Arts & Ecology

This week's podcast is a conversation between guest interviewer Dr. Mike Edwards, co-founder of environmental organisation Sound Matters, and scientist and journalist Anna Turns who is the Senior environment editor of Conservation UK.

Anna writes: 

I specialise in crafting features and radio documentaries about sustainability, from climate change and renewable energy to marine issues, food and farming. My first book, Go Toxic Free: Easy and Sustainable Ways to Reduce Chemical Pollution, was published in 2022, and I enjoy presenting episodes of BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth series. As a freelance journalist and Oxford University biology graduate, I combine my passion for storytelling and my curiosity about the natural world to write inspiring, intelligent content for many national publications including The Guardian, BBC Future, Positive News and Riverford’s Wicked Leeks. I’ve never missed a deadline. With rigorous reporting skills and a keen eye for imagery, my work focuses on progress, innovation and solutions. Constructive journalism is a thread that runs through all of my work. I’m an assessor for the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership on the Communicating for Impact and Influence online course. I have taught journalism undergraduates at Plymouth Marjon University. I’m an active member of the Guild of Food Writers, Women in Journalism and National Union of Journalists and also mentor early career journalists. I also sit on the integrity council for Provenance which aims to combat greenwashing and create standards that better enable transparency. I’m passionate about environmental education and the importance of a strong connection to the landscape and coast.

Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of storytelling and the climate crisis. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative, where she has spearheaded initiatives for nearly two decades, getting theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate conversation and climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, artist convenings, and an award-winning distributed theatre festival.

Playwriting awards include the Woodward International Playwriting Prize as well as First Prize in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Festival and First Prize in the Uprising National Playwriting Competition.  Her plays have been shown in a dozen countries and translated into Greek, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese. 

She curates the HowlRound Theatre Commons’ essay series Theatre in the Age of Climate Change, has written for American Theatre Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review, and contributed to several academic volumes including Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage (Routledge, 2023). She is the editor of four anthologies of short plays, one of which earned her an Honorable Mention from the Patrick O'Neill Award for Best Edited Collection given by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. 

She is currently writing a series of eight plays – the Arctic Cycle – that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states. She is a Creative Core Member of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, and in 2019 was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.

Show notes

Mentioned in the episode The Book of Trespass By Nick Hayes https://astridardagh.com https://www.evabakkeslett.com www.thecoferenceofthebirds.net

Biographies

Eva

Eva Bakkeslett is an artist, filmmaker, curator and gentle activist, exploring the potential for social change through gentle actions and subtle mind-shifts. Her socially engaged practice often combines film, participatory events and workshops; She frequently collaborates with other artist, activists, scientist and engaged people in her work. Eva creates spaces and experiences that challenge our thinking and unravel new narratives that inspire and engage us to make sense of and embody sustainable and thriving ways. By revealing and reclaiming forgotten or rejected practices, concepts and cultures her work directs our attention to the patterns that connect us to the earth as a living organism. Eva is particularly inspired by the process of fermentation and explores how this can be a method for re-imagining sustainable human cultures. She looks at how microbes can inspire creative problem solving, collaboration and transformation to find new ways to deal with the many challenges we are now facing in the world. Eva shows, lectures, curates and performs her work worldwide. She has an MA in Art & Ecology from Dartington College of Art in England and lives on the beautiful island of Engeløya in North Norway. Here she tries to walk the talk, grow and harvest her own food and learn as much as possible about life and sustainability from old folks, animals, birds, trees and the earth whilst enjoying the beauty of every day.

Astrid

Astrid Ardagh is an artist and filmmaker from Engeløya in Northern Norway, with a Bachelor's in Moving Image from Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her site-specific work delves into the interconnected relationship between people and their environment in a rapidly changing world. By merging her interest in anthropology and aesthetic storytelling, her films become immersive and sensory experiences that transcend traditional human-centred perspectives. Ardagh's short films have been screened at acclaimed festivals such as Clermont-Ferrand and Kortfilmfestivalen in Grimstad, as well as galleries and art museums such as Kristiansand Kunsthall, the Eye Film Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future.  Each season we ask artists, authors, and curators one question. This season we ask, how can we tell better stories?

This week's guests are ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and artist Rita Leduc.

Guest Bios:

Rich

My lived-experience is a deeply reciprocal relationship of continuity with nature. Over a lifetime this has provided access to an inexhaustible source of natural knowledge. 

But when the science I "know" is coupled to first-hand participation in the story of the cosmos, it affords much more than knowledge. Living in a relational mode with nature cultivates a forgotten form of human wisdom that's aligned with nature itself. Not only does this have profound ameliorative effects on one's body and mind, I believe it has become an essential aspect of the future (if there is to be one for humans).

Every human has access to the intelligence of nature through the long and intimate histories of our ancestor's relationships with the habitats of Earth. However, very few of us have the time or opportunity to live in sustained touch with this intelligence. I believe remembering our ancient endowment has the power to heal our injuries, restore justice, detoxify our culture, and put us on a path towards a more realistic, healthy, and hopeful technological future. One way I propose and teach this idea is Earthling Theory.

In addition to founding Oika, I am currently the Scientist-in-Residence at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket Island. In both capacities, I collaborate with ecosystems, artists, and other creatives on cultural transformation projects. You can learn more through my podcast and talks. 

I also manifest Oika philosophy artistically by co-creating wooden surfboards (yes, surfboards) through a deeply participatory design process that I developed. Learn more about this and how it fits into my Oika worldview through the narrative bio below.

"If we are to thrive into the future, we must re-invent what it means to be humane by re-aligning our selves and our culture with nature." 

Rita

Originally from New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, Rita Leduc is an interdisciplinary artist now living in New York’s Hudson Valley. In her creative practice, she absorbs insights from nature-grounded relationships and applies them to novel endeavors on human and societal scales. 

Current examples of these endeavors include multifaceted projects with Oika, a living philosophy that merges creativity, natural science, deep time, cognition, and spirituality. One such project is Extending Ecology, a collaboration with ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Additional ongoing engagements include GROUNDWORK (process-oriented creative direction), and The Place Collective (using art to enrich community research).

Leduc’s work has been shown throughout the greater New York City area and beyond, including exhibitions at the Museum of the White Mountains (NH), Stand4 Gallery (NY), Maria Mitchell Gallery (MA), Mount Saint Mary College (NY), Glasshouse Project (NY), Terrain Biennial (NY), Wells College (NY), Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Art (Russia), Governors Island (NYC), RAW (Miami), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC). Past residencies include i-Park Foundation, PLAYA, Tofte Lake, and Vermont Studio Center. She has received support from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Atlas Obscura, Oika, Broto, Wells College, and Rutgers University, among others. She has published and presented her work widely including on the cover of Signal House Edition as well as in unpsychology magazine, Artis Natura, and at Art.Earth’s conference, “Sentient Performativities: Thinking Alongside the Human” at Dartington Hall. 

Leduc received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, BA from the University of Pennsylvania and is certified in Oika, an applied philosophy of natural, ecological intelligence. She currently teaches at Rutgers University within their new, interdisciplinary program, Creative Expression and the Environment.

 

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future. Each season we ask artists, authors, and curators one question. This season we ask, How can we tell better stories?    In this episode, Natasha is in conversation with author, environmentalist, and financier Ben Goldsmith.    Ben is a British environmentalist and financier. He is a leading light in the rewilding movement in Britain and Europe, as well as a pioneer of green investment. Ben and his wife, Jemima, are rewilding their farm in Somerset, and Ben has helped to establish a number of environmental initiatives, including the Environmental Funders’ Network, the Conservative Environment Network, Rewilding Britain, Beaver Trust, and the Conservation Collective, a global network of locally focused environmental foundations. Ben was a Director at DEFRA for five years, successfully advocating for a series of ground-breaking environmental restoration policies during his tenure, including the new Environmental Land Management scheme, the Nature for Climate Fund and the Species Reintroductions task force. The Iris Project was established by Ben Goldsmith and Kate Rothschild in partnership with the Global Greengrants Fund in loving memory of their daughter, Iris Goldsmith, a young environmentalist who loved the natural world. @bengoldsmith

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future. Each season we ask artists, authors, and curators one question. This season we ask, How can we tell better stories?    In this episode, Natasha speaks with author, mythologist, and pyschologist Sharon Blackie.  

Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist. Her highly acclaimed books, courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of myths, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, cultural and environmental problems we face today.

As well as writing five books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted and her latest, Hagitude, her writing has appeared in anthologies, collections and in several international media outlets – among them the Guardian, the Irish Times, and the Scotsman. Her books have been translated into several languages, and she has been interviewed by the BBC, US public radio and other broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Her awards include the Roger Deakin Award, and a Creative Scotland Writer’s Award. Her next book, Wise Women: Myths and folklore in celebration of older women will be published by Virago in 2024.

Sharon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has taught and lectured at several academic institutions, Jungian organisations, retreat centres and cultural festivals around the world. Find out more at www.sharonblackie.net.

Arts and Ecology is a brand new podcast about the vital role art and culture plays in creating a regenerative future. This season we ask authors, artists, and curators one question: How can we tell better stories?   James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. They are the author of 'New Dark Age' (2018) and 'Ways of Being' (2022), and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019. Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future. This season we ask artists, authors, anc curators one question: How can we tell better stories?  

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey (b. 1959/1959 England) are internationally acclaimed for creating works that intersect art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology and history.  Referencing memory and time, nature and culture, urban political ecologies, the climate emergency and degradation of the living planet, their time-based practice reveals an intrinsic bias towards process and event.  Processes of germination, growth and decay (organic and inorganic) feature in artworks that often evolve through extended research in response to people and place, interfacing their profound interest in local ecologies and global planetary concerns.

They give high profile keynotes and public presentations and contribute writings and photographs to books and journals.  In 2019, the artists co-founded Culture Declares Emergency in response to the climate and ecological emergency.

In 2021, one hundred Beuys’ Acorns trees were exhibited at Tate Modern to commemorate Beuys’s centennial and Tate’s declaration of climate emergency.

Currently Beuys’ Acorns is residing in London on Global Generation’s Paper Garden and Story Garden.  Each tree is contained in a specialist Air-pot that has enabled both portability of the trees and ensured their on-going welfare through healthy root development.

Public exchanges, keynotes, conversations and live open-ended research are integral to their approach and practice, and Ackroyd & Harvey give many high-profile keynote lectures and presentations, notably Declaring Emergency: Museums and the Climate Crisis, Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Big Botany, Spencer Museum, Kansas; How to be a COPtomist, Kings College, London; On Energy, Banff Centre, Canada; Environmental Funders Network, Cambridge, UK; COCE/Conference on Communication and Environment,University of Colorada, Boulder; ‘Nobel Laureate Symposium’ on Creativity, Leadership and Climate Change at London’s Science Museum; ‘Art + Alchemy’Trinity College, Cambridge; EARTH: Art of  a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Smith School, Oxford; London School of Economics, UK; the Royal Society, London; Royal Institute of British Architects, London; Tate Britain, London; Royal National Theatre, London; Manchester International Festival, UK; Courtauld Institute, London; Harvard University, Boston, USA; San Francisco Institute of Arts, USA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA.

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future. This season we ask authors, artists and curators one question, “How can we tell better stories?” Not just about the many crises we face but about the regenerative future so many of us are working hard to build.

 

This week, we speak with author Katherine May. Katherine is an internationally bestselling author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Her most recent book, Enchantment became an instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. Her internationally bestselling hybrid memoir Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times was adapted as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, was adapted as an audio drama by Audible. Other titles include novels such as The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, and The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood which she edited. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Observer and Aeon.

Katherine’s podcast, How We Live Now, ranks in the top 1% worldwide, and she has been a guest presenter for On Being’s The Future of Hope series. Her next book, Enchantment, will be published in 2023. Katherine lives with her husband, son, two cats and a dog. She loves walking, sea-swimming and pickling slightly unappealing things.

 

Arts and Ecology is a podcast about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future. This season we ask one question, “How can we tell better stories?” And not just about the many crises we face but about the regenerative future so many of us are working hard to build. Join your host, Natasha Rivett-Carnac, for these in-depth conversations with artists, curators, and authors across a range of subjects and discover how you might bring a fresh perspective on story telling into your own practice