Time for Action: COP26 creative commissions

• Collaborators: HarrisonParrott (Scotland), Afghanistan National Institute of Music (Afghanistan), Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Scotland), Scottish Ballet (Scotland), Gaza Sky Geeks (Occupied Palestinian Territories), Promise Hub (Uganda)
• Climate change theme: General 

Synopsis

Creativity is at the centre of this arts and digital exchange. Centred around a Shared_Studios 'Portal' shipping container (in residence at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), it enables immersive, life-sized and life-like connections creating the sensation of being in the same room – allowing people across the world to talk, dance, play and collaborate. The portal will connect to 10 or more countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda) with the UK.  

Each country has international partner curators – from refugee camps to tech hubs  – who will engage their audiences in immersive portal-to-portal collaborations. These curators will each identify participants, organise events, facilitate dialogues and provide live language interpretation, resulting in up to 12 hours of content each week for a total of 4 months leading up to and during the COP 26 conference. Climate Portals will also engage conservatoire students and the Glasgow community more broadly. All around the theme of climate change, this could include new artistic commissions, masterclasses, and knowledge exchange in collaboration with the international partners.

• Collaborators: Design Manchester (England), Nairobi Design Week (Kenya), Standard Practice Studio (England), S!CK Festival (England)
• Climate change theme: Food

Synopsis

Doing Zero is a prototype collaboration project between two urban communities with different climate change profiles and experiences: Dagoretti Corner in western Nairobi, Kenya, and Moston and Harpurhey inner-city area in Manchester, England. Doing Zero explores the intersection between mental health, poverty and climate change in the context of food.

The project will commission local artists/designers to work alongside residents and communities to co-design locally-relevant interventions in a "green library” pop up space. The library will have a digital connection to their international partner and will be used as a space for collaboration, workshops and storytelling, supported by online engagement. Scientists and other specialists will create a baseline of information about current lifestyles, local carbon budgets and resources for the local groups. These will be reviewed alongside existing plans and policies of local and national governments of each respective area, with the aim of developing a fine grain understanding of the priorities and choices relevant to individuals, households, small businesses and community organisations.

The outcomes of Doing Zero include public art interventions, information resources, communication design and behaviour data launching during Nairobi Design Week and developed for an exhibition at Design Manchester's DM21 festival.

• Part of British Council and WWF Collaboration
• The British Council is working in partnership with WWF UK and it’s Just Imagine competition, which invited creative networks, institutions and individuals throughout the UK to reimagine a new world, inspired by the themes of the David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet film. As part of our partnership, WWF UK were a guest judge on our creative commissions shortlisting panel and selected Doing Zero to also feature as a winning project in the Just Imagine competition. Doing Zero will be part of a collection of 12 other selections which will feature in an exhibition, showcased in open air locations throughout the UK.

Find more on the British Council and WWF Collaboration

• Collaborators: Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea University (Wales), Dhaka Literature Festival (Bangladesh)
• Climate change theme: General

Synopsis

Everything Change is a programme of discussions, online screenings and live performance events taking place in Swansea, Dhaka. The focus will be creative and adaptive thinking across a spectrum of sectors and disciplines in overcoming the challenges of the climate and ecological crises to create a better future, featuring the perspectives of artists, academics, writers, scientists and crucially and communities in shared global dialogue.

Everything Change will have an action-focused approach that is interactive and addresses complex social issues and the programme will include six mini commissions through film, drama, plays and VR storytelling which consider how we can mainstream climate consciousness in our respective cultures. Showcases of the project will contribute towards the October sessions of Everything Change and in Swansea and Dhaka at the Literature Festival in January 2022.

• Collaborators: Goldsmiths University of London (England), Indian Institute of Technology Indore Simrol (India)
• Climate change theme: Melting glaciers

Synopsis

The material transformations of Himalayan glaciers due to climate change are impacting directly upon mountain communities through flood events, rainfall patterns, and temperature rise but also climate systems globally. This creative commission builds upon multi-year research exploring the many different knowledge practices that are mediated by "ice" from scientific expertise to local knowledge and indigenous traditions. 

Listening to Ice - Learning from Glaciers and Glacial Communities will be organised by five primary activities each with different acoustic approaches and audio/visual outputs: 1) Himalayan Experiment in Acoustic Research (HEAR) 2) Deep Listening to Glaciers 3) Public Hearing 4) Aural/Oral Histories of Glacial Change and 5) Listening & Learning. 

Major outcomes from Listening to Ice include a documentary film that will be screened at COP26, shown in public galleries and at film festivals, an online digital project platform with functionality for hosting a live data transmission from Drang-Drung Glacier, as well as series of interviews and podcasts.

• Collaborators: Neville Gabie, Independent Artist and Philippa Ruth Bayley, Creative Producer (England), Matthias Brenzinger, Researcher in Linguistics (South Africa), Cesar Augusto Sánchez León (Colombia)
• Climate change theme: Landscape; Nature

Synopsis

Living-Language-Land is a global conversation about the seeds of human survival in the face of devastating climate change and biodiversity loss. It will create a living lexicon - a word bank - drawn from minority and disappearing languages in relation to land and nature. Like plant and animal species, hundreds of languages are rapidly vanishing and with them genuine conceptual and practical strategies for sustainable livelihood. Living-Language-Land aims to animate world views that lie outside the English and Western dominated conversation about climate breakdown and its market-led solutions.

Working across social media, initially in English and Spanish, the project will release one word per week for the 26 weeks leading up to COP26. Each word will unfold into written, video, audio and photographic stories that connect audiences to the specific land-language associations, as well as to the environmental challenges they face. Words will also evolve into creative actions people might take in their own lives, with the opportunity to contribute and discuss new ideas.

• Collaborators: National Theatre of Scotland (Scotland), Think Arts (India)
• Climate change theme: Carbon footprint

Synopsis

Millipede is a project between National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and Think Arts. "One shoe can change your life" – Cinderella, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - Neil Armstrong. Everyone has a carbon footprint and Millipede questions what does yours look like? 

Millipede is an art installation disguised as an online shoe shop where digital exhibits are works of art in the form of film, photography, sculpture, spoken word, poetry and songs. Each exhibit is represented by a digital shoebox and reflects an individual's response to climate change and their own carbon footprint. The project will create an interactive website where visitors navigate their way through shoe boxes on virtual shelves. Each digital artwork exhibit will be created by professional artists working with intergenerational participants from community groups based in Scotland and India. Millipede's exhibits will engage visitors to reflect on their own carbon footprint and those of other people around the world. 

Accompanying each artwork will be a 'label' connecting the collection back to science and offering tangible solutions for how we can each reduce our contribution to climate change. NTS and Think Arts will work in partnership with leading Scottish and Indian artists, scientists and climate change organisations to create a programme of workshops for seven different community groups across Scotland and India to generate artistic responses, that will ultimately be realised as Millipede's collection of digital exhibits. Millipede will stimulate global conversation between people from different cultures and lived experiences in Scotland and India.

• Collaborators: Cooperative Innovations (England) Eden Festival of Action (led by Greenpop, South Africa)
• Climate change theme: Plastic

Synopsis

The online Museum of Plastic will be set in 2121, looking back from a future where single-use plastics have been banned and climate destruction has been averted through the actions of 21st century activists. The exhibition (available through VR and smartphones) will create new ways of sharing existing knowledge and research about plastics. The project will also facilitate young South African artists to create 3D digital murals which imagine a world without plastics in order to advocate for steps to be taken towards a ban.

The exhibition brings together not only science and education but 3D objects and 360 degree experiences which will be first piloted at the Greenpop's Eden Festival of Action in South Africa (a coastal area recently hit by vast forest fires) and aims to have a platform in Glasgow during COP26. Audiences will be invited to create their own artwork in response to the exhibition. The intention is to work towards an international crowdsourced exhibition, with a wraparound learning programme.

• Collaborators: D-Fuse (England), Metal (England), RMIT University (Vietnam), Maya Chami, Digital and Visual Artist, Sembilan Matahari (Indonesia), AguaForte (Brazil), Multiplicidade (Brazil)
• Climate change theme: Consumption

Synopsis

Nine Earths is a new collaborative and interdisciplinary project that explores the relationship between our carbon footprint, the global consumption of day-to-day life and the differences within global cities and cultures. The project brings together independent artists, climate activists and local communities in the UK, Indonesia, Lebanon, Brazil and Vietnam to explore and document their daily lives. Video, audio, imagery and conversations around climate change will be gathered to create an innovative and unique broadcast, that will run 24 hours a day for an initial 4-week period.

This broadcast will amalgamate video and imagery taken by young participants (18-24), interwoven with an original soundscape. With this collection of visual lived experience, the project aims to create a rolling digital interactive exhibition to change and elevate understanding of how our daily routines impact our climate. The project is framed around 'Earth Overshoot Day' - the month by which each country uses a year's worth of resources (for example, February 11 in Qatar, and May 17 in the UK) and will be underpinned by scientific rationale and data.

• Collaborators: Scottish Youth Theatre (Scotland), ARROWSA (South Africa), University of Aberdeen (Scotland), Al-Harah Theater (Occupied Palestinian Territories), Touchstones (England), Study Hall Educational Foundation (India)
• Climate change theme: Renewable energy; Biodiversity; Contested land ownership

Synopsis

This project is built around the premise that 'mother earth has stopped breathing', resulting in a 'phone call to the world'. Young people from three continents will engage with climate change issues that impact them at a local level, coming together to consider the wider global climate challenge. Using the simple framework of a 'phone call to the world', young people will create a digital performance that will inform, question, confront and make demands of its audiences.

Performances will be short and impactful in their messaging, designed to be consumed via social media and other digital platforms with mass reach. This will be accompanied by longer art projects taking the form of podcasts, film, and live performances. Each location will focus on a locally pertinent theme, for example, in Scotland the focus will be on oil and gas (Shetland/East coast/Fife); forestry and rewilding (Dumfries & Galloway/Highlands) and in South Africa: young people from Durban and Cape Flats will explore climate change contextualised within historical issues related to contested land; advocating for indigenous peoples as guardians of the land.

The project will create its own central website that will host young people's creations in the form of sound files, film or podcasts layered into Google Earth maps and connected to YouTube and social media channels of all partners.

• Collaborators: Middlesex University (England), Khazar University (Azerbeijan), Oracle TES, European University of Tirana (Albania), Dzemal Bijedic, University of Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Arab Academy for Science & Technology (Egypt), Ivane Javakhishvili, Tbilisi State University (Georgia), Mutah University (Jordan), Innovative University of Eurasia (Kazakhstan), Universum College (Kosovo) and University of Jos (Nigeria), Oracle TES (England)
• Climate change theme: General

Synopsis

Project arCc (assuming responsibility for climate change) was inspired by a realisation during Covid-19, that institutions and organisations from almost twenty different countries were lacking in the platform and infrastructure to share knowledge of the crisis. The same challenge exists for creative and innovative responses to climate change. In collaboration with Oracle TES, a UK-based organisation with expertise in educational services, Middlesex University will coordinate institutions from twelve different countries to increase awareness of climate change at an international level.

Emphasis will be given to trigger empathy at national level by educating a critical mass of students and citizens about their share of accountability and responsibility towards climate change. This project is intended to be the first step towards establishing a network of partners who are capable to scale up the project outputs with subsequent actions.

• Collaborators: University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Tribhuvan University (Nepal), Teach for Nepal, Midlothian Council (Scotland)
• Climate change theme: Biodiversity; Air pollution

Synopsis

This project will partner school children in Nepal - a country truly impacted by climate change but not as developed in terms of green behaviours, with communities in Scotland - a country dedicated to taking measures but not as obviously affected. Through the collaboration, school children from ten schools in each country will perform parallel environmental measurement experiments and share stories, actions and findings. The children will share experiences through video pen pal exchanges to explore which of their interventions are most successful and to learn more about each other's climates.

Experiments and pupil-led field research will include testing air and water pollution levels, litter analysis and measuring CO2 levels, temperature and rainfall - working with older pupils to assemble and programme weather stations. The findings of their experiments will be used as the foundation for school and wider community level eco-committees to take action specific to the environmental issues most prevalent in their area.

The eco-communities across Scotland and Nepal will share their successes and challenges with the ultimate aim of finding the most innovative solutions - supported through the establishment of an annual prize. Pupils will also create artworks promoting sustainable messages and will work alongside comic artists, produce blogs and journalistic reports.

• Collaborators: Soumik Datta Arts (England), Earth Day Canopy Project (India)
• Climate change theme: Various - climate migration, extreme weather, energy efficiency, plastic pollution, air pollution, coastal erosion, deforestation, and wildfires

Synopsis

Songs of the Earth aims to disrupt, provoke and challenge the unacceptable wreckage of our planet's environmental health through a digital, animated music series. Acknowledging new stories, fresh voices, multiple languages, electronica, classical fusion, illustration and FX technology, the project aims to create 8 animation films, each carrying a seminal message of climate change based on issues equally critical to India and UK. These include climate migration, extreme weather, energy efficiency, plastic pollution, air pollution, coastal erosion, deforestation and wildfires.

The creative team will facilitate workshops with scientists to compose, record and animate mini films that engage audiences in urgent climate conversations. through original music and visuals to encourage impactful behaviour. The aspiration of the team is for the composed song to be become the 'anthem of COP26'.

• Collaborators: Dumbworld (Northern Ireland), The Art of Music Foundation (Kenya), White Rhino Films (Kenya)
• Climate change theme: General

Synopsis

Street Art Opera is an active programme inviting young participants to write, develop and perform an opera in response to climate change from a human and social perspective. The opera will be recorded, animated and projected as an audio-visual public space installation performed for three hours, over three days in Kenya and in Glasgow to complement COP26. This will launch as part of a larger global programme of innovative opera artworks in the run up to 2030, contributing to raising awareness for the UN SDGs and capturing the voices, concerns and vision of youth on climate change and its impact on people and the environment.

This project seeks to platform the voices of young people through creative expression, based on their lived experiences, concerns, and hopes and vision for their future.

• Collaborators: Repair Acts, University of the West of England (England), Toxic Links (India), Gambiologia (Brazil)
• Climate change theme: Repair; Consumption

Synopsis

Tales of Repair and Care brings together artists, designers, academics and environmental non-governmental organizations from India, Brazil and the UK to create a digital repository of repair related stories alongside resources on how citizens can maintain their city, village or town. Positioning repair as a radical act that transforms our relationship with the material world, this project links the UN SDG on responsible consumption and production to climate change. Stories will be collected through a call to action aimed at young people (18-24), individuals, families and the older generation (68-80) who will be invited to submit objects they have repaired and the stories behind them.

The programme will run 'call to action' events, with the aim to collect objects and stories from three locations – Delhi (India), Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Bristol (UK). Expert workshops will also be held with city policy makers, manufacturing and sustainability experts, youth groups and senior citizens, who together will co-devise a 'Repair and Care Declaration' for each city. In highlighting stories of repair, this project aims to reveal the complex set of dynamics that include, for example, issues relating to resource efficiencies, cradle-to-grave economics and the effect of waste pollution on earth systems.

• Collaborators: Studio Future (England), Studio Future (England), Climate Exploration Hub (Botswana), TNT Media Production (South Africa)
• Climate change theme: Planning; Biodiversity

Synopsis

The Green Spaces Atlas will work with young people (18-24 years) to conceptualise, visualise and develop urban green space models for abandoned and neglected spaces in urban neighbourhoods. Initially, the concept will target Gaborone, Botswana, and will bring together five teams of three young people from different disciplines to develop their vision of an urban green space.

The teams will be paired with an experienced green architect who will assist with project design, a climate change expert who will monitor and mentor the process and a graphic designer who will bring their vision to life. The teams will document their journey and creative process and upon completion, the team's models will be uploaded to a dedicated website (as the first entries of the Green Spaces Atlas) and will be presented to city planners in Gaborone to instigate action and change.

• Collaborators: Dundee City Council (Scotland), Rural Organization for Betterment of Agro-pastoralists (Ethiopia) and Institute for Sustainable Horticulture (Canada)
• Climate change theme: Biodiversity

Synopsis

Trees for Life brings together the experience of Ethiopian youth (Kofele, Oromia region) with indigenous knowledge to respond to challenges around biodiversity and climate mitigation through tree planting and web-based digital storytelling. In Ethiopia, the project will establish a tree sapling nursery with local young people and women on how they are using land management techniques for positive change.

Alongside mentors and audio production specialists, the project will launch five open-source e-artworks using time-lapse 360' photographs and audio tracks, including open-source web Tour/VR templates to allow other global communities to start their own immersive online climate art biodiversity land improvement projects.Dundee City Council, which is a UNESCO City of Design, will launch projects to create civic awareness about climate challenges and mitigation through its digital projection festival Neon. This project will act as a prototype for future partnerships, working to create meaningful action around the world.

• Collaborators: Lakes Arts Festivals (England), Komiket (Philippines); Creative Concern (England)
• Climate change theme: General

Synopsis

10 years to save the world uses comics to stimulate climate change action in young people (18-24). This partnership will produce a 10-part digital comic anthology (using a variety of styles from comic strips to longer designed story-telling and graphic novels), which will be brought to life with animations, provocations and interactions based on Creative Concern Manchester and C40 toolkit methodology.

Each of the ten comic strips will represent one of the remaining 10 years we have to save the world. This project and underpinning methodology will challenge young people’s everyday actions and attitudes. The final comic anthology will be made available online and to download and share in the UK, the Philippines and globally alongside the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (presented by Lakes Arts Festivals) and the Philippines International Comics Art Festival (presented by Komiket) through an immersive and interactive website.