How can Utopia help people face the climate emergency?
In collaboration with David Sergeant at the University of Plymouth, we have successfully applied to the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with 6 creative organistaions in Plymouth to explore how visions of Utopia may be able to help us to face the energy crisis and the climate emergency.
Drawing on David Sergeant's research into Utopia in contemporary literature, The Art and Energy Collective will convene this fully funded series of 3 meals and makes to give us all time and space to explore how ideas of Utopia might help us radically alter the way we do business.
Bringing people together to discuss climate and the future is challenging especially as we enter a fuel crisis that will affect all of us and the viability of our businesses. We need new and better visions to help us navigate the darkness. Can Utopia help us?
This is one strand of the being developed by Plymouth Culture and The University of Plymouth to support a cultural response to the climate emergency and our energy crisis. We are looking for 6 culture sector participants working in Plymouth who would like to join in this creative investigation.
We can
Offer £500 to support your time,
Deliver a facilitated session with your group and
Provide £500 to support a Utopian idea that your group would like to try.
You must be able to commit to all these dates:
Deadline for applications is Wednesday 5th October
We very much look forward to seeing you later in October.
About us:
The ART and ENERGY Collective is a group of artists, thinkers, makers and tinkerers based in the South West of England.
We inspire creativity, empower people to take action in response to the climate emergency and harness hope, for a brighter greener future.
'How to Bury the Giant' is Art and Energy's current mass-participation artwork in development. It invites people to explore the world of mosses on their doorstep and green worlds from our shores to the moors to see how tiny actions can make a big difference for our planet.
David Sergeant’s recent research and creative practice has focused on the stories that are being told about the near future. It has traced the almost invisible – because so widespread – predominance of dystopian thinking; and, linked to that, of escapism, stories that let today’s individualism continues under a slightly different guise. Counter to this, though, there are utopian narratives – ‘utopian’ meaning, in our day and age, not ‘perfect’, but simply the avoidance of the sixth mass extinction event in earth’s history. So, a pretty low bar!
His research has found communal organisation and action to be central to these narratives, as well as the making visible of infrastructure and place, the kinds of things that in another story might have been almost invisible. It has also explored the importance of creativity as a democratic force, a pleasure and a power open to everyone. The core idea in all this work is that stories are powerful and that to change the story of who we are and where we live can be the first step in changing what is possible.
Here is a bit more about David’s work:
Net Zero Visions
The imagination is a powerful thing. The stories we tell about ourselves are powerful. These might be stories that we don’t even realise are stories. Who we are, what the world is like, what’s possible where we live, what is ‘realistic’ – none of these have fixed, preordained answers – they are all part of a story that each of us has running in the background every minute of the day, largely unconscious or unseen, shaping how we see things, what we do. To change the story of who we are and where we live can be the first step in changing what is possible.
We exist in a culture that is rife with dystopia, with pessimistic visions of the future. To adapt the words of the cultural critic Fredric Jameson, for a long time now it has seemed easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine even a modest change in the way the world is organised – as any cinema listing, streaming service or bookshop will show you. As these stories swill around in our heads, what does that do for our sense of possibility, our ability to change things for the better? OK, things might be bad – they are very bad – but resigning ourselves to the end of civilisation seems a little premature. We still have agency, the power to act; there are many positive changes we could make.
The Devon Carbon Plan is a compendium of such changes: a roadmap for how Devon will reach net-zero emissions by 2050 (at the latest), developed with public consultation and built on detailed, ongoing assessments of Devon’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is divided into five key sectors that are also addressed by contributors to this book: economy and resources, energy supply, food, land and sea, transport, and the built environment. ‘Net Zero Visions’ threads through all these sectors; it encourages us to bind them together and bring them alive through the stories we carry inside us.
What might the place you live in look like in a better, net zero future? What would you want it to look like? What might a day in the life look like in that 2050?
One of the best things about this project is that it has been and remains fun. There’s a pleasure in taking the streets or roads or scenes around you and being freed into saying, well, you could do this, or, wouldn’t it be great if we had that. Planning for some of these things might already be underway; some might be feasible relatively soon; some might appear a more distant dream. Net Zero Visions can help in planning, and they can also simply help in building awareness, knowledge, engagement and enthusiasm. They can allow people to share ideas and recognise desires they have in common. They can clarify challenges. But they are also, at essence, fun.
It’s an education to do a little net zero imagining with children. There’s a 1001 practical, material initiatives that we can and must employ, but if you’re just telling a story then why not also have a zip wire running down a rewilded main street? It doesn’t mean you’re ever going to build it, but the pleasurable wildness in such imagining has a strange way of lending its power to more sober ideas, and adapting into more recognisable prospects. A zip wire that runs through a climate resilient and biodiverse local park to a community café stocked with local produce that also acts as a share and repair shop? Details like the zip wire can be the pulse that brings such plans alive.
Net Zero Visions is a project that continues to send tentacles shooting out in many different directions and different ways. As one part of the project we brought together net zero transition experts and acclaimed professionals in different creative media, to work with individuals and community groups to produce arresting visions of their locations across Devon as part of a net zero future. You can see images from those visions in this book.
However, the project is also asking for submissions from individuals and groups. These visions can take the form of a piece of art, a story, a video, or even a podcast. They will be hosted on the project website and plotted on an interactive map. Together we hope to build a mosaic made up of people’s imaginings of a future net-zero Devon; a tapestry of wished-for futures to be carried forward beside the Carbon Plan.
So why not have a go yourself? On your own, or with your kids, or friends, or a group that you’re a part of? Then go to the project webpages and send in what you come up with, and maybe let us know how you found the whole experience. These visions can be as casual or as committed as you like, but we promise that you won’t regret it. Stories are powerful, and freely available to everyone. Tap into yours, and light it up.