Join us for the next in the series of Counterpoints’ PopChange Salons presented with Climate Spring, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre.

Full details and booking

This salon explores the intersection of migration and climate justice through the lens of artistic practice and the works of artists and guests who harness the power of storytelling.

By bringing into a conversation visionary guests and artists, it explores approaches that shine a light on new narratives uncovering the intricate connections between migration and environmental justice.

Throughout, participants engage in thought-provoking discussions centred on the following critical questions:

Regenerative language: How can we champion and bring forward a language of inclusivity and hope that recognises the tireless efforts of artists, activists and policymakers dedicated to equity, justice, and decolonization? How do we ensure our language and storytelling reflects the world we are trying to move into, not just the world we want to move away from?

Weaving cooperation: What innovative strategies can we foster to bring diverse voices together to nurture cooperation, collaboration and solidarity?

Climate displacement: How do we acknowledge and respond to the unique and disproportionate impact of climate change on women, and on people on the move?

This Pop Change Salon is hosted by Lucy Stone, Founder and Director of Climate Spring, and Dijana Rakovic, Senior Producer at Counterpoints Arts.

About Climate Spring

Climate Spring is a global organisation at the forefront of using the power of the screen to transform how people see and respond to climate change. Launched in 2022 by a collective of leading screen industry and climate experts, Climate Spring works closely with gatekeepers, creatives and producers to create content that shifts climate narratives and reaches mainstream audiences. It offers early-stage development funding; advice and guidance from climate experts for writers, commissioners and producers; and support in moving a project from idea to distribution. By informing, inspiring and incentivising mainstream content makers to explore climate stories in a more impactful way, Climate Spring helps transform society’s response to the climate crisis.

Photo: House of Weaving Songs by Dhaqan Collective, at Playable Cities, Trinity Hall, Bristol, July 2023

 

Our Salon panellists are:

 

ALINAH AZADEH

 

 

Alinah Azadeh is a writer, artist, performer and cultural activist of British Iranian heritage. Alongside a 30-year arts career, Azadeh has been published, most recently in Best British Short Stories 2023 (Salt). As inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park and Sussex Heritage Coast 2020-23, for South Downs National Park, she led We See You Now, a decolonial landscape and literature programme for writers of global majority heritage, exploring the coast through the lens of climate change and justice, personal migration and belonging. This led to her podcast The Colour of Chalk and We Hear You Now, an audio series of poetry, speculative fiction and myth by 9 writers, installed on Listening Posts across the coast and online, co-funded by Arts Council England. Alinah is working on writing projects, including a book proposal on ecological and human loss, recovery – and letting go. She is also Changing Chalk Associate Artist for The National Trust/Writing Our Legacy.

@alinahazadeh

 

DHAQAN COLLECTIVE

 

 

Dhaqan Collective is led by Fozia Ismail and Ayan Cilmi. Their practice asks and seeks to find ways of building imaginative futures that support Somali people here and in East Africa to resist the threats over their cultural heritage. 

Dhaqan Collective is a feminist art collective of Somali women, centering the voices of womxn and elders in our community, and privileging co-creation and collaboration.  The Collective uses everyday materials, cassette tapes, food, textiles, to create spaces of communion, joy and healing that centre the full range of Somali diasporic experiences.  Their creative ecology is rooted in the collective thinking of Somali nomadic life and the creativity at its heart. In the last few decades, Somali nomadic life has become endangered due to environmental collapse.   

The Collective’s previous projects include:  Camel Meat & Tapes part 1 funded by Paul Hamlyn via Arnolfini’s City Fellows programme and part 2 funded by Arts Council England. These projects explored orality, ancestors, archives & identity and were co-created with Somali elders and young people in Bristol using cassette tapes to unearth the embodied archives of the Somali community.  Audible Tapestries, focused on finding new ways to combine sound with physical ‘woven’ artefacts. The project explores the links between Somali nomadic weaving patterns and the songs that are an inherent part of the weaving process.  Dhaqan were responsible for curating the International Festival Day of Co-Creating Change in the Arts at Battersea Arts Centre in November 2021.  They have designed and delivered a range of talks and workshops on their practice for a range of organisations and universities including:    Watershed, British Library, the Welcome Collection, Battersea Arts Centre, Visual Arts South West, Bricks Bristol, Numbi Arts, London School of Economics, University of East Anglia and Bermin University. 

Dhaqan Collective’s House of Weaving Song is currently co-commissioned by Counterpoints Arts and Art Reach.

@dhaqancollective

 

GAIA VINCE

 

 

Gaia Vince is an honorary senior research fellow at UCL and a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environments. Gaia has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than sixty countries, has lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo, for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene.

@wanderinggaia

 

LENA DOBROWOLSKA & TEO ORMOND-SKEAPING

 

 

Lena Dobrowolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping are a Polish-British artist collaboration working with photography, documentary and narrative film, immersive technologies, and artist research. 

Their collaborative practice sees them work on extensive, interdisciplinary projects exploring the political ecology of the climate crisis, climate-induced migration, slow violence, climate-changed future scenarios, the governmentality of Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC, and the cultural critique of the Anthropocene, which they prefer to call the Capitalocene.

The duo are recipients of numerous awards, including the Art and Citizenship Residency at the Embassy of Foreign Artists (2021), the Prix COAL 2019 on Disaster Displacement (2019) and the Culture and Climate Change: Future Scenarios Networked Residency (2016). 

Their work has been screened and exhibited internationally at climate change conferences, galleries, museums and film festivals, including Fotodoks, Munich (2023), Futures/Melkweg Expo Amsterdam (2022), The Noorderlicht Festival of Photography (2019), Kunst Haus Wien: Museum Hundertwasser (2019), Krakow Photomonth (2019), and UNFCCC COP25 (2019). 

In addition to their artistic practice, Lena is a PhD Researcher at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE Bristol, a Research Associate with Culture and Climate Change at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield and lectures in MA Digital Direction at the Royal College of Art. 

Teo works to coordinate the Loss and Damage Collaboration’s (L&DC) Advocacy and Outreach and Communications programs as well as co-coordinating their Human Mobility and Displacement and non-economic loss and damage working groups. 

Together, they run the L&DC’s Art and Culture program “Ways of Repair: Loss and Damage” which is aimed at facilitating a transdisciplinary exchange around the issue of loss and damage caused by the climate crisis.

@lena_dobrowolska

@teoormondskeaping