A day of performances, workshops, and talks exploring the climate crisis, our relationships with the non-human, and what it means to practice radical hope in the midst of catastrophic change.
Arts OneQueen Mary University of LondonMile End Road
An interactive talk and workshop with performer, playwright and scholar Mojisola Adebayo, exploring her play Family Tree.
An interactive talk and workshop with performer, playwright and scholar Mojisola Adebayo, exploring her play Family Tree. Inspired by Henrietta Lacks and informed by the experiences of both enslaved women and Black workers in the NHS during the Covid 19 pandemic, Mojisola Adebayo’s award-winning play Family Tree addresses the colonial history of extraction from Black women’s bodies & how this relates to environmental racism, the relationship between gynecology and gardening, soil and cells and many layers more. Mojisola will read selected extracts from the play and share about the roots of the work, accompanied by some participatory elements drawn from her Agri/Cultural Practices workshops, developed with Nicole Wolf (Goldsmiths), which explore permaculture ethics and principles and environmental racism through Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896141803257?aff=oddtdtcreator
Collaborative storytelling workshop and installation with Giuila Carabelli and Mathew Beach investigating the complexities of human-plant relationships.
Cabinet cultures is an ongoing project which started in 2023 as a collaboration between the Garden Museum, Sarah Gardner, Emma Angold, Giulia Carabelli and Matthew Beach. It aims to investigate the value of houseplants and our affective relationships with them, interrogating the complexities of human-plant relationships through storytelling. For this edition of the project, Giulia and Matthew will host a houseplant storytelling workshop featuring the original cabinets. Participants will be invited to contribute their own experiences, which will then become part of the installation as it continues throughout the day.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896055394807?aff=oddtdtcreator
A drop-in theatrical role-playing game exploring mutual-aid-based responses to the climate crisis
A participatory theatre-game facilitated by Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz, using arts and crafts alongside table-top roleplaying game techniques to explore stories of radical hope through community-level responses to the climate crisis. In 30 minute sessions, participants are invited to come together and create a story of community-level response to the impacts of climate change. Inspired by real-world responses to the crisis that already exist, participants are offered the chance to work together in imagining and practising hopeful responses to the catastrophic changes we’re experiencing today.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896170820047?aff=oddtdtcreator
A performance/discussion by Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi, Omikemi and Jemima Yong, exploring the movement of time in the deep sea via conversation, connectedness, durational work, and song-like structures.
The early stages of Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz are built on an underwater flow, various currents that flow past each other in different directions the way shoals of fish do. We will work with blending and combining, dissolving outlines. We are looking into the deep sea to see what we find. We are looking for simultaneous durations and song-like structures. We are asking: who says time moves in only one direction? We hope this project will speak to a tolerance of difference around our sensibilities and how to be in the world right now, while sharing a desire for connectedness.
Supported by Queen Mary University Centre for Creative Collaboration.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896185985407?aff=oddtdtcreator
A talk and Q&A featuring researcher Heather McMullen’s work on the effects of the climate crisis on physical and psychological reproductive health.
A talk and Q&A with Dr. Heather McMullen, senior lecturer in Global Public Health at Queen Mary. This talk will explore Dr. McMullen’s recent research into how climate change and other environmental crises relate to sexual and reproductive rights and politics, particularly how these intersections are framed in global policy and advocacy, and how they are experienced by people in regards to their own reproduction.
Heather McMullen has a background in medical social science and specifically in the area of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice. She conducts research in this area but also works with civil society and multilateral organisations. Recently she has begun exploring how climate change and other environmental crises relate to sexual and reproductive rights and politics. She is interested in how these intersections are framed in global policy and advocacy but also how they are experienced by people in regard to their own reproduction.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896184019527?aff=oddtdtcreator
A cabaret-style magic show with skilled magician Megan Swann, using magic techniques to explore climate change and its impacts.
Megan Swann presents her uplifting new show of Environmental Magic, full of fun, entertaining magic to leave you feeling inspired to act and full of hope for the future of our planet.
Megan Swann is a magician from London. In 2021 she was elected as President of the world’s most prestigious magic society, The Magic Circle, becoming the first woman and youngest ever person to hold the position. Megan is also passionate about the environment and studied a BSC in Wildlife Conservation at the University of Kent. She combines her two interests in her unique ‘Environmental magic’ routines, specially designed to share environmental messages, in a clever, engaging and inspiring way.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/environment-and-magic-with-megan-swann-tickets-907687877877
A Public Studio on Radical Hope in A Time of Crisis, with Lois Weaver, Sarah Faulkner, and Catherine Nash.
This public studio on radical hope in a time of climate crisis features a conversation between experts Sarah Faulkner and Catherine Nash, facilitated by Lois Weaver and invites audience members to become part of the conversation.
The Public Studio uses the artist’s studio as a site for creative problem-solving, offering space for engagement with new ideas, unlikely collaborations, and experimentation with raw materials. The three stages include the observation of a three-way discussion between experts and a moderator, separate group conversation with one of the speakers, and finally an open workshop where both speakers and participants apply creative thinking to a complex problem, be it social, political, medical, environmental.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/896155363817?aff=oddtdtcreator