Sketch by Meg McKenzie
History was made (depending on your perspective) at the Roundhouse on Monday, with the Culture Declares Emergency Assembly.
Culture Declares Emergency is a growing community of creative practitioners and organisations concerned about the dire state of our living planet, launched in April 2019. This big gathering was made possible by the generous support of the Gulbenkian Foundation, and by the Roundhouse – who declared Emergency on the day – being generous in their hosting.
The event was timed to be part of London Climate Action Week, and on the same day, Olafur Eliasson’s retrospective opened at Tate Modern. Eliasson says: “We Are Living in a Climate Emergency…We need to re-imagine and re-engineer the systems that brought us to where we are. We need to take risks. We don’t have a choice. The future has to be different from the past.” Our hunch is that inviting people to declare Emergency, and forming a learning community to support thought and action beyond the act of declaration, can help the Cultural sector with that task of re-imagining the future.
Over 300 people were at the assembly, in what used to be a turning place for trains, to discuss the role of Arts & Culture in turning round from this Climate & Ecological Emergency. So, in this round place, there were thirty-eight circles of white chairs, a setting to allow for facing each other. It may not be surprising then that the strongest theme arising was about how we engage inclusively with our communities.
Sketch by Meg McKenzie (circles of discussion)
Discussion formed the core of the day, but it was rich with embodied and creative elements. There were tables covered with curious and ordinary objects, later held in hands for face-to-face conversations.
There were pink banners and printed pink swallow patches. There was a making area for those preferring to express themselves visually. There was a ‘regen’ space for those who needed time out and care, given the subject to be discussed.
The afternoon opened with a procession of bell ringers to the sound piece composed by Mira Calix for our launch in April.
Sam Lee at the end of the procession
There was a lot more sonic art and music. There were spoken word pieces from Roundhouse young artists including Rakaya Fetuga and Awate Sulieman. Later, a sound piece by Sarah Nicholls with Greta Thunberg’s voice caused profound reflection. There was a moment of silence to listen to endangered birds. And at the end, there was a shared song about trees led by the lovely (unknown, to me) singer in this photo.
There were prompts – by facilitators Tamsin Omond, Lucy Neal, Kay Michael and Ruth Ben-Tovim – to connect with our emotions, with wild nature, with each other.
There was a mapping of where people came from, what they cared about, how they felt. Many more stood up to say they felt despair than stood to say they were optimistic about the future. One had come from the North, many had come from London. Many had signed with us to declare. A surprisingly large number had joined an Extinction Rebellion action.
There were speakers including Rupert Read, Paul Allen, Farhana Yamin, Sholeh Johnston, and Zuneira Malik (from Action for Conservation) who challenged us with insights into why the emergency is happening, visions of what might happen if nothing is done, and later visions of what could be if we take this moment to change.
I want to pick up on some of these provocations, and I’m sorry that I can’t do everyone justice. In particular, I’m not doing justice to the younger speakers and performers, but perhaps another blogpost can aim to do this.
Rupert Read said that things are almost certainly worse than we think they are. See this interview about his new co-authored book, in This Civilisation is Finished. I share his assessment that there are three main future scenarios: 1) Total civilisation breakdown with extinction/near-extinction of humanity 2) The seeding of a future successor civilisation as this one collapses, with multiple megadeaths or 3) The unprecedented, radical & rapid transformation of civilisation to avert this collapse. I share Rupert’s view that virtually everyone in the environmental movement is fixated on the third scenario, unwilling to consider anything else.
I’m involved in Culture Declares because I see Arts & Culture as a community that might open up willingness to imagine all possible scenarios. If you don’t entertain the possibilities around scenarios one and two, any work towards scenario three will be too much based on precedent, too conservative and too slow. I don’t want to stop people focusing on scenario 3, but to ensure that it is informed by the emotions, truths and consciousness involved in considering scenarios 1 and 2. This is behind the work I do on being Possitopian.
Paul Allen’s contribution was an imaginative piece of ‘evidence-based optimism’ towards the third kind of future scenario. He drew on solutions included in CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain He described how you tackle complex, non-linear, accelerating problems with regenerative multi-solving approaches that follow the same pattern in a positive way: Scaling-up deployment leads to new research into manufacturing, which in turn leads to price drops, leading to more scaling-up etc. These solutions have knock-on benefits and cost-savings in health, biodiversity, job creation, increased democracy and resilience to climate impacts. He asked us to imagine what we see out the Roundhouse café window at a zero-carbon London in 2035, and described these changes in detail.
Farhana Yamin, an environmental lawyer and climate justice activist said “nature is abundant, energy is abundant” but that the extractive, unequal system exacerbated by the Emergency are depriving masses of people especially in the Global South. The destructive cycle of grabbing resources without replacing them does not secure human rights, as is claimed by industrial lobbyists. It is possible to supply energy & food to everyone through micro-grids and so on. We can’t get to this rights-respecting abundant future without fundamental equalities, without embracing & recognising our humanity.
Sholeh Johnston from Library of Change (and Season for Change) dived to the roots of the issue, and in doing so, reinforced the points made by the other speakers. She talked about overcoming the deep disconnection between self, society and ecosystem. She highlighted the role of the arts in changing the narrative of the culture we are living in, rebalancing power, the importance of solidarity with colleagues on the front line of climate breakdown, and how to create the conditions for mass creative empowerment where everyone feels like they have a meaningful role to play in change.
Sandwiched around these talks, the participants held conversations in their circles of eight people.
The key question was:
In response to the climate and ecological emergency we are in, what does the cultural sector need to relinquish, what might we restore and how do we build resilience as individuals and organisations? In the light of this what kind of art and culture will we make, cherish and share?
To explain these terms, they are taken from the Deep Adaptation framework:
- Relinquish: the ways of working, consuming or thinking that we need to let go
- Restore: what we might repair, bring back, or leave intact for future generations,
- Resilience; building skills, capacities, connections or relationships.
These were summarised into key statements or questions that groups wanted to be discussed in the second round. The ideas that arose were conundrums, challenges, fresh ideas for ways to work, and some familiar chestnuts that we grapple with. The key themes were:
- Refocusing on communities and localities
- The vital importance of inclusion, and a diversity of voices
- Relinquishing power and ego
- Shifting from superheroes to collaboration
- the need for ‘rapid imperfect prototyping’.
Most of these were captured in the Twitter feed for @CultureDeclares or for the event #CDEAssembly. Also, a giant book of notes and sketches was produced at the end, which will be somehow digitised in future. It feels important to mine all of this for more insight, because there is so much systematic work to be done to embrace the full possibilities of the role of Culture (e.g. as I’ve started to sketch here). I couldn’t take part in the discussion circles as I was managing the social media and enquiries around the event, so I have missed the nuance.
Before closing, there were also invitations to share messages to the Arts Council about their Next Ten Years strategy. (See my blogpost in response to the environmental aspects of the latest strategy, which in many other aspects is a great improvement.) We also asked for suggestions on how Culture Declares Emergency can grow and be stronger together.
This event was also a chance to announce the Second Wave of declarers, i.e. those individuals and organisations who have registered since April 3rd. See the list here, updated as of July 8th https://tinyurl.com/y5rp7ns6
If you were there, or have been inspired by this account of the assembly, let us know how you found it, and please have a look at the toolkit and consider registering to declare with us.
Sketch by Meg McKenzie. Some of the spokespeople for 38 groups queuing to share their statements. Meg (aged 19) also took the photos in this post & available for download here.
The Learning Planet 