Autumn Equinox Newsletter 2024

Photograph of Orford Ness, in East England, by Lucy Carruthers

As we emerge from a period of rest during the summer, we’d like to use this equinox moment to reflect on how we can use rest as fuel for change. For this newsletter, Climate Museum UK associates have gathered offerings and reflections from their own practices to share with you, and invite you to reflect on your own opportunities for both rest and action as we move into a busier time of year together.

Changing Tide

From southern city heat
We go west to clear our lungs
A trip to refresh our minds
Or return them to focus

We didn’t swim in Swansea Bay
As engineers dug all-day
Reinforcing defenses
From the rising sea
Which data sets did they use?
What scenario was the basis
To determine a height
To protect from flooding

We took a dip in Caswell Bay
Wallowing in warmer waters
Paddled down Pennard Pill
As a higher tide came in
Steering our boards into banks
Trying to relocate the river path
As the sea blanketed visual traces
Squeezing past sea-seeped trees
Through a low stone arch
Emerging into the Wellhead

Our summer pause veers East
Cycling along the River Alde
Overlooking a cold legacy
In the Orford Ness
Atomic weapons awfulness
Handed back to nature
Research transaction
From bombs to birds
No cream teas on that side
Boat trips in between

Storm battered stories
On meandering waterways
Expansive landscapes
Echoes of my youth
Playing deep in mud
Along the River Deben
Noticing connections
As the future approaches

By Lucy Carruthers

Illustrations depict paddling along Pennard Pill in South Wales, Lucy Carruthers

Earth Talk

Bridget McKenzie has taken advantage of CMUK’s pause in activity this summer to prepare and launch her new offering. This is a course, an online community of practice and a book that offers a rich set of tools for holding effective conversations and creative activities about the Earth Crisis.

It’s open to anyone interested in accessing the following benefits:

A network of like-minded others to share your practice and challenges, and find collaborators
A book in ten parts: see part one here which outlines all the contents
Seven online workshops for training and discussion, and additional networking events
At least 126 activities – with delivery resources including diagrams, posters, card sets and question sets, workshop plans, mini-essays and slide decks.

She has developed or adapted these mainly through running conversations and projects with CMUK. Her motivation to share all this is to rapidly spread the skills to activate the people we connect with in our work or daily lives, to help them understand the Earth Crisis, to tackle its causes, and to care for others as its impact worsens.

There are three pricing levels to join as a one-off cost: Explorer (£75), Deep Dive (£200), and Champion (£300). If more people join than is comfortable, then a second cohort and series of training sessions will be added. Taking part in all the sessions isn’t compulsory, and sessions will be repeated in 2025 so you can catch up if you miss some.

Read on for more information

Below is an example of one of the many Earth Talk tools, a spiral of Inner Work needed to sustain action. The five goals of Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting come from a scheme called Inner Developmental Goals, but with more practical suggestions of things to do to help these developments. For the dimension of Acting, see the whole People Take Action framework.

Wildfire

A kayak strays
from the gravelly shore
I lie bac
kon beached logs
of cedar
still majestic

In the silence
hot sun hides
among wild flowers
moist green
seaweed
rising from mud
primeval

Above
sky haze
with floating ash
of forest
A far cry
On the horizon

Upstream
a flash of birdwing
on the ripples
of grey jagged stone
eddies and currents
flowing against and with me.

By Ann Borda

Wildfire is a poem written whilst on a summer’s day stroll on the Vancouver Island coastline (British Columbia, Canada), taking in time for reflection and repose. Soon after this walk, there were alerts of air quality warnings from new wildfires in the province (430 active on the day), and the soon-to-be destruction by forest fires of the historic town of Jasper in the Rocky Mountains and surrounding national park area bordering British Columbia and the neighbouring province of Alberta.

A display at Greener and Cleaner’s community Hub in The Glades, Bromley highlighting reuse, secondhand shopping and craft, Tamasin Rhymes

This summer really reminded me of the value of a pause whilst also making it very hard to take one

The hint of progress with a new government makes it feel imperative to push ahead as fast as possible. Starting a new role just before the school holidays also adds pressure to do everything needed to get off to a good start. However wanting to spend time with my mum, who needed a like help after an injury forced some short pauses in the busy schedule. This allowed time picking fruit, listening to birds, walking the dog and generally spending time at a different pace precisely when that felt hard to do.

It reinforced for me that those pauses even when they feel inconvenient are actually a vital reminder of their importance. When you feel you are battling something as big as the changing state of our only home it often feels like there is no time to waste. And there isn’t but understanding where you are now as an individual and a community can shed light on how to move forward. It is never a waste to stop and listen to nature and the people around you.

Reconnect with yourself and your setting and it is easier to see the way forward. So refreshed on a different way I approached the new term and the onset of autumn much more hopeful than I expected. New colleagues with new ideas lift the spirits and shake things up, which gets us all moving as the weather turns.

By Tamasin Rhymes

South Downs National Park consultancy

After a 12-month process of consultancy with South Downs National Park, we are pleased to announce that our set of place-based educational resources will be released to local schools this Autumn. We are grateful to teachers and pupils at pilot schools who have helped us to road-test and refine the resources. We will share a link to the resources in the next newsletter.

Eco Young and Engaged Conference
We were thrilled to welcome new CMUK associate Tanwen Morgan to co-design and facilitate sessions at the Eco Young and Engaged Conference in Shoreham, East Sussex, involving over one hundred young people from across the Sussex area. We collaborated with ‘We Are Nature’ to design a creative workshop which invites young people to an opportunity for creative ARTivism in relation to the campaign to change the definition of nature to include humans.
Read more here

Churchill Fellowship: Transforming higher education to respond to eco-anxiety

With support from CMUK colleagues, associate Kevin Davidson has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore innovative approaches in higher education which aim to support young people experiencing difficult feelings around the future uncertainty of the Earth. Kevin will visit Finland, Spain and Argentina (remotely):

In Finland, www.climateuniversity.fi offers students the opportunity to supplement any degrees with accredited modules in topics around climate, biodiversity and systems.
In Spain, the University of Barcelona will introduce a mandatory course on the climate crisis from the 2024 academic year for all 14,000 students and 6,000 academic staff will attend a training programme.
In Argentina, a nationwide-law requires educational institutions to incorporate environmental education at all age levels, including teacher education.

Kevin will report on his findings in 2025 and hopes to implement some changes in his work at Goldsmiths College, London where he is associate lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies.

Ground Up

After carrying out an extraction-themed residency this summer with Groundwork Gallery in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, James Aldridge is excited to invite you along to the Ground Up exhibition. With 20 artists involved in this summer’s residency, Ground Up will be the first of two exhibitions, with Ground Water, the second show, following next Summer.

James will be showing a wall-based installation titled ‘The Beaver and The Whale’ which documents the research that he carried out while in Norfolk, and focuses in particular on the impact of the extraction of animal bodies from wetland ecosystems.

Of the 12 artists showing work in Ground Up, three have worked with Climate Museum: James Aldridge, Katrin Spranger and Rachel Wright.

Exhibition Launch Event
Friday 11th October 5.30 to 7.30pm

The exhibition will run until 14th December, opening from Wednesday to Saturday 11.00 to 4.00 pm

Groundwork Gallery conference

In addition to the exhibition, Groundwork Gallery will be convening a conference exploring the themes of the residency.

‘Each artist will briefly present their work and then we will open discussion with partners and respondents from contingent fields of expertise. We aim to discuss the collaborations and sharing of expertise which informed each project during the artist residencies. What have artists a) learned, b) discovered and c) revealed? What are the implications in terms of their work and its impact?’

The conference will take place on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th November, a draft programme and booking details are available on the Groundwork Gallery website. Our founder Bridget McKenzie will be contributing by summing up.

And finally. . more dates for your diary

8th World Environmental Education Day on 14 October

Future of Museums Summit – Oct 29-30th (virtual event)

Climate Museum UK