Mathews (adult student), Claude Schryer (professor) and Riel Schryer (male student): September 2021, OttawaRecording cast : Clara Schryer (female student): September 2021, OttawaScriptNote: Some of the script has been slightly modified during the recording through improvisation and is not captured in this text.(Sounds of students chatting, arriving in class and sitting down)Teacher: Hello students. Let's start the class. Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. Last time we had to disrupt the class because of the air pollution alarm but now the air quality is acceptable, and we can breathe again so hopefully the alarm won't go off again. Let's pick it up where we left off last week. I see we have the same group as last week. a few students in class and one online. Je vous rappelle que c'est une classe bilingue. A quick reminder that we're going to conclude our case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast, which produced by an Ottawa based sound artist, Claude Schryer and at the end the last class he was reading a quote from a dharma teacher Catherine Ingram.  I think we'll start by playing that again so that you remember what that was about. Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. … There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own.Teacher: Alright. Let's talk about art. One of the key moments in the 2020s was when society started to understand that climate change was a cultural issue and that the role of art was not so much to provide solutions, even though they are important, but to ask hard questions and to help people overcome barriers to action. Here is excerpt that I really like a lot from British ecological artist David Haley. It's fromepisode 43:Climate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.Adult student: The 2020s sure were a strange time. I heard that some said it was the most exciting time to be alive, but I think it would have been terrifying to live back then and … Teacher (interrupting): You're right and that they were tough times, but they were also a time of possibilities, and some people saw how the arts could step up to the plate and play a much larger role. One of these was Stephen Huddart who was the CEO of a foundation called the JW McConnell Family Foundation based in Montreal. Let's listen to him in episode 58 talk about the crisis and the role of the arts. This is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.Male student: They keep talking about tipping points. What's a tipping point?Teacher: Ah. Right, sorry about that. I should have filled you in about that. Let me find a quote from episode 19 where Schryer actually refers to an expert on this (sound of typing). Here it is. It's from Canadian writer Britt Wray in an article called Climate tipping points: the ones we actually want. Again, this is Schryer reading that quote. Oh, and you'll notice in this one the sound of a coocoo clock in this one. Schryer liked to insert soundscape compositions in between his interviews in season 2. Here is Britt Wray: When a small change in a complex system produces an enormous shift, that new pathway gets reinforced by positive feedback loops, which lock in all that change. That's why tipping points are irreversible. You can't go back to where you were before. A tipping point that flips non-linearly could be the thing that does us in, but it could also be the thing that allows us to heal our broken systems and better sustain ourselves. Adult student: So, they knew back in the 2020's that they were on the verge of irreversible collapse due to climate change and yet they did nothing to heal their broken systems?  Teacher: It's not that they did nothing but rather that they did not do enough, quickly enough. it's easy to look back and be critical but that's why we're looking at this history and trying to understand what happened back then and what it means to us now. You are students of history, and you know how significant it can be. There were so many theories and great writing about the need for radical change back then by authors such as Richard Heinberg, Jeremy Lent, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Naomi Klein,Michael E. Mann, and so many more, and there were also great podcasts like Green Dreamer and For the Wild that provided words of warning, interviewed brilliant people and alternatives paths forward, it was all there – but at first it did little to mobilise the population. People were pretty comfortable in their lifestyle and mostly lived in a kind of denial about the climate emergency. People only really started changing their behaviour when climate change affected them directly, like a fire or flood in their backyard, and this is when it became clear that the arts had a role to play in shaping the narrative of change and changing the culture. I'll give you an example, performance artist and podcaster Peterson Toscanotalksabout the power of storytelling and the idea of touching people hearts and minds. This is from episode 33:It's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also, we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So, it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.Female student: Right, so something as simple as a story could change a person's behaviour? Teacher: Yes, it could, because humans are much more likely to understand an issue through a narrative, image or allegory than through raw scientific data. In fact, we need all of it, we need scientists working with artists and other sectors to effect change. People have to work together. As I was listening to episode 19 this next quote struck me as a really good way to talk about the power of words to affect change. It's by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese in episode 19 :To use the act of breathing to shape air into sounds that take on the context of language that lifts and transports those who hear it, takes them beyond what they think and know and feel and empowers them to think and feel and know even more.  We're storytellers, really. That's what we do. That is our power as human beings.Teacher: How is everyone doing? Need a break? No, ok, well, let's take a look at arts policy in 2021 now. Cultural theorist and musician Dr. David Maggs, wrote a paper in 2021 called Art and the World After This that was commissioned by the Metcalf Foundation. In this excerpt from episode 30, Dr. Maggs explains the unique value proposition of the arts and how the arts sector basically needed to, at the time, reinvent itself:  Complexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.Adult student: We studied this report in an art history class. It's a good piece of writing. I think it had 3 modes of engagement: greening the sector, raising the profile :Teacher: … and I think it was reauthoring the world if I remember correctly. It's interesting to note how the arts community were thinking about how to create ecological artworks as well as theoretical frameworks and how does that happen. I'll give you a couple of examples. First, an environmental theatre company in Vancouver called The Only Animal. Let's listen to their artistic director Kendra Fanconi inepisode 36:Ben Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.Teacher: This actually happened. The arts community did develop carbon positive arts works. To be realistic the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere was probably minimal but the impact on audiences and the public at large was large.  At the time and still today, it gets people motivated and open the door to change. People started creating their own carbon positive projects Female student: (interrupting) Amazing! I just found a video of their work on You Tube…Teacher: Please share the link in the chat. It's always good to see what the work looked like. The other example I would give is in Montreal with a group called Écoscéno, which was a circular economy project that recycled theatre sets. Now this one is in French, so let me explain that what Anne-Catherine Lebeau, the ED of that organization is saying. She suggests that the arts community should look at everything it has as a common good, praises the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England for their work on circular economies and she underlines the need to create art that is regenerative…Let's listen to Anne-Catherine Lebeau in episode 37:. Pour moi, c'est sûr que ça passe par plus de collaboration. C'est ça qui est intéressant aussi. Vraiment passer du modèle ‘Take Make Waste' à ‘Care Dare Share'. Pour moi, ça dit tellement de choses. Je pense qu'on doit considérer tout ce qu'on a dans le domaine artistique comme un bien commun dont on doit collectivement prendre soin. Souvent, au début, on parlait en termes de faire le moins de tort possible à l'environnement, ne pas nuire, c'est souvent comme ça que l'on présente le développement durable, puis en faisant des recherches, et en m'inspirant, entre autres, de ce qui se fait à la Fondation Ellen MacArthur  en Angleterre, en économie circulaire, je me suis rendu compte qu'eux demandent comment faire en sorte de nourrir une nouvelle réalité. Comment créer de l'art qui soit régénératif? Qui nourrisse quelque chose.Male student (interrupting) Sorry, wait, regenerative art was a new thing back then? Teacher: Actually, regenerative art had been around for a while, since the 1960 through the ecological art, or eco art movement that David Haley, who we heard from earlier in this class. he and other eco artists did work with the environment and ecosystems. Let's listen to another excerpt from David Haley from episode 43:What I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.Teacher : So eco art was an important movement but it did not become mainstream until the 2020s when natural resources on earth were drying up and people started looking at art forms that were about ecological balance and a harmonious relationship with nature. . Now, fortunately, many artists had tested these models over the years so there was a body of work that already existed about this... Btw there's a great book about eco art that came out in 2022 called Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities. I'll  put it on the reading list for you so that you can get it form the library. All of this to say that in retrospect, we can see that 2021 was the beginning of the end of capitalism that Dr. Todd Dufresne predicted, and the arts were at the heart of this transformation because they had the ability to us metaphor, imagery, illusion, fantasy, and storytelling to move people's hearts and presented a new vision of the world. So, I think you're starting to see how things were unfolding in the arts community in 2021. What was missing was coordination and some kind of strategic structure to move things along in an organized way now this was happening in the Uk with Julie's Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland and similar organizations, but we did not have that in Canada. I want you to listen to an excerpt of Schryer's conversation with Judi Pearl, who ended up being a very important figure in the arts in the 2020's because she was a co- founder with Anjali Appadurai, Anthony Garoufalis-Auger, Kendra Fanconi, Mhiran Faraday, Howard Jang, Tanya Kalmanovitch, David Maggs, Robin Sokoloski and Schryer himself of an organization called SCALE, which I mentioned earlier. Here is Judi Pearl who explains what SCALE was about in episode 59:It's a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.Teacher: OK, time is passing quickly here. there are many other examples in season 2 of the role of the arts, about community-engaged arts, immersive systems, activist art, ritual based art, etc. but in the interests of time, I suggest we move to the notion of hope now. There were so many amazing books and podcasts about hope during this time. Schryer mentions that he enjoyed the book by Thomas Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, Eslin Kelsey's Hope Matters, Joanna Macy's and Chris Johnstone's classic from 2010, Active Hope but there were many others. The thing about hope back then is that it was aspirational. Indeed, andthere were many different forms of hope. Let's start with Schryer reading a quote from Dr. Todd Dufresne in episode 19:We're all being “radicalized by reality.” It's just that for some people it takes a personal experience of fire, landslide, or hurricane to get their attention. I'm afraid it takes mass death and extinction. … Whoever survives these experiences will have a renewed appreciation for nature, for the external world, and for the necessity of collectivism in the face of mass extinction. There's hope in this — although I admit it's wrapped in ugliness.Teacher: And it is very ugly, isn't it...? Here's another take on hope from composer Dr. Annie Mahtani in episode 52. Annie was director of a electroacoustic music festival in the UK where the focus of the 2021 was on listening and how listening could us better understand our environment. If we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up.Female student: I love the focus on listening. I think Schryer was a specialist in acoustic ecology, if I remember correctly.Teacher: Yes. On a similar wavelength, here's excerpt from soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp from episode 22:We need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute… If there is any chance to survive, that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.Teacher: Thankfully, we did survive, and we did develop the capacity to listen and slow down as Westerkamp suggests. She was quite prescient in this way. But the notion of hope was elusive, because science keep telling us that they were headed for catastrophe, and there was good reason to be concerned about this and this created massive tension. Male Student: How did they manage that? Teacher: They just kept going in spite of the uncertainty and the grim prospect... As I mentioned earlier, no-one knew if was possible to stop the destruction of the planet, but they kept going on and they   use art not only to change systems abut also to keep up morale.  Let's listen to this excerpt from episode 54 with theatre artistIan Garrett: I don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.Male student: OK, they knew that there would be trouble ahead but what about adaptation and preparedness in the arts community. How did they prepare and adapt to the changing environment? Did they not see it coming?Adult Student: It's one thing to raise awareness through art but how did art actually help people deal with the reality of fires, floods, climate refugees and all of that?Teacher:  Remember that art had the ability to touch people emotions and motivate them to change their attitudes and lifestyles, but it was also a way to teach people how to adapt while continuing to enjoy the things around them. Artist-researcher and educator Jen Rae is a good example. Rae and her colleagues in Australia did a lot of work in the 2020's to develop tools and resources that call upon art to reduce harm during emergencies.  The notion of preparedness. This is from episode 41:The thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.Teacher: Online student, you have a question. Please go ahead. Female student: Did artists step up? Teacher: Yes, they did. For example, in 2021, there were the Green Sessions organized by SoulPepper Theatrecompany and the Artists for Real Climate Action (ARCA), a really great collective of artists who did all kinds of activist art projects that set the tone for years to come. Some of the most impactful art works were the ones that directly addressed the culture of exploitation and the disconnection from nature that caused the ecological crisis in the first place, so it was not observations but also critique of the root of the issues that humanity was facing at the time. There was also a body work by Indigenous artists, writers, curators and educators that was extremely important and transformative. A good example is Towards Braiding, a collaborative process developed by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti, developed in collaboration with Sharon Stein, in 2020 that opened the door to new ways of working with indigenous communities in cultural institutions and all kinds of settings. It was very impactful. I found an episode from conscient podcast episode 67 from season 3 called ‘wanna be an ally' where Schryer talks about this book and reads the poem called ‘wanna be an ally' from Towards Braiding and I think it's worth listening to the whole thing. It's really important to understand these perspectives. conscient podcast, episode 67, ‘wanna be an ally'? I've been thinking about decolonization and reconciliation and other issues in our relations with indigenous communities. I was reading a text the other day that really affected me positively but also emotionally and I wanted to read it to you. If you remember last episode, I talked about the idea of radical listening. Well, this is a type of radical listening in the sense that each of these words are, I think very meaningful and important for us all to consider. It's from a document called Towards Braiding by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa. Andreotti written in collaboration with Sharon Stein and it's published by the Musagetes Foundation. I'd like to start by thanking them all for this a very important document that essentially talks about how to, or proposes how to engage indigenous and non-indigenous relations in an institutional setting and, principles and methods, to consider. It's very well-written and I recommend a strongly as something to read and something to do, but for now, I'll just read this poem, on page 39 of the document and, and leave it at that for today because, it's already a lot to consider and as we listen more radically, that means just sitting back and listening with our full attention and openness of mind. So here it is.don't do it for charity, for feeling good, for looking good, or for showing others that you are doing good don't do it in exchange for redemption from guilt, for increasing your virtue, for appeasing your shame, for a vanity award don't put it on your CV, or on Facebook, or in your thesis, don't make it part of your brand, don't use it for self-promotion don't do it as an excuse to keep your privileges, to justify your position, to do everything except what would be actually needed to change the terms of our relationship do it only if you feel that our pasts, presents and futures are intertwined, and our bodies and spirits entangled do it only if you sense that we are one metabolism that is sick, and what happens to me also happens to you do it recognizing that you have the luxury of choice to participate or not, to stand or not, to give up your weekend or not, whereas others don't get to decide don't try to “mould” me, or to “help” me, or to make me say and do what is convenient for you don't weaponize me (“I couldn't possibly be racist”) don't instrumentalize me (“my marginalized friend says”) don't speak for me (“I know what you really mean”)don't infantilize me (“I am doing this for you”) don't make your actions contingent on me confiding in you, telling you my traumas, recounting my traditions, practicing your idea of “right” politics, or performing the role of a victim to be saved by you or a revolutionary that can save you and expect it to be, at times, incoherent, messy, uncomfortable, difficult, deceptive, paradoxical, repetitive, frustrating, incomprehensible, infuriating, boring and painful — and prepare for your heart to break and be stretched do you still want to do it? then share the burdens placed on my back, the unique medicines you bring, and the benefits you have earned from this violent and lethal disease co-create the space where I am able to do the work that only I can and need to do for all of us take a step back from the centre, the frontline from visibility relinquish the authority of your interpretations, your choice, your entitlements, surrender that which you are most praised and rewarded for don't try to teach, to lead, to organize, to mentor, to control, to theorize, or to determine where we should go, how to get there and why offer your energy to peel potatoes, to wash the dishes, to scrub the toilets, to drive the truck, to care for the babies, to separate the trash, to do the laundry, to feed the elders, to clean the mess, to buy the food, to fill the tank, to write the grant proposal, to pay the tab and the bail to do and support things you can't and won't understand,and do what is needed, instead of what you want to do, without judgment, or sense of martyrdom or expectation for gratitude, or for any kind of recognitionthen you will be ready to sit with me through the storm with the anger, the pain, the frustration, the losses, the fears, and the longing for better times with each other and you will be able to cry with me, to mourn with me, to laugh with me, to “heart” with me, as we face our shadows, and find other joys, in earthing, breathing, braiding, growing, cooking and eating, sharing, healing, and thriving side by side so that we might learn to be ourselves, but also something else, something that is also you and me, and you in me, and neither you nor me Teacher: We need to wrap this class up soon, but I think you've noticed that Schryer was deeply influenced by indigenous writers and knowledge keepers of his time. He published a blog in September 2021 that quotes Australian academic and researcher Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta from episode 321 of the Green Dreamer podcast. I'll read a short excerpt now but encourage you to listen to the entire interview if you get a chance. Teacher:The most damaged people on the planet are going to have to set aside their IOUs, set aside any kind of justice, or hope for justice or karma, or anything else, and carry the load for another thousand years to keep everything alive. And it's going to be hard just to forgive and then hand over all this wealth of knowledge and relationship and everything else to the people who are still holding the capital from the last great heist and are not going to give it up or share it anyway. The only way that's going to save the entire planet is to bring everybody back under the law of the land, and be very generous with our social systems, open them up and bring everybody back in. And that's going to be really hard, because at the same time, people are going to be trying to extract from that, corrupt that and everything else. Adult student: That's interesting. It kind of brings us back to the notion of reality and grief, but Yunkaporta doesn't even mention art in that quote so how do we connect the dots with the arts here?Teacher (interrupting): It's a good point but the presence of arts and culture is implied through the notion of the transfer of knowledge and through relationships with humans and the natural world. I think art is there he just did not use the word. Most indigenous cultures at that time did not consider art as separate activity from day-to-day life. It's interesting to observe Yunkaporta's prophesy is essentially what is happening in our world today, isn't it? We're slowly returning to the natural laws of the land, at least in the habitable parts of the planet, and our social systems are being transformed by the knowledge and expertise of Indigenous peoples, right? It's true that we had to go through a tremendous amount of suffering to get there – and we still are - but we seem to be on the other side of that elusive just transition that Anjali Appadurai spoke about in episode 23. So that's why 2021 in the arts in Canada is such an interesting topic and that's why we spent two classes on it as part of this course on Canada in the year 2021. The arts essentially planted seeds for massive transformation that came later. Artists and cultural workers at the time guided the way for that transformation. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time for today's class and my voice is getting tired... I suggest we end the class with another quote from that same blog by Schryer. I've just put it in the chat. I suggest we read it out loud as a group, OK? I'll start and then point to the next person to read out loud. I'll begin.  Now that season 2 is complete, I've been thinking about I can be most useful to the ecological crisis. Is it by sharing more knowledge about art and climate through podcasts like this one? Is it by engaging in more activist and protest art? Or is it by developing more green policies for the arts sector? All of these will likely help, but I think the most useful thing for me to do is to listen radically. Let me explain what I mean by listening radically. Male Student: Listening radically is about listening deeply without passing judgment. Listening radically is about knowing the truth and filtering out the noise. Listening radically is about opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done.Female Student: I conclude this blog with a quote that I used at the end of episode 1 of this podcast by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese, from his novel, For Joshua. ‘We may not relight the fires that used to burn in our villages, but we carry the embers from those fires in our hearts and learn to light new fires in a new world.'Adult Student: ‘We can recreate the spirit of community we had, of kinship, of relationship to all things, of union with the land, harmony with the universe, balance in living, humility, honesty, truth, and wisdom in all of our dealings with each other.'Teacher: OK. We'll continue with more about Canada in 2021 next week. Thanks so much for being such an engaged and fun group today. Merci. Miigwech.(speaking softly under the professor, improvised)Male Student: Thanks Prof. I'm really exhausted but I learned a lot. Female Student: Moi aussi. Merci pour cette classe. Aurevoir 2021. Adult Student: Yup, I learned a lot, but I'm bushed. Does anyone want to go for coffee? *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. 'dr. todd dufresne, e21 conscient podcastVideo version:Transcriptione21 dufresne : capitalism is over, my conversation with philosopher Dr. Todd Dufresne about reality, grief, art and the climate crisis.Democracy of SufferingI think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now and will at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.e22 westerkamp : slowing down through listening, my conversation with composer and listener Hildegard Westerkamp about acoustic ecology and the climate crisis.Some HopeWe need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute - if there is any chance to survive - that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.e23 appadurai: what does a just transition look like?,my ‘soundwalk' conversation with climate activist Anjali Appadurai about the just transition and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.The deeper diseaseThe climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.e24 weaving : the good, possible and beautiful, my conversation with artist jil p. weaving about community-engaged arts, public art, the importance of the local, etc.The roles that artists can playThe recognition, and finding ways to assist people, in an awareness of all the good, the possible and the beautiful and where those things can lead, is one of the roles that artists can specifically play. e25 shaw : a sense of purpose, my conversation with Australian climate activist Michael Shaw about support structures for ecogrief and the role of art.Listen to what the call is in youIt's a real blessing to feel a sense of purpose that in these times. It's a real blessing to be able to take the feelings of fear and grief and actually channel them somewhere into running a group or to making a film or doing your podcasts. I think it's important that people really tune in to find out what they're given to do at this time, to really listen to what the call is in you and follow it. I think there's something that's very generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.e26 klein : rallying through art, my conversation with climate emergency activist Seth Klein about his book A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, the newly formed Climate Emergency Unit and his challenge to artists to help rally us to this causeMy challenge to artists todayHere would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, World War II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.é27 prévost : l'énergie créatrice consciente (in French), my conversation with sound artist, musician and radio producer Hélène Prévost about the state of the world and the role of artists in the ecological crisis.The less free art is, the less it disturbsIt is in times of crisis that solutions emerge and that would be my argument. It is in this solution to the crisis that, yes, there is a discourse that will emerge and actions that will emerge, but we can't see them yet. Maybe we can commission them, as you suggest: Can you make me a documentary on this? or Can you make me a performance that will illustrate this aspect? But for the rest, I think we must leave creative energy be free, but not unconscious. That's where education, social movements and education, or maybe through action. You see, and I'm going to contradict myself here, and through art, but not art that is servile, but art that is free. I feel like quoting Josée Blanchette in Le Devoirwho, a week ago, said 'the less free art is, the less it disturbs'.é28 ung : résilience et vulnérabilité (in French), my conversation with educator and philosopher Jimmy Ung about the notion of privilege, resilience, the role of the arts in facilitating intercultural dialogue and learning, education, social justice, etc. Practicing resilienceResilience, at its core, is having the ability to be vulnerable and I think often resilience is seen as the ability to not be vulnerable, and for me, the opposite, more like resilience is the ability to be vulnerable and to believe with hope. Maybe we have the ability to bounce back, to come back, to rise again, to be reborn? I think that's a way of practicing resilience, which is more and more necessary. Because if we want to move forward, if we want to learn and learn to unlearn, we will have to be vulnerable and therefore see resilience as the ability to be vulnerable.e29 loy, : the bodhisattva path my conversation with professor, writer and Zen teacher David Loy about the bodhisattva path, the role of storytelling, interdependence, nonduality and the notion of ‘hope' through a Buddhist lens.The ecological crisis as a kind of the karmaSome people would say, OK, we have a climate crisis, so we've got to shift as quickly as possible as we can from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, which is right. But somehow the idea that by doing that we can just sort of carry on in the way that we have been otherwise is a misunderstanding. We have a much greater crisis here and what it fundamentally goes back to is this sense of separation from the earth, that we feel our wellbeing, therefore, is separate from the wellbeing of the earth and that therefore we can kind of exploit it and use it in any way we want. I think we can understand the ecological crisis as a kind of the karma built into that way of relating and exploiting the earth. The other really important thing, which I end up talking about more often, is I think Buddhism has this idea of the bodhisattva path, the idea that it's not simply that we want to become awakened simply for our own benefit, but much more so that we want to awaken in order to be a service to everyone. e30 maggs : art and the world after this, my conversation with cultural theorist David Maggs about artistic capacity, sustainability, value propositions, disruption, recovery, etc.Entanglements of relationshipsComplexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report (Art and the World After This) is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.e31 morrow : artists as reporters, my conversation with composer, sound artist, performer, and innovator Charlie Morrow about the origins of the conscient podcast, music, acoustic ecology, art and climate, health, hope and artists as journalists. In tune with what's going on in the worldI think that artists are for the most part in tune with what's going on in the world. We're all reporters, somehow journalists, who translate our message into our art, as art is in my mind, a readout, a digested or raw readout of what it is that we're experiencing. Our wish to be an artist is in fact, in order to be able to spend our lives doing that process.é32 tsou : changer notre culture (in French), my conversation (in French) with musician and cultural diplomacy advisor Shuni Tsou about citizen engagement, cultural action, the ecological crisis, arts education, social justice, systemic change, equity, etc,Cultural change around climate actionCitizen engagement is what is needed for cultural change around climate action. It's really a cultural shift in any setting. When you want to make big systemic changes, you have to change the culture and arts and culture are good tools to change the culture.e33 toscano : what we're fighting for, my conversation podcaster and artist Peterson Toscano about the role of the arts in the climate crisis, LGBTQ+ issues, religion, the wonders of podcasting, impacts, storytelling, performance art, etc. Where the energy is in a storyIt's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.é34 ramade : l'art qui nous emmène ailleurs (in French), my conversation (in French) with art historian, critic, curator and art and environment expert Bénédicte Ramade on the climate emergency, nature, music, visual arts, ecological art, etc.With music, you can convey so many thingsI am thinking of artist-composers who write pieces based on temperature readings that are converted into musical notes. This is also how the issue of global warming can be transmitted, from a piece played musically translating a stable climate that is transformed and that comes to embody in music a climatic disturbance. It is extraordinary. Is felt by the music, a fact of composition, something very abstract, with a lot of figures, statistical curves. We are daily fed with figures and statistical curves about the climate. ‘They literally do nothing to us anymore'. But on a more sensitive level, with the transposition into music, if it is played, if it is interpreted, ah, suddenly, it takes us elsewhere. And when I talk about these works, sometimes people who are more scientific or museum directors are immediately hooked, saying ‘it's extraordinary with music, you can convey so many things.e35 salas : adapting to reality, my conversation with Spanish curator + producer Carmen Salas on reality, ecogrief, artists & the climate crisis, arts strategies, curating and her article Shifting ParadigmsArtists need help in this processI find that more and more artists are interested in understanding how to change their practice and to adapt it to the current circumstances. I really believe artists need help in this process. Like we all do. I'm not an environmental expert. I'm not a climate expert. I'm just a very sensitive human being who is worried about what we are leaving behind for future generations. So, I'm doing what I can to really be more ethical with my work, but I'm finding more and more artists who are also struggling to understand what they can do. I think when in a conversation between curators or producers like myself and people like you - thinkers and funders - to come together and to understand the current situation, to accept reality, then we can strategize about how we can put things into place and how we can provide more funding for different types of projects.e36 fanconi : towards carbon positive work, my conversation with theatre artist and art-climate activist Kendra Fanconi, artistic director of The Only Animal about the role of the arts in the climate emergency, carbon positive work, collaboration and artists mobilization.Ecological restorationBen Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.é37 lebeau : l'art régénératif (in French), my conversation with Écoscéno co-founder and executive director Anne-Catherine Lebeau on collaboration, circular economies, the role of art in the climate crisis, moving from ‘Take Make Waste' to ‘Care Dare Share' and creating regenerative art.From 'Take Make Waste' to 'Care Dare Share'For me, it is certain that we need more collaboration. That's what's interesting. Moving from a 'Take Make Waste' model to 'Care Dare Share'. To me, that says a lot. I think we need to look at everything we have in the arts as a common good that we need to collectively take care of. Often, at the beginning, we talked in terms of doing as little harm as possible to the environment, not harming it, that's often how sustainable development was presented, then by doing research, and by being inspired, among other things, by what is done at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England, around circular economies, I realized that they talk about how to nourish a new reality. How do you create art that is regenerative? Art that feeds something.e38 zenith : arts as medicine to metabolize charge, my conversation with animist somatic practitioner, poet, philosopher, ecologist and clown Shante' Sojourn Zenith about reality, somatics, ecological grief, rituals, nature, performance and ecological imaginations.The intensity that's left in the systemArt is the medicine that actually allows us to metabolize charge. It allows us to metabolize trauma. It takes the intensity that's left in the system, and this goes all the way back to ritual. Art, for me, is a sort of a tributary coming off from ritual that is still sort of consensually allowed in this reality when the direct communication with nature through ritual was silenced, so it comes back to that wider river…e39 engle : the integral role of the arts in societal change, my conversation with urbanist Dr. Jayne Engle about participatory city planning, design, ecological crisis, sacred civics, artists and culture in societal and civilizational change.How change occursThe role of artists and culture is fundamental and so necessary, and we need so much more of it and not only on the side. The role of arts and culture in societal and civilizational change right now needs to be much more integral into, yes, artworks and imagination - helping us to culturally co-produce how we live and work together into the future and that means art works - but it also means artists perspectives into much more mainstream institutions, ideas, and thoughts about how change occurs.e40 frasz : integrated awakeness in daily life, my conversation with researcher and strategic thinker Alexis Frasz about ecological crisis, creative climate action, community arts, Buddhism, leadership and cross-sectoral arts practices. A lack of agencyThere is a lot of awareness and interest in making change and yet change still isn't really happening, at least not at the pace or scale that we need. It feels to me increasingly like there's not a lack of awareness, nor a lack of concern, or even a lack of willingness, but actually a lack of agency. I've been thinking a lot about the role of arts, and culture and creative practice in helping people not just wake up to the need for change, but actually undergo the entire transformational process from that moment of waking up (which you and I share a language around Buddhist practice). There's that idea that you can wake up in an instant but integrating the awakeness into your daily life is actually a process. It's an ongoing thing.e41 rae : a preparedness mindsetmy conversation with artist-researcher, facilitator and educator Jen Rae about art and emergency preparedness, community arts, reality, ecological grief, arts and climate emergency in Australia How artists step upThe thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.e42 rosen : when he climate threat becomes real, my conversation with architect Mark Rosen about what is enough, green buildings, how to change the construction industry, barriers and constraints in finding solutions to the climate crisis and deferred ecological debt.The idea of enoughThe idea of enough is very interesting to me. The idea that the planet doesn't have enough for us on our current trajectory is at the heart of that. The question of whether the planet has enough for everyone on the planet, if we change the way we do things is an interesting way. Can we sustain seven, eight, nine billion people on the planet if everyone's idea of enough was balanced with that equation? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I think that if we've shown nothing else as a species, as humans, it's adaptability and resiliency and when forced to, we can do surprisingly monumental things and changes when the threat becomes real to us.ConstraintsOne of the things that I find very interesting in my design process as an architect is that if you were to show me two possible building sites, one that is a green field wide open, with nothing really influencing the site flat, easy to build, and then you show me a second site that is a steep rock face with an easement that you can't build across. Inevitably, it seems to be that the site with more constraints results in a more interesting solution and the idea that constraints can be of benefit to the creative process is one that I think you can apply things that, on the surface, appear to be barriers instead of constraints. Capitalism, arguably, is one of those, if we say we can't do it because it costs too much, we're treating it as a barrier, as opposed to us saying the solution needs to be affordable, then it becomes a constraint and we can push against constraints and in doing so we can come up with creative solutions and so, one way forward, is to try and identify these things that we feel are preventing us from doing what we know we need to do and bringing them into our process as constraints, that influence where we go rather than prevent us from going where we need to go.e43 haley: climate as a cultural issue my conversation with British ecoartist David Haley about ecoart, climate change as a cultural issue, speaking truth to power, democracy, regeneration, morality, creating space and listening.Deep questions and listeningClimate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.A regenerative way of doing and thinkingGoing back to reality, one of the issues that we are not tackling is that we're taking a dystopian view upon individual activities that creates guilt, syndromes, and neuroses which of course means that the systems of power are working and in terms of actually addressing the power - of speaking truth to power - we need to name the names, we need to name Standard Oil, IG Farben who now call themselves ESSO, Chevron, Mobil, DuPont, BP, Bayer, Monsanto BASF, Pfizer and so on. These are the people that control the governments that we think we're voting for and the pretense of democracy that follows them. Until those organizations actually rescind their power to a regenerative way of doing and thinking, we're stuffed, to put pretty bluntly.Create the space for life to move onwardsWhat I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.e44 bilodeau : the arts are good at changing culture, my conversation with playwright and climate activist Chantal Bilodeau about theatre, cultural climate action, the role of art in the climate emergency and how to build audiences and networksLet's think about it togetherI think of the arts as planting a seed and activism as being the quickest way you can get from A to B. So activism is like, this is what we're going to do. We have to do it now. This is a solution. This is what we're working towards and there's all kinds of different solutions, but it's about action. The arts are not about pushing any one solution or telling people, this is what you need to do. It is about saying here's a problem. Let's think about it together. Let's explore avenues we could take. Let's think about what it means and what it means, not just, should I drive a car or not, but what it means, as in, who are we on this earth and what is our role? How do we fit in the bigger ecosystem of the entire planet? I think the arts are something very good to do that and they are good at changing a culture.e45 abbott : a compassionate, just and sustainable world, my conversation with filmmaker Jennifer Abbott about her film The Magnitude of all Things, reality, zen, compassion, grief, art and how to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world.Untangling the delusionThe notion of reality and the way we grasp reality as humans is so deeply subjective, but it's also socially constructed, and so, as a filmmaker - and this is relevant because I'm also a Zen Buddhist - from both those perspectives, I try to explore what we perceive as reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being diluted? And in what ways do we have clear vision? And obviously the clearer vision we can have, the better actions we take to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world. I'm all for untangling the delusion while admitting wholeheartedly that to untangle it fully is impossible.We're headed for some catastropheIn terms of why people are so often unable to accept the reality of climate change, I think it's very understandable, because the scale and the violence of it is just so vast, it's difficult to comprehend. It's also so depressing and enraging if one knows the politics behind it and overwhelming. I don't think we, as a species, deal with things that have those qualities very well and we tend to look away. I have a lot of compassion, including for myself, in terms of how difficult it is to come to terms with the climate catastrophe. It is the end of the world as we know it. We don't know what exactly the new world is going to look like, but we do know we're headed for some catastrophe. e46 badham : creating artistic space to think, my conversation with Dr Marnie Badham about art and social justice practice Australia and Canada, research on community-engaged arts, cultural measurement, education and how the arts create space for people to think through issues such as the climate emergency.There's a lot that the arts can doI think going forward, there's a lot that the arts can do. Philosophically art is one of the only places that we can still ask these questions, play out politics and negotiate ideas. Further, art isn't about communicating climate disaster, art is about creating space for people to think through some of these issues.e47 keeptwo : reconciliation to heal the earth, my conversation with Indigenous writer, editor, teacher and journalist Suzanne Keeptwo about Indigenous rights and land acknowledgements, arts education, cultural awareness and the role of art in the climate emergency.Original AgreementIn the work that I do and the book that I've just had published called, We All Go Back to the Land, it's really an exploration of that Original Agreement and what it means today. So I want to remind Indigenous readers of our Original Agreement to nurture and protect and honor and respect the Earth Mother and all of the gifts that she has for us and then to introduce that Original Agreement to non-indigenous Canadians or others of the world that so that we can together, as a human species, work toward what I call the ultimate act of reconciliation to help heal the earth.é48 danis : l'art durable (in French), my conversation with author and multidisciplinary artist Daniel Danis on sustainable art, consciousness, dreams, storytelling, territory, nature, disaster and the role of art in the ecological transitionImages of our shared ecology are bornIt's like saying that we make art, but it's an art that, all of a sudden, just like that, is offered. We don't try to show it, rather, we try to experience something and to make people experience things and therefore, without being in the zone of cultural mediation, but to be in a zone of experiences, of exchanges and therefore that I don't control. For example, in the theatre, a bubble in which I force the spectator to look and to focus only on what I am telling them, how can we tell ourselves about the planet? How can we tell ourselves about our terrestrial experiences, where we share a place between branches, clay, repair bandages and traces of the earth on a canvas or ourselves lying on the earth? No matter, all the elements that one could bring as possible traces of a shareable experience are present, and from there, all of a sudden, images of our shared ecology are born.Art must emit wavesFor me, a manifestation of art must emit waves and it is not seen, it is felt and therefore it requires the being - those who participate with me in my projects or myself on the space that I will manifest these objects there - to be in a porosity of my body that allows that there are waves that occur and necessarily, these waves the, mixed with the earth and that a whole set, we are in cooperation. It is sure that it has an invisible effect which is the wave, and which is the wave of sharing, of sharing, not even of knowledge, it is just the sharing of our existence on earth and how to be co-operators?e49 windatt : holistic messages, my conversation with Indigenous artist Clayton Windatt of about visual arts, Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, the arts and social change, communications, artists rights, the climate emergency and hope.Make a changeWhat if you tasked the arts sector with how to make messages, not about the crisis, but on the shifts in behavior that are necessary on a more meaningful basis. When the pandemic began and certain products weren't on the shelves at grocery stores, but there was still lots of stuff. There were shortages, but there wasn't that much shortage. How much would my life really change if half the products in the store were just not here, right and half of them didn't come from all over in the world? Like they were just: whatever made sense to have it available here and just having less choice. How terrible would that be: kind of not. How can we change behavior on a more holistic level, and have it stick, because that's what we need to do right now, and I think the arts would be a great vehicle to see those messages hit everybody and make a change.e50 newton : imagining the future we want, my conversation with climate activist Teika Newton about climate justice, hope, science, nature, resilience, inter-connections and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.There are no limitsThere are so many amazing people across this country who are helping to make change and are holding such a powerful vision for what the future can be. We get trapped in thinking about the paradigm limit in which we currently live, we put bounds on what feels like reality and what feels possible. There are no limits, and the arts helps us to push against that limited set of beliefs and helps us to remember that the way that we know things to be right now is not fixed. We can imagine anything. We can imagine the future we want.We need to love the things around usI see that there are a lot of ways in which people in my community use the landscape in a disrespectful way. Not considering that that's someone's home and that a wild place is not just a recreational playground for humans. It's not necessarily a source of wealth generation. It's actually a living, breathing entity and a home to other things and a home to us as well. I find that all really troubling that there is that disconnection and it sometimes does make me despair about the future course that we're on. You know, if we can't take care of the place that sustains us, if we can't live with respect for not just our human neighbours, but our wilderness neighbors, I don't know how well we're going to fare in the future. We need to love the things around us in order to care for them.Feel connected to othersHaving the ability to come together as a community and participate in the collective act of creating and expressing through various media, whether that's song, the written word, poetry, painting, mosaic or mural making, so many different ways of expressing, I think are really, really valuable for keeping people whole grounded, mentally healthy and to feel connected to others. It's the interconnection among people that will help us to survive in a time of crisis. The deeper and more complex the web of connections, the better your chances of resilience.e51 hiser : the emotional wheel of climate, my conversation with educator Dr. Krista Hiser on research about climate education, post-apocalyptic and cli-fi literature, musical anthems, ungrading, art as an open space and the emotional wheel of the climate emergency.Help them see that realityWhat motivates me is talking to students in a way that they're not going to come back to me in 10 years with this look on their face, you know, Dr. Hiser, why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't you tell me? I want to be sure that they're going to leave the interaction that we get to have that they're going to leave with at least an idea that someone tried to help them see that reality.The last open spaceThe art space is maybe the last open space where that boxiness and that rigidity isn't as present.Knowledge intermediariesThe shift is that faculty are really no longer just experts. They are knowledge brokers or knowledge intermediaries. There's so much information out there. It's so overwhelming. There are so many different realities that faculty need to interact with this information and create experiences that translate information for students so that students can manage their own information.Not getting stuck in the griefThere's a whole range of emotions around climate emergency, and not getting stuck in the grief. Not getting stuck in anger. A lot of what we see of youth activists and in youth activism is that they get kind of burned out in anger and it's not a sustainable emotion. But none of them are emotions that you want to get stuck in. When you get stuck in climate grief, it is hard to get unstuck, so moving through all the different emotions — including anger and including hope — and that idea of an anthem and working together, those are all part of the emotion wheel that exists around climate change.e52 mahtani : listening and connecting, my conversation with composer Dr. Annie Mahtani about music, sound art, the climate emergency, listening, nature, uncertainty, festivals, gender parity and World Listening DayThat doesn't mean we should give upIf we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up. Exploration of our soundscapesFor the (BEAST) festival we wanted to look at what COVID has done to alter and adjust people's practice, the way that composers and practitioners have responded to the pandemic musically or through listening and also addressing the wider issues: what does it mean going forwards after this year, the year of uncertainty, the year of opportunity for many? What does it mean going forward to our soundscape, to our environmental practice and listening? We presented that goal for words, as a series of questions, you know, not expecting necessarily any answers, but a way in a way to address it and a way to explore and that's what the, the weekend of concerts and talks and workshops was this kind of exploration of our soundscapes, thinking about change and thinking about our future.e53 kalmanovitch : nurturing imagination, my conversation with musician Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch about music, ethnomusicology, alberta tar sands, arts education, climate emergency, arts policy and how artistic practice can nurture imaginationThe content inside a silenceOne of the larger crises we face right now is actually a crisis of failure of imagination and one of the biggest things we can do in artistic practice is to nurture imagination. It is what we do. It's our job. We know how to do that. We know how to trade in uncertainty and complexity. We understand the content inside a silence, it's unlocking and speaking to ways of knowing and being and doing that when you start to try to talk about them in words, it is really challenging because it ends up sounding like bumper stickers, like ‘Music Builds Bridges'. I have a big problem with universalizing discourses in the arts, as concealing structures of imperialism and colonialism.GriefNormal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community ofcare. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act inthe fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.StorytellingMy idea is that there's a performance, which is sort of my offering, but then there's also a series of participatory workshops where community members can sound their own stories about where we've come from, how they're living today and the future in which they wish to live, what their needs are, what their griefs are. So here, I'm thinking about using oral history and storytelling as a practice that promotes ways of knowing, doing and healing … with storytelling as a sort of a participatory and circulatory mechanism that promotes healing. I have so much to learn from indigenous storytelling practices. Nature as musicWe are all every one of us musicians. When youchoose what song you wake up to on your alarm or use music to set a mood. You sing a catchy phrase to yourself or you sing a child asleep: you're making musical acts. Then extend that a little bit beyond that anthropocentric lens and hear a bird as a musician, a creek as a musician and that puts us into that intimate relationship with the environment again.AlbertaI guess this is plea for people to not think aboutoil sands issues as being Alberta issues, but as those being everyone everywhere issues, and not just because of the ecological ethical consequences ofthe contamination of the aquifer, what might happen if 1.4 trillion liters of toxic process water, if the ponds holding those rupture, what might happen next…That story will still be there, that land and the people, the animals and the plants, all those relationships will still be imperiled, right? So to remember, first of all, that it's not just an Alberta thing and that the story doesn't end just because Teck pulled it's Frontier mining proposal in February, 2020. The story always goes on. I want to honor the particular and the power of place and at the same time I want touplift the idea that we all belong to that place.e54 garrett : empowering artists, my conversation with theatre artist Ian Garrett about ethics, theatre, education, role of art in Climate Emergency, Sustainability in Digital Transformation & carbon footprint of Cultural Heritage sector. Complete guarantee of extinctionI don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.A pile of burning tiresThe extreme thought experiment that I like to use in a performance context is: if you had a play in which the audience left with their minds changed about all of their activities, you could say that that is positive. But, if the set that it took place on was a pile of burning tires – which is an objectively bad thing to do for the environment – there is a conversation by framing it as an arts practice as to is there value in having that impact, because of the greater impact. And those sorts of complexities have sort of defined the fusion and different approaches in which to take; it's not just around metrics.Individual values towards sustainabilityThe intent of it [the Julie's Bicycle Creative Green Tools] is not like LEED in which you are getting certified because you have come up with a precise carbon footprint. It's a tool for, essentially, decision-making in that artistic context, that if you know this information, then you have a better way to consider critically the way that you are making and what you're making and how you are representing your values and those aspects, regardless of whether or not it is explicitly part of the work. And so there's lots of tools in which I've had the opportunity to have a relationship with which that are really about empowering artists, arts makers, arts collectives to be able to make those decisions so that their individual values towards sustainability – regardless of what they're actually making – can also be represented and that they can make choices that best represent those regardless of whether or not they're explicitly creating something for ‘earth day'.The separation of the artist from the personThe separation of the artist from the person and articulating as a profession is a unique thing, whereas an alternative to that could just be that we are expressive and artistic beings that seeks to create and have different talents but turning that into a profession is something that we've done to ourselves and so while we do that, we exist within systems, our cultural organizations exist within systems, that have impacts much farther outside of it so that a systems analysis approach is really important.é55 trépanier : un petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste (in French), my  conversation with indigenous artist France Trépanier about colonialism, indigenous cultures, ecological transition, time, art, listening, dreams, imagination and this brief moment…The responsibility to maintain harmonious relationshipsI think that with this cycle of colonialism, and what it has brought, that we are coming to the end of this century, and with hindsight, we will realize that it was a very small moment in a much larger space, and that we are returning to very deep knowledge. What does it mean to live here on this planet? What does it mean to have the possibility, but also the responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships? I say that the solution to the climate crisis is ‘cardiac'. It will go through the heart. We are talking about love of the planet. That's the work.Terra nulliusFor me, the challenge of the ecological issue or the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves is to understand the source of the problem and not just to put a band-aid on it, not just to try to make small adjustments to our ways of living, but to really look at the very nature of the problem. For me, I think that something happened at the moment of contact, at the moment when the Europeans arrived. They arrived with this notion of property. They talked about Terra Nullius, the idea that they could appropriate territories that were 'uninhabited' (I put quotation marks on uninhabited) and I think that was our first collision of worldviews.Eurocentric vision of artistic practicesIf we take a longer-term view of how the eurocentric view of artistic practices have imposed itself on the material practices of world cultures, this is going to be a very small moment in history. The idea of disciplines, the way in which the Eurocentric vision imposed categories and imposed a certain elitism of practices. The way it also declassified the material culture of the First Nations, or it was not possible, it was not art. Art objects became either artifacts or crafts. It was completely declassified, we didn't understand. I think the first people who came here didn't understand what was in front of them.The real tragedyThe artist Mike MacDonald was telling a story, Mike, who is a Mi'kmaq artist, who is with us now, but who has done remarkable work, a new media artist, he was telling a story once about one of the elders in his community, he was saying that the real tragedy of Canada, it's not that people have been prevented from speaking their language. The real tragedy is that the newcomers have not adopted the cultures here. So 'there have been great misunderstandings. Rewriting the worldI don't think we need to rewrite anything at all. I think we just need to pay attention and listen. We just need to shut up a little bit for a while. Because it's in the notion of authoring there is the word 'author' which presupposes the word authority and I'm not sure that's what we need right now. I think it's the opposite. I think we need to change our relationship to authority. We need to deconstruct that idea when we're being the decision makers or the masters of anything. I don't think that's the right approach. I think you have to listen. I'm not saying that we shouldn't imagine - I think that imagination is important in this attentive listening - but to think that we are going to rewrite is perhaps a little pretentious.é56 garoufalis-auger : surmonter les injustices (in French), my conversation with activist Anthony Garoufalis-Auger about sacrifice, injustices, strategies, activism, youth, art, culture, climate emergency and disaster SacrificeIt's going to take sacrifice and it's going to take a huge commitment to change things, so maybe getting out of our comfort zone will be necessary at this point in history. What's interesting is looking at the past and the history of humanity. It has taken a lot of effort to change things, but at least we have examples in history where we have come together to overcome injustices. We need to be inspired by this.We are really heading for disasterThe people around me, the vast majority, understand where we are with climate change. There is a complete disconnect with the reality that we see in our mass culture and in the news which is not a constructed reality. What science tells us is reality. We are really heading for disaster. é57 roy : ouvrir des consciences (in French), my conversation with artist Annie Roy on socially engaged art, grief, cultural politics, nature, how to open our consciousness, the digital and the place of art in our livesThe contribution of artIs being creative also about getting away from the world, pure to the source as it is, rather than just accepting that we're small and we should go back to the basics? I don't know if art brings us back to the essential versus brings us back to drifting completely. Maybe creativity or creation takes us so far away that we imagine ourselves living on Mars in a kind of platform that doesn't look like anything, or we won't need the birds, then the storms, then the this and that. We will have recreated a universe from scratch where it is good to live. That could be the contribution of art. I don't like this art too much.Opening consciousness If we are in reality and then we say to ourselves in the current world, it is necessary that it insufflate desire and power towards a better future. But it is not the artist who is going to decide and then that disturbs me. It bothers me to have a weight on my shoulders, to change the world while not having the power to do it, real. The power I have is to open consciousness, to see dreams in the minds of others and to instill seeds of possibility for a future.On the back of artThe artist is a being who lives in his contemporaneity, who absorbs the 'poop' in everything that happens and tries to transform it into something beautiful, then powerful for a springboard to go towards better. But we could leave it at that, in the sense that people, how do they use art in their lives? The artist may have all his wills, but what is the place of the art that we make in our lives? Because they are between four walls, in a museum or in very specific places. It's not always integrated into the flow of the day as something supernatural. It's a framed moment that we give away like we consume anything else. Then, if you consume art like anything else, like you go to the spa or you go shopping and then you buy a new pair of pants and then it feels good to have gone to a play. Wasn't that good? Yeah, it's cool but it's not going to go any further than anything other than a nice thrill that's going to last two or three hours and then you're going to get in your Hummer and go home all the same. I think that's putting a lot on the back of art.e58 huddart : the arts show us what is possible, my conversation with Stephen Huddart about dematerialization, nature, culture, capital, supporting grassroots activity, innovation and how the arts can show us what is possible.Existential crisisThis is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.DematerializationI think we have to more broadly, dematerialize and move from a more material culture to some more spiritual culture, a culture that is able to enjoy being here, that experiences an evolutionary shift towards connection with nature, with all of that it entails with the human beings and the enjoyment and celebration of culture and so I think those two perspectives that the arts have an essential and so important and yet difficult challenge before them.Gabrielle RoyLet's just say that on the previous $20 bill, there's a quote from Gabrielle Roy. It's in micro-type, but it basically says : 'how could we have the slightest chance of knowing each other without the arts'. That struck me when I read that and thought about the distances, that have grown up between us, the polarization, the prejudices, all of those things, and how the arts create this bridge between peoples, between lonely people, between dreamers and all people and that the arts have that ability to link us together in a very personal and profound and important ways. Capital A lot of my time is really now on how do we influence capital flows? How do we integrate the granting economy with all that it has and all of its limits with the rest of the economy: pension funds, institutional investors of various kinds, family offices and so on, because we need all of these resources to be lining up and integrated in a way that can enable grassroots activity to be seen, supported, nurtured, linked to the broader systems change that we urgently need, and that takes the big capital moving so that's a space that I'm currently exploring and I'm looking for ways to have that conversation.e59 pearl : positive tipping points, my conversation with arts organiser Judi Pearl about theatre, climate emergency, collaboration, arts leadership, intersection of arts and sustainability and the newly formed Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE)That gathering placeIt's (SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.é60 boutet : a la recherche d'un esprit collectif (in French), my conversation with arts practice researcher Dr. Danielle Boutet on ecological consciousness, reality, activism, grief, art as a way of life, innovation and spiritualityUnconsciousCollectively, we are unconscious. We try to talk about ecological consciousness. If there is a collective psyche, which I believe there is, I do think there is a kind of collective mind, but it is a mind that is unconscious, that is not capable of seeing itself, of reflecting and therefore not capable of meditating, not capable of transforming itself, and therefore subject to its fears and its impulses. I am quite pessimistic about this, in the sense that ecological grief, all grief and all fear is repressed at the moment. There are activists shouting in the wilderness, screaming, and people are listening, but in a fog. It is not enough to bring about collective action. Therefore, our grieving is far from being done, collectively.Changing our relationship to nature We need to change our relationship to nature, our way of relating to others, and it's not the generalizing science that's going to tell us, it's this kind of science of the singular and the experience of each person. For me, it is really a great field of innovation, of research and I see that the artists go in this direction. You know, you and I have been watching the changes in the art world since the 1990s. I see it through the artists who talk about it more and more and integrate their reflection in their approach. How art can help humans evolveI hear a lot of people calling for artists to intervene and of artists also saying that something must be done, etc. I think that art is not a good vehicle for activism. I'm really sorry for all the people who are interested in this. I don't want to shock anyone, but sometimes it can risk falling into propaganda or ideology or a kind of facility that I am sorry about, in the sense that I think art can do so much more than that and go so much deeper than that. Art can help humans to evolve. It is at this level that I think that we can really have an action, but I think that we have always had this action, and it is a question of doing it again and again and again.e61sokoloski: from research to action, my conversation with arts leader Robin Sokoloski about cultural research, arts policy, climate emergency, community-engaged arts, creative solution making and how to create equitable and inclusive organizational structuresConnections to truly impact policyI think that there needs to be greater capacity within the art sector for research to action. When I say that the art sector itself needs to be driving policy. We need to have the tools, the understanding, the training, the connections to truly impact policy and one thing that Mass Cultureis really focused on at the moment is how do we first engage the sector in what are the research priorities and what needs to be investigated together and what that process looks like, but then how do you then take that research create it so that it drives change.Creative Solution MakingI'm very curious to see what the arts can do to convene us as a society around particular areas of challenges and interests that we're all feeling and needing to face. I think it's about bringing the art into a frame where we could potentially provide a greater sense of creative solution making instead of how we are sometimes viewed, which is art on walls or on stages. I think there's much more potential than that to engage the arts in society.Organizational StructuresWe do have the power as human beings to change human systems and so I think I'm very curious of working with people who are like-minded and who want to operate differently. I often use the organizational structure as an example of that because it is, as we all know is not a perfect model. We complain about it often and yet we always default to it. How can we come together, organize and, and bring ideas to life in different ways by changing that current system, make it more equitable, make it more inclusive, find ways of bringing people in and not necessarily having them commit, but have them come touch and go when they need to and I feel as though there'll be a more range of ideas brought to the table and just a more enriching experience and being able to bring solutions into reality by thinking of how our structures are set up and how we could do those things differently.  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Ben Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a Culture of Consumerism to a Culture of Stewardship, and we are the culture makers, so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture? And it will take all of us as artists together to do that…  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive? I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.kendra fanconi, conscient podcast, April 19, 2021, British ColumbiaI've known Kendra for many years, first through her work with Radix Theatre then as an arts and environment advocate in the community, notably through The Only Animal, which she co-founded in 2005 and which has created over 30 shows that ‘take theatre places it has never gone before'. I've always admired Kendra's vision, her calm demeanour, her strategic mind, and deep commitment to environment issues, as you'll hear on our conversation, which recorded remotely between Ottawa and her home on the Sunshine Coast. As I did with all episodes this season, I have integrated excerpts from previous episodes in this case, from e19 reality in this episode. I would like to thank Kendra for taking the time to speak with me, for sharing her deep knowledge of arts and environment practices, her generosity of spirit and her passion for the mobilization of artists in climate emergency. For more information on Kendra's work, see https://www.theonlyanimal.com/Kendra in the field... *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

This podcast features recordings made at the Green Tease event COP Tales and Cocktails, which brought together people from a wide range of arts, sustainability, campaigning, and policy organisations to have a few drinks and discuss plans for creative engagement with COP26 when it comes to Glasgow in November 2020. The podcast starts with an introduction from Ben Twist, director of Creative Carbon Scotland, who discusses his previous experience of COPs in Copenhagen and Paris and offers some advice on what the barriers tend to be and what makes for the most effective work. This is followed by some thoughts from Chris Fremantle of ecoartscotland. Chris also led a performance of an extract from environmental artists Helen and Newton Harrison's Lagoon Cycle poem, which is not included in the podcast but can be read on their website. This is followed by elevator pitches from organisations and individuals who are already making plans for COP26. In order of appearance these are: Stop Climate Chaos, Manchester Science Festival, Glasgow National Park City, Creative Climate Symposium, Ellie Harrison, artist and activist, RSPB, Edinburgh Data Visualisation Meetup Group. These recordings are being made available so that those who were unable to make it on the night due to distance, weather, or inability to get a ticket can still hear about what is being planned and get involved. Further information is available on our website at https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/green-tease-cop-tales-and-cocktails/. For more information, please get in touch with lewis.coenen-rowe@creativecarbonscotland.com.

Produced in association with Headstuff Podcast Network, the Culture Night Podcast delves into different facets of culture and the arts, with some leading thinkers, doers and makers exploring the ways in which our cultural heritage enhances our experiences. In this episode, chaired by Emma Gleeson, we explore sustainability in the arts and creative industries. Joining Emma are Catríona Fallon, Maeve Stone, Clodagh O’Reilly and Clare O’Connor. Catríona Fallon was responsible for initiating the Greening Siamsa initiative in Siamsa Tire and is a co-founder of the Green Arts Initiative in Ireland with Theatre Forum, supported by Creative Carbon Scotland.  Catríona is also a founder member of Kerry Climate Action Network and a board member of Kerry Sustainable Energy Co-op.  She currently works with Siamsa Tíre part-time as their Visual Arts Curator. Maeve Stone is an artist and activist working in theatre and film. As part of a new EU-funded project, Cultural Adaptations, she will serve as an ‘embedded’ artist within both Codema (Dublin’s Energy Agency set up by Dublin City Council in 1997) and axis:Ballymun over 2019 – 2020. Clodagh O’Reilly is Executive Director of ReCreate Ireland. ReCreate is a social enterprise that works to inspire curiosity, creativity and care for the environment. Working with over 280 Irish companies, they work to inspire creativity by giving unused excess materials another life. Clare O’Connor is the Sustainability Officer with Native Events, Ireland’s leading sustainable event production company. Emma Gleeson is a professional declutterer with a sustainable twist. She is currently writing a book with Penguin Ireland about our  consumer society and how leading a more mindful material life can make for calmer, more joyful and more sustainable households  Find her on Instagram @stuffhappensemma Culture Night is an annual all-island public event that celebrates culture, creativity and the arts. This year, it takes place on Friday 20th of September.

We joined Dr Matt Brennan for the launch of his new music venture Citizen Bravo's debut album 'Build A Thing of Beauty' as part of the Green Tease events programme. The evening also launched a research film project directed by Graeme O’Hara titled The Cost Of Music; and a demonstration of an interactive musical sculpture known as the SCI★FI★HI★FI, which forms the only physical copy of the new album. We took the opportunity afterwards to interview some of the participants at the event, as well as on of the makers of the SCI★FI★HI★FI, about their views on the role of music in tackling the climate crisis! Build A Thing of Beauty draws on musical influences ranging from Jonathan Richman to Robert Wyatt, Brennan recorded the album with the help of friends including Andy Monaghan (Frightened Rabbit), Malcolm Benzie (Withered Hand), Raymond MacDonald (Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra), and Pete Harvey (Modern Studies). Brennan also found inspiration in scavenging and manipulating orphaned samples from antique recording formats and integrating them into his songs. The short film The Cost Of Music documents Matt’s journey making the album: disillusioned by prevailing attitudes about the disposability of new music and the decline of physical formats, Matt set out to record his own songs and release them in an unusual way: not so much a ‘concept album’ as a musical sculpture that explores the concept of albums as historical artefacts. In doing so, he discovers how the cost of listening to records has changed over the past century: while the economic cost of listening to one’s choice of recorded music has never been lower, the environmental cost has never been higher. While the album will be available for online streaming, the sole physical copy of the album is a one-off interactive musical sculpture called the SCI★FI★HI★FI. Built in collaboration an electronics engineer (Peter Reid) and metal worker (Mark Reynolds), the SCI★FI★HI★FI is what its name suggests: a science-fiction inspired hi-fi system that can play seven of the most historically significant recording formats (Edison wax cylinder, 78 rpm disc, vinyl LP, cassette tape, compact disc, mp3 on hard drive, and streaming remotely from the cloud). To listen to the album Build A Thing Of Beauty via the SCI★FI★HI★FI is to make sense of recorded music not as a fixed, frozen object but as an historical event unfolding over time. How was recorded music valued before the advent of albums, and how might it be valued after albums are gone? This is the third podcast from Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease network & events programme, to share any feedback please contact gemma.lawrence@creativecarbonscotland.com. To find out more about the Green Tease programme and and joining the network, visit the Creative Carbon Scotland website. The backing track for the podcast is of course an instrumental of the title song from the album Build A Thing of Beauty by Citizen Bravo.

This podcast was produced by Madeleine Jordan to help provide a deeper understanding of the Burnie Journey project. The interviews, recordings and production took place as part of a work placement with Creative Carbon Scotland from the Edinburgh College of Art. The Burnie Journey research project explores how adopting a creative approach to engagement could be taken by Scotland’s flooding authorities to effectively raise levels of flood awareness and preparedness in flood risk communities. Unlike traditional forms of public engagement, this project sought the skills and expertise of a creative practitioner to design and facilitate a number of engagement workshops on flooding and local flood risk management on behalf of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). The project was funded through SEPA’s internal Research and Development Fund and was managed by SEPA’s Flooding Communications and Customer Services team. SEPA commissioned Creative Carbon Scotland to help shape and develop this project using their knowledge of the cultural sector and experience of connecting environmental and climate change organisations with those working in the arts. Creative Carbon Scotland was instrumental in bridging the gap between SEPA and project artist, Simon Gall. The project was also supported by Aberdeen City Council’s Structures, Flooding and Coastal Engineering team who provided local flooding knowledge and community contacts. To find out more about the project, visit the Floodline Scotland web-page: floodlinescotland.org.uk/creative-engagement. To find out more about our wider culture/SHIFT work visit our project page: https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/project/cultureshift

‘Biosystems – Cli-Fi: The New Weird’ is the latest project from A+E, a collective of creative practitioners who run a monthly reading group series, focusing on ecological themes and offering a lively environment to explore the pains, pleasures, problems and potentials of the fraught era we live in. Dr Rhys Williams, Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Research Fellow in Fantasy Literature (English Literature) at the University of Glasgow. The event was supported with funding and staff time through Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease Open Call. This is the second podcast from the Green Tease network & events programme, to share any feedback please contact gemma.lawrence@creativecarbonscotland.com. To find out more about the Green Tease programme and joining the network, visit the Creative Carbon Scotland website.

Can art get people travelling by bike, by foot, by other means of sustainable transport? This podcast on Arts & Active Travel is introduced by Gemma Lawrence, CultureSHIFT Producer at Creative Carbon Scotland with presentations from Cosmo Blake, Arts & Diversity Officer at Sustrans Scotland and Ben Spencer, independent Arts consultant. The first podcast from Creative Carbon Scotland's Green Tease network & events programme, to share any feedback please contact gemma.lawrence@creativecarbonscotland.com. To find out more about the Green Tease programme and and joining the network, visit the Creative Carbon Scotland website.

Dr Emily Taylor and Jayne Murdoch talk to Tabi Jayne about sustainable projects being run by the Crichton Carbon Centre. Emily and Jayne share the benefits of the Refill project and the impact of plastic bottles on individuals, organisations and the planet. They also speak about the benefits of peatlands and restoring them. Dr Emily Taylor leads the Land Management programme at the Crichton Carbon Centre. Originally from the Isle of Coll, off the west coast of Scotland, Emily’s passion is the countryside and the sustainable management of our natural environment. She has a BSc from St Andrews University in Marine Environmental Biology, a MSc in Carbon Management and a PhD with Edinburgh University and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology which focuses on the impact of management practices on the carbon dynamics of peatlands. Jayne Murdoch was a consultant for The Crichton Carbon Centre assisting businesses to comply with ESOS reporting and with Creative Carbon Scotland helping their funded organisations to report and reduce their carbon emissions. She is currently running the Refill D&G campaign to reduce the amount of plastic water bottles used in Dumfries and Galloway. The Crichton Carbon Centre is an independent, not-for-profit, applied research body which is focused on the challenges and benefits of transitioning to a low carbon society. It focuses on three key areas: rural land management, rural sustainable development and innovative forms of renewable energy. If you enjoyed this episode then listen to Angelika Konko talk about the benefits of forests. Additional Information: + carboncentre.org + refill.org.uk Download the Refill Better app for your apple or android phone.