Over the past few months, I've been spending time developing research and thinking around my new project Hot Contents, a 2-year project taking place in Darlington exploring the relationships between industry, the circular economy and the climate emergency.

I wanted to begin this project with a research residency, spending a period of time researching the changing shape of industry in Darlington, getting to know the people and projects taking place locally and understanding how these make an impact on the environment. A period of meeting, listening and reading. Rather than taking place over a solid block of time, this has been a much slower process - sometimes taking place online and sometimes in person where this could happen safely.

Through this process of looking at narratives of growth, sites of transition and spaces of resistance, I’ve spent some of this time getting to know and getting involved with the work of local climate action groups over evening Zoom gatherings. With Darlington Climate Action, I recently supported a pop-up performance in the town centre to raise awareness of the impact of proposed executive housing developments written into Darlington's new local plan. The performance was led by local writer and actor Paul Harman, and I worked with the group to prepare and capture imagery from the event. I am supporting Friends of the Earth Darlington's calls for a local Citizen's Assembly for climate change. Throughout this engagement, I have been thinking about what it means to be an artist in an activist space - which brings together people with different interests, motivations and expertise in environmental action - and how this process can be equitable. Some of this time has been spent mapping and photographing sites of transition, including Tornado Way - which runs along the site of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway, and where funding has just been awarded to the Darlington Forest Project to plant 6800 trees - thinking about how industrial heritage sits alongside the landscape, and how sites of industrial heritage are re-used and re-purposed for sustainable practices. Some of this time has been spent reading about the history and future plans for Darlington, thinking about trajectories of growth tied to the region's industrial heritage, where value is placed and how these can be re-thought.

When I first thought about this project - almost a year ago - I imagined the idea of the circular economy might feed into the work at the micro scale - looking at the creative re-use of materials and design practices. As it has developed, this idea has shifted towards a focus on ecology, circular systems and social value. I've learned a lot in this time - about the process and politics of town planning, and the shifting footprint of industry moving across the urban landscape; about the town's history of iron forging and engineering, and the region's future plans for carbon capture; about locally native trees, and some things entirely unexpected (such as a protest in 1800 over the rising price of butter) - and I've had a chance to get to know about and get involved in really interesting initiatives happening locally to tackle the climate emergency.

Moving into the autumn, I'm experimenting with some new digitally-generated videos, whilst working on a script for a video installation that responds to the things I've been thinking about during this residency. Sat at my desk under a local lockdown in Newcastle, I'm looking forward to spending some time in the studio translating these ideas, sketches and thoughts into finished work, and to being able to share them.

Hot Contents is kindly supported by:

November marks the start of Overmorrow, an ongoing festival that I have co-developed and produced with Andrew Wilson, Calum Bayne, Ciara Lenihan, Evelyn Cromwell, gobscure, Jessica Bennett, Jenny Mc Namara and Lydia Bailey as part of The NewBridge Project's Programme Committee. Taking place between November 2020 – April 2021 the festival will include a series of commissions, talks, screenings and events which explore our collective futures with audiences, members and communities.

In an attempt to unlock the future, we need to throw open the window of our minds. Now is the time for alternative horizons that spark the imagination, the time to forge resources for resistance and pursue new possibilities, the time for building our own utopias.

The global pandemic has deeply affected our everyday lives and the way we perceive the world. It has increased precarity and uncertainty for communities and exposed a lack of equality and fairness in our societies. But history shows us that pandemics can precipitate radical change. They open up moments of societal, political and cultural flux as citizens seek to redress the deep-seated problems of their times. For many, there can be no going back to ‘normal’ when normal is deeply unsettling, unjust and unsustainable.

The pre-Covid-19 world had become accustomed to the status quo, consenting to iniquitous and exploitative hierarchies through the foreclosure of alternative possibilities. We watched as voracious capitalists plundered the earth and our experiences to feed their insatiable lust for exponential growth and shareholder profits. As neoliberal economics colonised every aspect of society and hyper-normalised its covetous and individualistic rational. As this amoral life-order sacrificed the natural world in its idolisation of materialism and consumerism. Many protested, but the world acquiesced. We had buried utopia, out of ignorance that prevented us from imagining a new world.

Overmorrow will aid us in our quest to reimagine our futures and how we might chart a new path from the present. Exploring science-fiction as a tool for fictioning new possibilities, it will consider the futures we have lost and those we can still pursue. It will contemplate the public spaces of tomorrow and think about how the Pandemic has highlighted the problems in society that stand between us and utopia. We’ll be using this within our programme to challenge the competitive structures of the art world and consider the future of art and arts organisations.

‘It’s not a finished utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and
active’ - Bertrand Russell.

Throughout this programme we would like to foster practical conversation that acknowledges discomfort, embodies varied agendas and recognises privilege, breaks down silos and, ultimately, creates a space for a new kind of growth. Through collective dialogues, together we can proactively and collectively shape the future we want.

Find out more here.

I have added my endorsement to Julie's Bicycle's Letter to the Secretary of State asking for a Just and Green Cultural Recovery from COVID-19:

Dear Secretary of State, 

We are writing to urge you to make the cultural recovery a just and green cultural recovery. 

Along with many others in the UK the creative and cultural community has been badly hit; lives have been lost, buildings are dark, festivals are empty fields, tours are stationary, and thousands of people and business suppliers dependent on culture have shut up shop. Coronavirus has exposed deep-seated social and economic inequalities.

What we decide now will create the sustainable foundations for the future; we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a resilient recovery plan that is fair and tackles the climate and ecological crisis with urgency. We cannot let this opportunity pass us by.

Before the pandemic the creative and cultural sector was contributing £111.7 billion to the UK economy – greater than the automotive, aerospace, life sciences, oil and gas industries combined – employing over two million people and growing at 5 times the rate of the economy as a whole. The sector is of national and international significance but not just to the economy; aside from soft power and tourism, we generate civic and community cohesion and well-being. Our track record in climate action is also of international significance. Thousands of artists and organisations from across the creative spectrum have been championing climate action for many years, not least because Arts Council England has undertaken the largest cultural programme of environmental literacy anywhere in the world, and is the first national funding body to make environmental requirements a condition of funding. Having already shown our commitment to environmental action we want the cultural recovery to be a fair, just and green recovery.

The cultural community is ready to galvanise its power to drive change.

We urge government to commit to a rapid, just and green cultural recovery combining targeted public investment, clear policy signals, and implementation of Climate Change Act obligations extended to the Cultural Renewal strategy. We urge that action to protect nature and biodiversity is given the attention it so urgently deserves. And we urge that the singular opportunity to tackle systemic barriers to empowerment that many black and minority people experience, not least across the culture and environment sectors, are prioritised. This last point goes to the heart of a just transition.

The UK’s leadership matters. Whilst the UN COP 26 climate negotiations have been rescheduled for November 2021, we still have to fulfil our 2020 commitments and show increased ambition. Every month we delay action is a lost opportunity to establish the frameworks and investment commitments which demonstrate our dedication. The cultural community will do whatever we can; we hope you use these months well, and help us to help you lead.

We ask that:

1/ The Cultural Renewal Task Force prioritise a rapid, just and green recovery, with designated representation on every sub-group. A just transition must be woven into all themes to ensure that those who have been left out, and the freelance creative workforce are taken fully into account.

2/ The recommendation from the Committee on Climate Change that legally binding “net-zero policy [is] embedded across all levels and departments of Government” is adopted by DCMS and the UK put in place policies to meet its current fourth and fifth carbon budgets which we are currently not on track to meet. 

3/ Public cultural compliancy and funding requirements are aligned to net zero requirements and promote biodiversity, and that larger organisations adopt explicit science-based net zero pathways. 

4/ Any national Green Recovery plan is sector-specific to include the creative and cultural sector, with a focus on inclusion, place-making and communities, including strong incentives for space for nature. 

5/ Specific R&D funds are designated for the creative and cultural community to benefit from interdisciplinary knowledge and partnerships which result in fit-for-purpose and future-proofed cultural services and products. 

6/ A cross-cutting government Task force on Green Creative Skills and Curriculum Reform is created, with representation from Department for Education, Department for Enterprise, Innovation and Skills, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs encompassing environmental and cultural expertise to prepare the future cultural workforce adequately. 

Yours sincerely, 

Tony Wadsworth CBE, Chairman
Alison Tickell, Chief Executive

Thank-you to the Contemporary Visual Arts Network North East for awarding me a Creative Space Residency to spend time realigning my practice around a new area of research following the recent completion of my project Martha [Alzheimer's Machine III].

We held our breath

We are at a tipping point in our response to the climate emergency. Many of the issues concerning climate change are connected to our pace of life, culture of mass production and excessive mobility. Yet, our time in quarantine has given a brief reprieve to the environment, and raised valuable questions regarding our treatment of the planet. This presents an opportunity to step back, rethink and adapt, and our public spaces - both physical and virtual - are the forums in which dialogue is made visible and change can take root. How can we re-imagine our urban spaces so that they are better able to support and reflect sustainable ways of living?

The Creative Space residencies were created to support artists based in the North East of England given the current precarity of funds available for practitioners in these uncertain times and to foster solidarity in our region. They are to provide time to develop a new area of practice or simply to provide an opportunity for making, thinking or reflecting.

I will be spending the time afforded by my residency to develop new research and spend time engaging in network events for Culture Declares Emergency: a growing global community of individuals in arts and culture declaring a climate and ecological emergency; using the headspace afforded to do some deep thinking to kick-start the research process and sustain my practice over the lockdown period.

Congratulations to the other selected artists and collectives: Holly Argent / Art Matters Now / Claire A Baker & Nicola Golightly / Saud Baloch / Bobby Benjamin / Alex Charrington / Joanne Coates / Colin Davies / Grace Denton / Kathryn Elkin / AJ Garrett / Helen Jane Gaunt / gobscure / Laura Harrington / Alan Hathaway / Emily Hesse / Alice Highet / Beth J Ross / Jillian Johnston / Harley Kuyck-Cohen / Rachel Lancaster / Nicola Maxwell / Kitty McKay and Archie Smith / Joe Shaw / Slop / Ayako Tani / Christo Wallers / Michaela Wetherell / Matt Whitfield / Adam Wilson Holmes!

We are at a tipping point in our response to the climate emergency. Our pace of life, culture of mass production and attitudes towards waste are significant factors accelerating global heating and widespread environmental damage.
 
The society we live in has been built on the foundations of industry. In the North East, our industrial culture and landscape – from coal mining to steel working, textile production to large-scale engineering – has become a significant part of regional identity. Industry has played an important part in shaping our cities, towns and communities, ands a market town, Darlington has a longstanding connection to specialist crafts and trades – from railway lines and shipbuilding to leather tanning and weaving. The sudden process of de-industrialisation in the North East, and the impact this has had on communities and the landscape, has resulted in a growing emphasis on representing and remembering industrial heritage.[2]
 
However, the growth of industry, and the culture it has fostered, has also played a significant role in accelerating today’s environmental crisis. As we remember and celebrate industrial heritage, its wider impacts cannot be ignored: from the environmental pollution caused by industrial waste to the ‘more, newer and faster’ approach that feeds our disposable culture. More difficult to see, our deference to growth and profit has enabled private sector agendas to hold increasing levels of influence over our landscapes and the decisions we are able to make to combat climate change.
 
Our time in quarantine has to some extent stalled the wheels of industry and given a brief reprieve to the environment, raising valuable questions about our treatment of the planet and the sustainability of our way of life. Yet this has come with a sudden and painful cost to lives and livelihoods; health, wellbeing and civil rights. A recent study outlined that global carbon emissions as will fall up to 7% a result of COVID-19, if global restrictions remain in place until the end of 2020.[3] By contrast, a reduction of at least 7.6% is required each year for the next 30 years in order to meet the target to limit global heating to 1.5˚C[4], which scientists warn is essential to limit the negative impacts of climate change. Beyond the temporary impact of lockdowns around the world in response to COVID-19, even if global governments hit all our most ambitious environmental targets, global heating is set to rise by more than double this to 3.2˚C[5], with wide reaching impacts on the habitability of the planet.

From this vantage point, the scale of the climate emergency seems overwhelming. We can be left feeling unable to make a difference. A feeling perpetuated by negative headlines and the scale at which we have to think: the issue stretches beyond our lifetimes and requires global action to meet the challenges ahead.
 
Here, building emotional resilience to navigate our internal response is important, because small personal and organisational steps are part of a cultural shift necessary to effect wider change. As individuals and as artists, we can act as climate ambassadors. Through our work, we can create a tipping point in awareness, and share positive and proactive messaging to encourage individual action. Collectively, we must demand better from government and hold them to account. We must change our mindsets and reconsider our current relationships to production, consumption and waste. We must learn to slow down.
 
Our industrial past (and present) cannot be ignored as we work towards the solutions needed to address today’s climate emergency. We must also consider the role of social justice within our response, recognising that often those least in positions of influence are, and will be, those most affected by its’ impacts. At the recent North East Culture Partnership Forum, VONNE - Voluntary Organisations Network North East - talked about the need for a just transition, recognising that the sudden de-industrialisation of the North East in recent past did not provide adequate time or resources for communities to adapt. This also recognises the imbalance between the capacities of different communities to make these changes - for example, between: rural and urban communities, established and emerging economies, or those affected by historic inequalities.
 
In all of this, how do we avoid thinking about these issues in a bubble? How do we embed environmental thinking across all of our actions? And with the COP 26 Summit of world leaders – due to take place in Glasgow this November – postponed, and with our public spaces – a shared forum for dialogue and protest – now empty, how do we keep focus?
 

References
[1] Shantz, J. (2002). Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red-Green Vision. Environmental Politics, 11, 21-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/714000644
[2] Vall, N. (2018). Coal is our strife: representing mining heritage in North East England, Contemporary British History, 32:1, 101-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2017.1408541
[3] Le Quéré, C., Jackson, R.B., Jones, M.W. et al. (2020). Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement, Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x
[4] UN Environment. (2019). Emissions Gap Report 2019, UN, New York, 26. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[5] UN Environment. (2019). Emissions Gap Report 2019, UN, New York, 27. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Hot Contents is kindly supported by:

Like many around the country, I have spent the best part of two months at home, adjusting to the new normal. In these difficult times that have impacted so many, to be safe and well is not to be taken for granted.
 
Last weekend, I had planned to give a talk as part of Darlington Arts Festival about my work as an artist, and to introduce Hot Contents, a new project set to take place in Darlington exploring environmental pollution. Instead, while the world is on standby, I have been using this time to read, to think, and to take part in a weekly series of events organised by Culture Declares Emergency, a global community of individuals and organisations working in arts and culture declaring a climate and ecological emergency.

‘The spectre of industrialism will still – and must inevitably – haunt efforts at transformation, especially in decisions concerning the mess that industry has left behind’ [1]
– Jeff Shantz

We are at a tipping point in our response to the climate emergency. Our pace of life, culture of mass production and attitudes towards waste are significant factors accelerating global heating and widespread environmental damage.
 
We live in a society built on the foundations of industry. In the North East, our industrial culture and landscape – from coal mining to steel working, textile production to large-scale engineering – has become a significant part of regional identity. As a market town, Darlington has a longstanding connection to specialist crafts and trades – from railway lines and shipbuilding to leather tanning and weaving. Industry has played an important part in shaping our cities, towns and communities. The sudden process of de-industrialisation in the North East, and the impact this has had on communities and the landscape, has resulted in a growing emphasis on representing and remembering industrial heritage.[2]
 
However, the growth of industry, and the culture it has fostered, has also played a significant role in accelerating today’s environmental crisis. As we remember and celebrate industrial heritage, its wider impacts cannot be ignored: from the environmental pollution caused by industrial waste to the ‘more, newer and faster’ approach that feeds our disposable culture. More difficult to see, our deference to growth and profit has enabled private sector agendas to hold increasing levels of influence over our landscapes and the decisions we are able to make to combat climate change.
 
Our time in quarantine has to some extent stalled the wheels of industry and given a brief reprieve to the environment, raising valuable questions about our treatment of the planet and the sustainability of our way of life. Yet this has come with a sudden and painful cost to lives and livelihoods; health, wellbeing and civil rights. A recent study outlined that global carbon emissions as will fall up to 7% a result of COVID-19, if global restrictions remain in place until the end of 2020.[3] By contrast, a reduction of at least 7.6% is required each year for the next 30 years in order to meet the target to limit global heating to 1.5˚C[4], which scientists warn is essential to limit the negative impacts of climate change. Beyond the temporary impact of lockdowns around the world in response to COVID-19, even if global governments hit all our most ambitious environmental targets, global heating is set to rise by more than double this to 3.2˚C[5], with wide reaching impacts on the habitability of the planet.

From this vantage point, the scale of the climate emergency seems overwhelming. We can be left feeling unable to make a difference. A feeling perpetuated by negative headlines and the scale at which we have to think: the issue stretches beyond our lifetimes and requires global action to meet the challenges ahead.
 
Here, building emotional resilience to navigate our internal response is important, because small personal and organisational steps are part of a cultural shift necessary to effect wider change. As individuals and as artists, we can act as climate ambassadors. Through our work, we can create a tipping point in awareness, and share positive and proactive messaging to encourage individual action. Collectively, we must demand better from government and hold them to account. We must change our mindsets and reconsider our current relationships to production, consumption and waste. We must learn to slow down.
 
Our industrial past (and present) cannot be ignored as we work towards the solutions needed to address today’s climate emergency. We must also consider the role of social justice within our response, recognising that often those least in positions of influence are, and will be, those most affected by its’ impacts. At the recent North East Culture Partnership Forum, VONNE - Voluntary Organisations Network North East - talked about the need for a just transition, recognising that the sudden de-industrialisation of the North East in recent past did not provide adequate time or resources for communities to adapt. This also recognises the imbalance between the capacities of different communities to make these changes - for example, between: rural and urban communities, established and emerging economies, or those affected by historic inequalities.
 
In all of this, how do we avoid thinking about these issues in a bubble? How do we embed environmental thinking across all of our actions? And with the COP 26 Summit of world leaders – due to take place in Glasgow this November – postponed, and with our public spaces – a shared forum for dialogue and protest – now empty, how do we keep focus?
 
Adapting to life over the past few months has been challenging, but it has also offered some food for thought about what I can learn to let go of as an individual. The next years working on Hot Contents will be a time to reflect on some of these issues more deeply.
 
About Hot Contents
Hot Contents will take place in Darlington, imagining the role of new trades in a not-too-distant future where the over-production of unrecyclable waste materials has dramatically changed our landscape, reimagining Darlington’s history as a hub of crafts and trades built instead on recycled industrial materials.
 
Through a process of research, production, presentation and critical discussion exploring the life-cycle of the materials of industry, it asks:

• How can we creatively imagine ways to reduce environmental pollution and learn to live better with the waste we create?
• How do we re-examine industrial heritage narratives in environmental discussion?
• In what ways can we feed in a circular economy approach to our lives?
• What practices do we need to learn, and what do we need to unlearn?

 
While it touches on the many interconnected issues that are feeding climate change, Hot Contents look at pollution as a wider metaphor for living with the environmental crisis we have created for ourselves.
 
A trace – physically and emotionally – of what will be left for the future.


References
[1] Shantz, J. (2002). Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red-Green Vision. Environmental Politics, 11, 21-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/714000644
[2] Vall, N. (2018). Coal is our strife: representing mining heritage in North East England, Contemporary British History, 32:1, 101-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2017.1408541
[3] Le Quéré, C., Jackson, R.B., Jones, M.W. et al. (2020). Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement, Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x
[4] UN Environment. (2019). Emissions Gap Report 2019, UN, New York, 26. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[5] UN Environment. (2019). Emissions Gap Report 2019, UN, New York, 27. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

 Hot Contents is kindly supported by:

Thank-you to everyone who came to see Martha [Alzheimer's Machine III] at Shieldfield Art Works. This solo exhibition brought together a body of work developed over the past 4 years exploring the effect of Alzheimer's disease on the way we see and understand the world around us through the eyes of Martha, a fictional character living with Alzheimer's.

As Martha transitions into a care environment, she re-experiences moments of her life unfolding across surreal stages that resonate with both domestic and care environments. From moments of personal significance to seemingly incidental memories, the competing and intersecting narratives within the work create a complex portrait of Martha’s changing relationships to others, her surroundings and herself.

The exhibition programme included an artist talk and community meal event, where we discussed the exhibition and the complex ethics of producing work in this area; and a fiddle blanket making workshop inspired by some of the therapeutic strategies used to support individuals living with Alzheimer's.

From 4-12 March 2020, Martha [Alzheimer's Machine III] will be exhibited at Shieldfield Art Works as part of their 2020 Take Over Programme. This solo exhibition will bring together a body of work developed over the past 4 years exploring the effect of Alzheimer's disease on the way we see and understand the world around us through the eyes of Martha, a fictional character living with Alzheimer's.

As Martha transitions into a care environment, she re-experiences moments of her life unfolding across surreal stages that resonate with both domestic and care environments. From moments of personal significance to seemingly incidental memories, the competing and intersecting narratives within the work create a complex portrait of Martha’s changing relationships to others, her surroundings and herself.

The overall Take Over Programme will launch on Friday 7 February from 6-8pm and there will be a Preview for the exhibition on Friday 6 March from 6-8pm. For further details about the exhibition programme and gallery opening times, please visit the event page.

I'm really happy to have been selected for the 2019-20 edition of the Newbridge Project's Programme Committee. On the committee, I will be particularly interested in develping events that explore collaborative working and cross-disciplinary practice.

Last night I co-hosted 'Odd Combo', my first event under this role, with fellow artists and collaborators Jill Tate and Theresa Poulton. Over the evening we heard from Lesley Guy, from the collective Totaller, and Helen Shaddock and David Foggo, from the collaborative Marginendeavour, to practically unpick some of the nuts and bolts of collaborative and collective work.

I'm pleased to have been awarded a 2019 a-n Mentoring Bursary to work with visual artist Emilia Telese over the next year to take stock of my practice and point it in the right direction.

Before starting this journey, I cast my mind back to August when I submitted my application. In many ways, it had been a good year. I had just finished de-installing my first solo show outside the North East in Wigan, which after 18 months of development felt like it had really paid off. I'd spent the summer working with an artist as an editor, which has been a new way to consider making work, while earlier in the year I was approached to work on a heritage project with the Discovery Museum, and alongside all this, a new collaboration with two like-minded artists in my studio group was slowly developing.

But it had also been a year with a series of (albeit positive) rejections and having reached a turning point where I would like to pursue a new direction for my practice, positioning my new ideas against previous work has been challenging. Understanding rejection is part and parcel of the artist experience, it is difficult to see nothing new in sight and by August I was feeling burnt out and a bit deflated. And so as I wrote my application - full of hope and panic - I wanted to understand where I was falling short.

Cut to November, and the future is brighter and after a bit of time out new work and new projects have started to develop. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next year brings, and to having someone to share the journey with...