New metaphors for sustainability: Le Tour

Le Mans to Chateauroux, crossing the Montrichard Bridge

Le Tour de France is the metaphor Bradon Smith offers in our series of New metaphors for sustainability. Bradon is  a research associate in the Geography department at the Open University, and is also the AHRC research fellow on climate change for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 


The bicycle is a wonderfully efficient and ecological mode of transport; and the dynamics of professional cycling are a model for the cooperation that real sustainability will require.

This week saw the climax of the Tour de France. Four hundred thousand people gathered on the mountain roads leading up to Alpe d'Huez to watch that one stage alone. Cycling works as a spectator sport partly because of the intense physical effort, but also because of the layers of tactics and teamwork: strength and stamina aren't enough to win the Tour.

No rider could win the Tour without their team. Teamwork, co-operation and the team's different skills are required to win even a stage. Many of the members of a team (the domestiques) ride not for their own chances of glory, but for the benefit of another member of their team: setting the pace for their leading rider, carrying water for them, sheltering them from headwinds, and so on. These sacrifices are central to a team's success.

Nor can any rider win any stage - some are more suited to mountains, others to flat stages. The rider who can achieve the fastest speeds (a sprinter) is unlikely to win the Tour, which requires a better all-round rider. Some teams are dedicated to the success of a single rider, others spread their efforts more widely. A team has to play to the strengths of its members.

Despite the intense competition, and personal rivalries, there is a fundamental trust within the peloton. Hurtling along the road at 40mph, wheels within inches of one another, each rider must trust that the others will hold their line.

And this trust has built a unique ethic: the peloton follows a set of unwritten rules. It is not done, for example, to profit from other riders' crashes - the peloton will wait instead. And the team of the leading rider is expected to do the most work, setting the pace for the whole peloton.

Technological developments have dramatically affected cycling: bikes are lighter and more aerodynamic, and the riders are all equipped with radios for constant communication with their teams. Fans are divided over whether these changes are detrimental. But these developments have not drastically altered the basic ethic of the peloton.

But there is another side to cycling. Teams are reliant on their corporate sponsors, and team tactics are also built around giving the most TV exposure to their sponsors' logos. Deals are done between riders of competing teams: 'you can have this win, if you help me tomorrow'. And - the big ones - doping blights the sport and fans speculate about deals and corruption at a high level. It isn't really clear how these problems will be eradicated; but in a sport shot through with the ethos of teamwork and cooperation, they strike right at its heart.

There is a temptation to 'cheat' with sustainability too: to greenwash and make tokenistic changes, but never integrate it fully into our lives and societies. But the cooperation that is central to professional cycling is also central to sustainability; as in a cycling team, one specialism will not be enough; and like in the peloton, we need to trust that others will also make the effort.

Photo: Denis Balibouse / Reuters

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What is it that art could do for the environment?

Photo: Green Alliance

Kellie Payne reports on the Green Alliance's summer debate about the arts and the environment.

For their summer reception, the environmental think tank Green Alliance hosted an evening of opera and debate at the Royal Opera House. In conjunction with The Opera Group, the evening began with a fifteen minute excerpt of Luke Bedford‘s new opera Seven Angels, is inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost and has environmental degradation as its theme.

Following the opera taster, there was a panel discussion entitled ‘What have the arts ever done for the environment? The panel included a mix of representatives from the worlds of policy, the arts and academia. It was chaired by Julie’s Bicycle’s Alison Tickell, and panellists included: The Southbank Centre artistic director, Jude Kelly, RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor, Arcola Theatre executive director Ben Todd, the sculptor Peter Randall-Page and David Frame, fellow of Oxford University. In her introduction, Tickell indicated that the Seven Angels was one among a crop of new work being made by British artists that addressed nature or the environment among those artists she listed were Antony Gormley, Ian McEwan, Jay Griffiths.

One of the main themes of the evening was an attempt in the discussion to answer the general question of what it is that art can do for the environment. It was generally agreed that one of the strengths of art was that it was well equipped to deal with the complexities that many environmental issues such as climate change raise. Matthew Taylor saying that art should be one of the many interventions required to tackle climate change.

One of the most eloquent responses came from the scholar, David Frame, who highlighted art’s ability to deal with complexity and tension. He felt that as climate change and environmental problems are so complex in nature, with for instance climate change knowledge dispersed amongst many specialists without a graspable whole. He said that the arts community has ‘a unique ability to convey complexity, delicacy, and beauty and among the things you can do is you don’t need to simplify...’

He pointed to the deficits in mediums such as Twitter or the 1,000 word Op Ed piece and contrasted this with the length of a novel or a film where he said ‘the possibilities for the ideas you can upload to people is phenomenal.’ This type of medium he said was also more able to cope with uncertainties. ‘You leave interpretation open which isn’t considered acceptable in other forms and I think that in doing so you can bring out tensions between these parallel values’.

Changing values seemed to be one of the key roles identified for art that emerged from the discussion. Alison said she has observed what she describes as a ‘palpable’ shift in values taking place rapidly and for her ‘the arts do have a role to play in reflecting and shaping and engaging with those values.’ While Matthew didn’t agree with Alison the extent to which values have already changed in the positive direction Alison described. In fact, he warned that during this current time of disturbance there is a clear dissatisfaction with current values but which way public opinion would turn was not decided. He said the dissatisfaction could lead in two ways, and not necessarily in a progressive direction he lamented that ‘it can go in a dangerous direction as well.’

The question of how politics should be addressed raised differing opinions. Jude Kelly began by announcing she ‘didn’t mind a bit of bad art’ provided that art had some sort of message. She went on to say, ‘I don’t think it’s a hanging offence to produce a message’ However if it’s not particularly interesting it might ‘bore me after awhile’. Further, ‘I don’t mind artists having a go. I really dislike the idea that artists shouldn’t be allowed to take centre stage to comment on things.

While Peter conceded that there was ‘nothing wrong with political art’, for him it was less the politics which art was best equipped to address. He was more of the mind that art’s quality was that it didn’t have a direct ‘purpose’ that it was its intrinsic values alone that made art great. He believes that ‘arts are not well placed to (do) issue based lobbying’ contrasting what he finds often to be the pragmatism of the environmental movement with the arts ability to nourish imagination and the spirit in the way the natural world does. ‘I think the role that I feel for the arts in environmentalism is that it... reminds us that we’re not all bad. If we only feel negative it’s impossible for us to move forward and remove this exclusively pragmatic approach to looking after the world.’

Matthew wanted to introduce a third way of thinking about the issue agreeing that art shouldn’t attempt to kick us around the head. However, he felt art could ‘challenge people to live differently and value things in slightly different ways.’ Providing a vision of how ‘a different, deeper kind of understanding about what makes life worth living and what it is society wants to be.’ This task he felt art was ‘incredibly well suited’. That is, ‘art is there to explicitly to get you to think about what the good life is.’ He concluded this thought saying ‘art shouldn’t be ashamed to say that art is here to help you rethink what our values are and I don’t think that requires you to revert to a kind of crude placard waving.’

In addition to the discussion about art and politics, the panel also touched on the controversial issue of artists lifestyles and the high carbon footprint of the arts. The general attitude on the panel was that this shouldn’t be paid as much attention as it has been. Jude Kelly saying that this arts requires face-to-face interactions and not allowing artists to fly amounts to a cultural boycott. But Matthew Taylor thought artists should be accountable, and if they want to have influence on others they have to take account of their own actions.
Increased collaboration amongst artists was encouraged, suggesting that the problem of the environment is one that artists should attempt to do together. Arts organisations such as Cape Farewell and Tipping Point were highlighted as doing exceptional work, helping to inform artists of climate change and bringing the topic to their consciousness.

It was edifying to see an organisation such as the Green Alliance, who normally deals with more policy related issues such as building a sustainable economy, investigating climate and energy futures, designing out waste and political leadership to host a conversation with the arts community. A cursory glance over badges of audience members saw representatives from business and policy, including the Department for Energy and Climate Change and The Environment Agency, so the wider these issues can be encountered and discussed the better. It’s time the arts community made it’s voice heard in the conversation about climate change. Peter concluded well, stating that it is artists who need to create metaphors and narratives which make it possible to go into the future.

Pic: The speakers (l-r): Jude Kelly, Matthew Taylor, Dr David Frame, Ben Todd, Peter Randall-Page and Alison Tickell (photo: Paul West) more ...

New metaphors for sustainability: the timeless meal

Carolyn Steel calls herself a 'food urbanist', and she brings a notion of the 'good life' to our series of New metaphors for sustainability. 

What is it we’re trying to sustain? For me, the meal is the emblematic, wonderful situation that sums up the whole point of sustainability.

I think in metaphor all the time and food has become this way of seeing the world not just in terms of 'how are we going to feed ourselves in future?' - this kind of doom and gloom thing - but also in terms of asking 'what kind of society is it that we are trying to create as well as sustain?'.

When you talk about food, there’s a tendency to talk about ‘how much grain can you produce on that much land with that much water’. That’s very important, but you have to relate every conversation you have about food with the kind of life that you are talking about. It’s about a vision of society, an idea of the good life.

The table is a place where you don't just share food, but you share ideas, you share love, you share conversation.

It’s a beautiful metaphor of the kinds of things that we’re trying to sustain. It’s society. It’s ‘good life’ in every possible sense - not just good in terms of wonderful food - but also good in terms of the ethics of what you eat. If I am hungry I have a practical problem. If you are hungry, I have an ethical problem.

This business of sitting around a table with other people, the decorum of the table, and the sharing food - it brings the social relevance of sustainability into the conversation.

A timeless meal, a meal that is enjoyed through time that has a past that we all intuitively understand, but a future as well, sums up for me the idea that food is life on earth.

Carolyn is included in our film.

Photo: Feast on the Bridge, 2009, curated by Clare Patey. Photo by Tim Mitchell.

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New metaphors for sustainability: an indigenous tribe of the Amazon

Francesca Galeazzi is a sustainability engineer and artist, currently working for the design studio of Arup Associates in Shanghai, in pursuit of a greener and more sustainable model of urban development in China. Her art work focuses on issues of climate change, urbanisation and sustainable development. Here, she continues our series on New metaphors for sustainability.

I underestimated the amount of time and thinking that it would take me to come up with something that I am happy with. Sustainability not only is something that I care about, but it is also extremely difficult to pin down to something specific. It holds many facets and most are often equally important!

Having said this, I still believe that diversity is key to sustainability.

Ecosystems rely on a complex set of relationships and interdependence of diverse species and creatures to sustain themselves. This is the basis of all life on our planet and applies to flora and fauna, as well as society and culture. However, the current aggressive approach to global development that we have experienced in the last century is threatening diversity at all levels.

Visualising diversity is a difficult task. The first images that sprung to my mind were not too dissimilar to the United People of Benetton campaign in the 90’s, highlighting the beauty of multiculturalism. But how obvious it is! I also thought about cities, food, gardens, oceans, the coral reef - but none seemed really appropriate.

The metaphor that to me best evokes the idea of both ecological and social diversity is the Amazon, probably the most important biodiverse and rich ecosystem of our planet, under so much threat of irreversible change. But the image of that magnificent tropical rainforest is not sufficient to me to evoke the notion of sustainability; as a general metaphor I think it is too obvious and worn out.

I am instead choosing the image of an indigenous tribe of the Amazon. To me this conveys not only the ecological issues that rainforests around the world face today (deforestation, illegal logging, land exploitation, mining, etc) but also talks about that fundamental element that is societal diversity. Indigenous tribes, ethnic minorities and rural communities around the world represent a huge treasure of culture and unique heritage that is under increasing threat of disappearance.

The indigenous tribe of the Amazon is a metaphor for all those ethnicities in the world under physical and cultural threat, and indirectly for their endangered environment, too. It is also a metaphor for knowledge and strength, for cultural richness and social resilience, for strong community cohesion, for respect and adaptability to the natural environment, all of which to me are the pillars of sustainability.

Photo above is © Indigenous People's Cultural Support Trust

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A metaphor from politics: 'Be a part of better'

In response to our New metaphors for sustainability series, Chris Ballance wrote to us and agreed we could post his email. As a playwright, Chris was one of our earliest listings on the Directory. He was Green Party Member and Member of the Scottish Parliament from 2003 - 2007, and now works for Moffat CAN, (Carbon Approaching Neutral), a community-owned company and charity. 

One of the ideas that's concerning some of us here is 'how do we tell the cultural story of how good it could be to go green'? It's inspired by the recent success of the SNP who - helped admittedly by dreadful campaigns by their opponents - based their huge election victory by selling independence as 'Be a part of better'; a direct reference to a literary quotation from the author Alasdair Grey 'Live each day as if you were in the first day of a better nation.' 

A quotation doubtless unknown in London, but well enough known here in Scotland to be inscribed into the stone walls around the Scottish Parliament. The phrase has passed into commonplace so much that I've even seen 'Be a part of better' used to advertise merchandise in a shop. The SNP are using a cultural story and cultural references to achieve independence. (That's to say nothing about planning to hold their referendum shortly after the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.)

How do we create a cultural story which can then be used to make sustainability attractive? So often it is seen as 'sacrifice', doing without, enforced change. (I often remember being on an election hustings with a UKIP candidate who told me "Look, we all know your green world is coming. It's just that we don't want it, and we're going to do everything we can to put it off for as long as possible.") How do we conjure up images of something that people will actually want?

Your exploration of metaphors is definitely a step towards this. It's not just sustainability - the whole concept of environmentalism lacks it: the only metaphors to have attached themselves to environmentalism are those framed by our opponents; 'yoghurt knitters', etc. Thank you.

(And I love the Madagascan-based tapestry.)

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New metaphors for sustainability: ten so far

From the 'iron curtain' to the 'glass ceiling', metaphors are one of the most powerful ways in which we frame the way we think.

Yet one of the key concepts in environmentalism - sustainability - seems to be remarkably short of vivid metaphors.

So we asked some artists, writers, architects, cultural commentators, environmentalists, activists and scientists to come up with their own metaphors for sustainability.

We've published ten new metaphors so far. More to follow.

New metaphors for sustainability: mercury
New metaphors for sustainability: symbiosis
New metaphors for sustainability: "Come into my house" (DVD)
New metaphors for sustainability: 'art & grace'
New metaphors for sustainability: my sweet pea
New metaphors for sustainability: water on a fire - helping turn the page - a child asleep - the family - failing better
New metaphors for sustainability: the shopping divider at the check-out

New metaphors for sustainability: the sailboat

New metaphors for sustainability: the Spiderweb Tapestry

New metaphors for sustainability: the act of breathing

Watch a film about four of the new metaphors.

Please suggest metaphors of your own. As @TheMuseDaily tweeted yesterday, "The drive toward the formation of metaphor is the fundamental human drive. - Nietzsche"

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New metaphors for sustainability: mercury

Mario Petrucci, poet, ecologist, physicist, essayist, continues our series of New metaphors for sustainability with shape-shifting mercury.  

My chief reservation about sustainability is that it can mean so many things to different interest groups. For one protagonist, sustainability may demand a massive redistribution of resources and wealth, coupled with radical reassessments of consumer values and economic practice; for another, it involves no more than modest adjustments to what we already do in order to accommodate a few of the most urgent ecological imperatives.

As with Climate Change, then, there’s no overall consensus concerning the precise shape sustainability will take. ‘Sustainable forest’ can mean a rich and ancient woodland drawn upon occasionally but left mostly to its own devices, or it can be a perpetual pine plantation supplying wood pulp and with practically zero biodiversity in it.

That’s why I’ve chosen mercury as a metaphor for sustainability. It challenges any assumption we might have that sustainability takes a uniform or consistent form among those considering it.

The image of mercury scurrying across a surface is familiar to most people, and is apt here because it allows us to better grasp the current ungraspability of sustainability. Sustainability is a fraught and fugitive issue, beset by political and personal evasions and manoeuvrings.

What’s more, the way in which sustainability can be made to adapt shape is both weakness and strength. On the negative side, if mercury is mishandled it becomes a toxic nuisance; likewise, sustainability can be distorted, misrepresented or misapplied, either through ignorance or cynically, to allow damaging practices to continue beneath a veneer of acceptability.

On the positive side, if put to proper use in a careful and structured way, and if its complex nature is understood and worked with, sustainability also provides an extremely valuable, if not life-saving, tool.

Mercury can communicate what the weather’s doing outside, or signal the degree of fever in the human body; sustainability, too, could be harnessed to monitor and sustain the wellness of our species in relation to its environment. Either that, or we can let the concept mess with our brains and slip through our fingers.

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New metaphors for sustainability: symbiosis

Zoë Svendsen, theatre director and researcher, continues our series New metaphors for sustainability by turning to 'symbiosis' as a better term.

When I was given the challenge of thinking about a metaphor for sustainability, I realized I didn’t really know what it was, other than the idea that maybe you shouldn’t do quite so much of something so that you could do things again in the future. But then I got to thinking about the underlying questions. What do we need to sustain? What’s the idea of sustainability? It’s linked to current discourses against consumption and to ideas about austerity and about doing less.

What could you replace sustainability with as a metaphor that would allow you to do something as opposed to just not doing something? I was thinking about things like conversation and reciprocity and some kind of interaction with your environment that didn’t deny the pleasures of exchange and of use. I eventually arrived at the term ‘symbiosis’ and symbiotic thinking.

What’s interesting about the term 'symbiosis', is that as a metaphor it takes us away from the 'nature versus culture' idea or ‘human benefit versus benefit for nature or the environment', and rather asks us to think about how there might be certain kinds of human symbiotic interactions and at the same time benefits for the environment.

The symbol for this kind of activity are bees, and bee-keeping. There can be a human relationship to these kinds of symbiotic practices that happen in the environment already – such as the spreading of pollen and the creating of honey.

And around that word 'symbiosis', there’s a whole series of other underlying terms or thoughts that could be replaced. Instead of thinking about 'austerity' – which is a negative thinking towards the future - that we can always only do less and life isn’t going to be as good – you might replace that with 'ingenuity'. This celebrates invention and entrepreneurialism and thinks about what’s at hand and what possible in what may be limited circumstance but treats those circumstances as a pleasureable challenge.

Part of the problem with austerity is that it makes you want to rebel. I have occasional bouts of recycling rebellion – I go 'fuck it' and throw it away. 'I want to waste, I don’t want to be sensible'.

This is something to do with the moral imperative around the idea of austerity – it’s just not fun. Part of the idea about  ‘symbiosis’, is that you don’t have that same kind of moral anxiety around all of your actions. You’re directed to a positive action instead of endlessly thinking about the negative – which just makes you want to be naughty and not do it.

Zoë is included in our film. 

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New metaphors for sustainability: "Come into my house" (DVD)

When we asked Hester Reeve, artist and lecturer, to suggest a metaphor for our series New metaphors for sustainability, she offered to make this DVD, "Come into my house."

The term 'sustainability' is rightly used first and foremost in the contexts of both local and global policy changes. Whilst acknowledging the crucial role played by activist pressure in ensuring sustainability is on the agenda in the first place, I see its implementation chiefly as the responsibility of politicians (shame on them).

I made my metaphor in my house. The camera is out on the street and I open each door/window in turn and call out for various thinkers to "Come into my house."

As an artist, I am more interested in restoring richness to the 'cult' of everyday life and in incorporating the force of poetic imagination than in reflecting/interacting with culture at large. My metaphor therefore reflects this sensibility.

I suppose the only thing someone like me at this point in the environmental direness of 2011 can do is to come back to the doorstep, where the agency of the single being starts and to call for that paradigm shift in our thinking that might finally allow us to dwell as an act of loving the world.

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New metaphors for sustainability: 'art & grace'

Continuing our series of New metaphors for sustainability, the ecological artist David Haley looks to the etymologies of two words.

art
The Sanskrit origin of the word ‘art’ is 'rta'. Originally appearing in the Rig Vedas, rta is still used in contemporary Hindi to mean the dynamic process by which the whole cosmos continues to be created, virtuously.

This noun/adjective also means the right-handedness, righteousness, and the right way of doing things. Here we find remnants of that meaning in modern English in terms like 'the art of gardening', 'the art of football, 'the art of archery' and 'the art of war'.

Rta conjugates into the verb 'ritu' (ritual) that refers to the correct order or sequence of rta (i.e. the cyclical pattern of the seasons, or the progression from seed to leaf and root to tree to blossom to seed). ‘Art’ may have lost much of its etymological meaning, but maybe it retains the potential to re-emerge as a metaphor for sustainability, like a flower waiting for rain in some future desert?

grace
This metaphor comes from my work with the artists The Harrisons, and is taken from their work 'The Lagoon Cycle': 'As the waters rise gracefully, how will we withdraw with equal grace?'

The difference between the Environment Agency's policy of 'managed retreat' in response to sea level rise and our proposals in the work 'Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground Gaining Wisdom' was the EA’s use of engineering and war metaphors to confront a problem, compared with an ethical and aesthetic repositioning of the situation.

‘Tide Turns, Waters Dance’ was one of my own ‘Writing on the Wall’ pieces, this one exhibited in Taiwan. The last of the 27 Haiku-style poems ended with the line, 'water, time and grace'. When a Taiwanese professor quizzed me over the use of the word, 'grace' to end the work, I explained that a meaning of grace was 'becomingness'. 'Aha', he replied, 'so you hope to evolve beyond climate change?'

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New metaphors for sustainability: my sweet pea

In a recent series of seminars on site-based performance and environmental change, our Ashden Directory co-editor Wallace Heim met Alison Parfitt, of the Wildland Research Institute, and writer on conservation. Here, Alison considers her sweet pea as a metaphor in our series New metaphors for sustainability. 

Sustainability. After the Rio Earth Summit 1992, I was impassioned about this challenging aspiration, with head and heart. Many of us struggled over complicated diagrams, wanting to encompass everything. We talked about ecological systems and the need for the sacred and spiritual, the connectedness of all. We explored social and environmental justice and quality and equality – with diversity. Models and metaphors came and went, bees in a beehive.

Now I see this challenge of understanding the potential and power of sustainability in a more intimate way. And I suspect that the full and inspiring notion of sustainability (sometimes understood but often not) is showing a way, a direction for the human species to evolve, if we can.

As I write this there is a sweet pea, picked this morning, beside me. A soft fresh fragrance. This flower is creamy pale with a purple, or even nearing indigo, fine edging on the petals. It looks and feels precise, very clear yet fragile. It moves in the air coming through the door. The flower is here today but gone tomorrow, the plant goes on and I shall gather seed. It is everyday and uniquely precious.

I accept that my sweet pea is not really a helpful metaphor for sustainability but for today, now, it enlightens me and reminds me of my relationship within all else. And how I could be more human. And that’s where my quest to understand has got to. I suspect it will move on again, soon.

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Cape Farewell and the Scottish "bellwether" islands

Standing Stone, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides. Photo: Ruth Little

Kellie Gutman reports on Cape Farewell's latest voyage.

Cape Farewell known for its seafaring expeditions to the Arctic to study climate change, with scientists and artists aboard, is taking a journey closer to home.

For four weeks starting July 15, a rotating crew of thirty-two artists and nine scientists will sail around Scotland's coastal islands to investigate the effects of climate change on the island cultures and ecologies.  A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns about the 'severe impact' rising sea levels are likely to have on the coastline of the UK, and the Outer and Inner Hebrides are the 'bellwethers' for the coast. Each week will have a theme: Gaelic language; island musical tradition and story-telling; marine and environmental science; local resources and the built environment.

Cape Farewell associate director Ruth Little comments:

'One of the aims of the project is to challenge the widespread assumption that climate change impacts are only relevant to coastal communities in the global south.  The environmental, social and economic situation in Scotland's island communities resonates strongly with that of other island and coastal cultures worldwide... [We] will seek to develop new forms of communication for the human experience of climate change, and new forums for collaboration and bold imaginative response to the profound changes we all face.'

The islands have a wide range of sustainability projects ongoing, and Cape Farewell will use these as a starting point for a four-year plan of artist residencies to document, disseminate and bring together
islanders around the issues of sustainability.

The expedition blog can be followed on the Ashdenizen blogroll in our left-hand column. more ...

New metaphors for sustainability: water on a fire - helping turn the page - a child asleep - the family - failing better

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is two adults and three children living in Everton, Liverpool. They talked together about sustainability, and here are their metaphors for our series. 

Neal (aged 10): The world is big plank of wood and it's on fire. The only thing to save it is water. Sustainability is water - that's what it is.

Gabriel (aged 8): It's a big round book, the world is a big circular book, but it needs help to turn the next page, it can't do it by itself so we all have to help the big book turn its next page. That's sustainability – helping to turn the page.

Sid (aged 3): (Sid was asleep on the couch when we asked him. That struck a chord with us. Sustainability is Sid asleep, rapid eye movements, visceral dreaming, thoughts shooting round his brain, wiring and rewiring the connectors in his head, trying to sort out what happened today ready for some sort of tomorrow. But his body mass seems to rest, refuel. It digests its food, slowly, carefully, puts things in place biologically, mentally, spiritually even so that when he wakes up he'll have a good chance at getting what he needs and be in a good enough mood to share what he has with his mates at the nursery.)

Gary (aged 39): A family is the best metaphor I can think of for sustainability. Not the family that the Pope, in Croatia in June, said was in the midst of ruin under the new atheism of secularisation, but the queer family, the radical family, the family that depends - indirectly - upon the reproduction of itself with difference. That's what having kids has been for us. They are us, with difference. You don't need to be a biological parent for this to happen, though. It happens through friendships, encounters and love affairs.

It's the indirectness that is crucial. Indirectness is at the heart of all family-making, and sustainability has an element of indirectness about it. I won't actually suffer climate chaos in Bangladesh or the terrible local effects of the Alberta Tar Sands extraction, except indirectly. That's partly what makes it so tricky to get hold of. How can everyone act in all-powerful acts of solidarity with massive numbers of people? The indirectness is what stops us.

But we have to embrace the indirectness, like we embrace the difference that is produced in our own kids every day as they grow into and away from us. Embracing indirectness is the only way to be happy in the long-run.

The relationship between me and my kids is the best metaphor I have for sustainability. Maybe because it's not even a metaphor but a living, loving struggle.

Lena (aged 36): sustainability is allowing difference, allowing impossible encounters to take place and surprise you. sustainability is being naughty. sustainability is getting out of the box you are in, getting out of networks you belong to, seeing beyond your own group. sustainability is travelling the world, learning a new language, but a really new language, a new method, a new skill. sustainability is beyond the local. sustainability is the provocation that stops you being righteous.

fail. fail again. fail better. go for the impossible.

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New metaphors for sustainability: the shopping divider at the check-out

Monik Gupta, environmental blogger and researcher has guest blogged for Ashdenizen. Here he suggests a metaphor in our series New metaphors for sustainability: the shopping divider at the check-out.

For me, thinking about sustainability, the object in the picture comes to mind. We come across it so regularly, however there is no word readily available to us to describe it (google suggests it to be termed 'cashier divider' by retail experts). Evidently, just like with 'sustainability', it is something very well known but much less engaged with.

What's more important, both the shopping divider and sustainability mark the necessity for confinement of our own consumption and draw attention to others' needs.

Maybe those two points, shallow engagement despite omnipresence and a focus on limitations of our consumption, are related. We are reluctant to make explicit the distinction between our needs and those of others, even though we are acutely aware of its necessity.

However, this is exactly where the beauty of both the 'shopping divider' and 'sustainability' could lie: in marking the confines of our needs, they enable us to direct attention to our fellow human beings. We begin to acknowledge that we are 'in this together', urgently needing to demonstrate our 'ability to sUStain'.

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New metaphors for sustainability: the sailboat

We continue our series of New metaphors for sustainability with the sailboat, suggested by James Marriott, artist, activist, member of PLATFORM. 

The boat for me is a very powerful metaphor. Sustainability is a rather grey and unclear term, but if it means anything, it means that we have to live with the finite resources of the earth. We have to deal with this in our generation and pass it on to future generations.

It is this sense of the finite capacity that I find interesting and comes to me through the experience of boats. I mean boats which are driven by sail and by oar – that use the motive power of the wind and the tide captured through wood and flax and hemp and use that to move from ‘a’ to ‘b’.

I’ve been learning to sail, and it’s been a wonderful experience. It makes you extremely aware of the forces of nature – it makes it very intimate. You’re at the mercy of the winds. You have to work with the tides – the skill comes from using whatever is there, that finite amount of power.

The finiteness, too, comes from the space of the boat itself. You have to pack everything in it that you might need or want. The boat frames my needs and desires about where I can go and how long it’s going to take me.

It concentrates the mind about the nature of the space in which I’m in, and about the wind and the water and the movement of the tide and the flow of the river.

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The Southbank re-designed with the tides in mind

Ella-Marie Fowler got in touch about her BA project on sustainability, and here she describes it.

I'm a graduating student from Design for Performance (BA Hons) at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London. For my final project, I chose to focus on sustainability within theatre and how the arts can affect climate change awareness.

I designed a proposal for a Sustainable Arts Centre on the Southbank, London (pictured). The centre would provide space for visiting artists, performers and theatre companies to respond to climate change awareness. The building would be constructed from reclaimed materials and use green energy sources. Visitors to the centre would encounter different experiences throughout the day due to the changing tide of the Thames.

Last year, I visited the Jellyfish Theatre and researched art organisations such as TippingPoint through the Ashden Directory. This sparked ideas about my final year project. As a graduating student in theatre design, I wanted my work to reflect contemporary issues and consider how to develop a sustainable approach to my future work.

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New metaphors for sustainability: the Spiderweb Tapestry

Continuing in our series on New metaphors for sustainability, the dramaturg, writer and Associate Director of Cape Farewell, Ruth Little, chooses the Spiderweb Tapestry.

The interweaving

This is a tapestry woven from the webs of a million Golden Orb spiders in Madagascar. I read about it in Nature, and went to see it in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. Made by local weavers over five years, it's an astonishingly beautiful - perhaps miraculous - work of art. Delicately held in tiny 'stalls', the spiders were milked by hand each day and released. Whose art, though, is responsible for the tapestry? Unsigned by either the spiders or the craftspeople who wove its intricate traditional patterns from a natural substance stronger than steel, it's my metaphor for integralism, resilience, and the cooperative values underlying sustainable living.

Universal nature/human nature: The woven web

The Spiderweb Tapestry begins with the web itself - that global symbol of complexity and interconnection - and adds to it the specifically human dimensions of culture, tradition, stewardship and imagination. Produced with a combination of curiosity, great care, local knowledge and local resources, it is at once organic and mysterious; fabricated and wild, particular and universally evocative. It literally glows: it contains the 'vital materialism' described by Jane Bennett in her account of the active participation of non-human forces in events. Like Bennett, my metaphor seeks to develop and transform our sense of care in relation to both the human and the non-human world, 'to encourage more intelligent and sustainable engagements with vibrant matter and lively things.'

Virtually all of earth's natural systems have now been influenced and to some extent deranged by human modes of production and consumption. We have begun to cross the threshold of catastrophic loss, compelled by an appetite that has its origins in the relatively recent intellectual separation of human nature from the matter-energy continuum of which we have always been part.

We may have been expelled from Eden for mismanagement, but the whole earth is now our home, and we have nowhere else to go. Only active, attentive and responsible stewardship of earth's living systems and the natural capital on which we rely entirely for survival will make the fabric we're woven into resilient enough to survive the shocks it's now subject to.

The Madagascan tapestry is a work of ethical ingenuity: drawing on the self-organising tendencies of the non-human world, it combines the exceptional capacities of human hands and human minds to create something much more valuable - in cultural and ecological terms - than the sum of its parts.

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New metaphors for sustainability: the act of breathing

In the first in our series on New metaphors for sustainability, the artist Ansuman Biswas, whose work moves between music, dance, theatre, visual art and writing, chooses the act of breathing.

I can’t imagine something that sustains forever and the notion of an endpoint isn’t there in the idea of sustainability. We’re talking about something that’s eternal, and I don’t know anything that is eternal. I can’t imagine eternity.

The word itself, sustenir from the Latin, is to hold something up. It's as if there's some magical wish to hold up against gravity. The image I keep coming back to is the image of breath with its inherent balance, and the craziness of trying to breathe in forever. What if I could breathe in forever? What would happen if I just took in more and more and more oxygen, and just kept breathing? As if I wanted to keep growing, more and more - I would burst like a balloon. I would just die.

It's necessary also to let go, to recognise the limits of my ribcage, the limits of my diaphragm and my body to hold any more breath. To recognise at the level of my body where that limit is and to let go. And in letting go, in breathing out, I speak and I sing to the world, and make a contribution that is unique to this body.

That’s the important part of sustainability. What is sustained is the song, is the music. It’s not made just by me and can’t be made if I only grasp at it. It has to be let go of and given. It's that music, that note, which for me sustains.

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Metaphors to continue to live by

Last year, Ashden Directory co-editor, Wallace Heim, presented a series of blogs about a neglected topic in environment and performance: Flowers on Stage. Today, Wallace introduces her new series: New metaphors for sustainability.

Metaphors influence our lives in many subtle and often overlooked ways: from the idea of life as a journey to the rhetorical wars on drugs and terror, metaphors help shape the world in which we
live. Some conjure up, very effectively, a particular set of circumstances: the "iron curtain", the "green belt", and the "glass ceiling".

But some of the most pressing ideas and circumstances today are short of illuminating or imaginative metaphors. 'Sustainability’ is one, narrowed by the language defining it and lacking the surprising metaphors that would express its significance, encompass its contradictions, and evoke its potential.

To encourage a shift in this situation, I’ve asked people to suggest a metaphor for ‘sustainability’. Over the next weeks, I’ll be presenting the metaphors that performance and visual artists, writers, architects, cultural commentators, environmentalists, activists and scientists have suggested. Each person’s metaphor will appear here on Ashdenizen as a blog, and all of them will be compiled on the Ashden Directory.

The project is not about finding the metaphor, but about revitalising the discourse. I wanted people to approach sustainability from the perspective that had meaning for them, whether sceptical or supportive. The first metaphor appears tomorrow.

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Physical theatre that works on many levels

Bradon Smith visits the Greenwich and Docklands Festival to see Wired Aerial Theatre's latest production, one of this year's TippingPoint commissions

As the World Tipped is a spectacular piece, written and directed by Nigel Jamieson, lying somewhere on the joins between theatre, cinema and circus arts. It opens in a bureaucratic setting with a roll-call of extinct species. An official takes a sheet of paper, reads the name of the lost species, stamps it and transfers it to another pile. Around him others bring the pieces of paper, at first singly and then in boxes, until they tower around him. As the boxes obscure his desk, news comes through of the COP15 summit, and the scene moves to Copenhagen.

And with that, the narrative of the piece is pretty much done. Because as we listen to excerpts from speeches from COP15 by Brown, Obama, and representatives of the Alliance of Small Island States; and as the negotiators struggle to reach an agreement; and as the characters on stage become increasingly exasperated as successive drafts are rejected; as this happens, the stage begins to tip towards the audience.

First boxes and papers begin to slide, then desks, then performers, who struggle to scramble up the inclining stage. As the stage becomes steeper, climbing becomes more difficult – some of the actors have reached the top and are hanging precariously on to the edge, but others are having difficulty. And the audience reacts with a combination of pleasure at the spectacle, cheering the performers in the manner of a pantomime, but with also a suggestion of anxiety, a sort of vicarious vertigo.

Hoisted by a crane, the stage becomes a vertical stage-screen; and as images are projected on to it, the performers – now wired to harnesses – tumble down the face of it and, in the vignettes that follow, interact with the images in a way that is convincing and compelling. As the text of draft negotiations scrolls down the screen, for example, the performers run, leaping the paragraph breaks; or as we watch scenes of floods, the actors are bounced around by the roiling water.

The movement of the performers across the screen is achieved by attaching them via pullies to operators who scamper up and down two ladders running along the sides of the screen-stage. The hanging performers are deftly manipulated, so that they appear immersed in the scene projected behind them. In one nice moment we see a girl scampering up the inclines of a graph projected on the screen behind her (CO2? GDP?) and sliding down the declines, with her operator administering a jolt as she 'hits' the bottom of each downward trend.

One result of this mechanism is that the performers themselves have only limited control over their own movements, aiding the illusion. But it is also an important part of the piece's visual metaphor – the characters appear at the mercy of the environment staged or screened behind them: at first, the failure of the Copenhagen negotiations, and then the unstable climate we have created.

As the World Tipped is a spectacle, but it also reveals evidence of a depth to its thinking. In one scene, a character is consumed by fire in a rather clichéd post-apocalyptic landscape. As she hangs limply, this scene is in turn swallowed by a TV screen, leaving the performer suspended in the frame. The moment suggests, perhaps, an awareness of the inadequacy of this very form of dramatic representation.

Technically the performance is dramatic – but the piece achieves a range of tone, with moments of levity and real poignancy. It also hints at issues beyond that of climate change. If I have a criticism, it is of a few projected images of sad, subcontinental faces staring in to the camera – a couple of moments felt like they were performed against the backdrop of an Oxfam poster campaign. In line with this was the ending, in which the performers 'tear' away the “The End” screen to reveal a screen asking us to “Demand Change Now”, which felt more heavy-handed than the preceding piece.

Otherwise, this is a great piece of physical theatre: dramatic, entertaining and with a conceit that works on many levels and from many angles. Especially the vertical.

Bradon Smith is a research associate in the Geography department at the Open University and AHRC Climate Change Research Fellow at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

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This year's Edinburgh Fringe takes green ideas into new areas

Every year we comb through the Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme, speculating on whether productions may have a connection with environmental themes or climate change. This year seems different to previous years.

There are half a dozen theatre shows that clearly have environmentalist themes: mountain-top removal mining; allotments; restrictions in response to climate change (a comedy about socks); and protests against nuclear energy (an adaptation of Lysistrata).

There are shows about human relations with animals, about bullfighting, vegetarianism, our fear of the wolf, and the return of a show taking place in the Edinburgh Zoo. There's also a return of The Man Who Planted Trees. Each year has a share of Frankensteins and Fausts, and shows about Darwin, Francis of Assisi and Galileo.

But there are more shows this year than previously that connect indirectly with environmental themes. Many shows are set in a post-catastrophe world (in previous years, the environmental catastrophe was usually still on its way), or set in the woods, or in dystopian cities.

Other shows relate an environmental situation to another aspect of life: the flooding of overwhelming human emotions is related to the flooding of rivers; a search for a longed-for grandfather is related to a search for a forest. And looking even more widely, we've included productions about capitalism, poverty and urbanisation. This dispersal of environmental ideas into new dramatic territories seems to be a notable change in what this year's Fringe offers.

The number of shows on at the Edinburgh Fringe that we list in the Ashden Directory is still a very small part of the Fringe overall, whose most popular themes remain World War II, the Holocaust, sex, relationships, and personal identity. more ...

new on our newspage

The Greening Design Forum, hosted by the Society for British Theatre Designers, will discuss sustainability in the theatre industry, at the Old Vic Tunnels, London, 22 June.

The morning after the solstice, 22 June, in Glasgow, a DIY chorus will sing to the sunrise.

A conference on the conflicts over goals and values arising in conservation and in the maintenance of biodiversity has sponsored four artists' residencies to explore conflicts and their contexts. The organisers are the Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability, and the artists are Dalziel and Scullion, using film and sculpture; Helen Denerley, who re-uses scrap metal to create sculptures inspired by the animal world; Huw Warren, pianist and composer; and Esther Woolfson, writer.

New productions:
A Funeral for Lost Species by Feral Theatre, a TippingPoint commission, comes to the Green Man Festival in Wales, in August.

My Last Car, by 509 Theatre, again a TippingPoint commission, will be at the Warwick Arts Centre in October.

University College Falmouth is offering funded PhD's, some of which have an environment and arts connection. Interviews early July. more ...

spring moved at 1.3 miles an hour

For a couple of years, this blog has been reporting on a remarkable school project, at the Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia, which follows the arrivals of daffodils along the east coast of America.  One of our editors, Kellie Gutman, participates in the project. The results for 2011 are now in.

"The southernmost daffodil arrived in Jacksonville, Florida March 4th, and the northernmost daffodil arrived in Ft. Kent, Maine, April 27, 2011.  The distance was 1812 miles in 56 days, 32.4 miles per day, or about 1 1/3 mile an hour."

This is the 21st year of their daffodil project, and the previous five years posted speeds of 12, 16, 20, 23.4, and 23.5 miles per day.  It seems that a late-starting spring, such as was experienced in Boston this year, makes spring race up the coast to catch up. When a blooming daffodil was finally spotted in Boston, on April 5, spring quickly followed with a sudden, intense flowery display, unrivaled for the last many years.

See also: spring's progress, school postcard, it's a mile an hour, as the snow melts, spring arrives at three times the speed

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climate playwright tackles free schools

As any regular reader of this blog knows, the playwright Steve Waters has written the best play about climate change. After The Contingency Plan, he went on to write Little Platoons, a play about free schools.

The radio version of Little Platoons is broadcast with the original cast tomorrow afternoon at 2.30pm.

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new on our newspage

Artsadmin’s Two Degrees 2011 Festival, Art & Activism, Climate & Cuts, runs from 12 – 18 June in London, with artist-led interventions and events on the themes of government cuts, global protest and activism, and the growth of alternative solutions to the climate crisis. There’s the chance to eat American Signal Crayfish caught from the River Thames, a trail of bicycling events between Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios and Arcola Theatre, and other events, films, excursions, including A Good Climate for Business, Future Editions, Potion, Haircut Before the Party, Paths Through Utopias.

Our Current Climate, 18 June, closes Two Degrees with a day of talks, workshops, performances, interventions and walks with artists from the festival and Encounters, UK Uncut and the Yes Men.
The event will be asking how exactly are the climate and the funding cuts linked, and how can we use art and activism to change our current climate?

Manchester International Festival has two different events touching on the environment, Björk’s Biophilia show, and the launch of a three-year project to construct a vertical farm in a disused tower block.

We list those summer music festivals that have environmental themes, or are working towards a low-carbon event.

New productions coming up in June include Harmonic Fields (Lakes Alive), As the World Tipped (Nigel Jamieson and Wired Aerial Theatre, a TippingPoint/Without Walls commission) and SEVEN ANGELS (The Opera Group, ROH2 and Tramway).

Other events: University of the Trees holds an Open Day on 5 June, and a public talk by Shelley Sacks on 11 June at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Devon.

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makes you gulp, makes you think

The Stage reviews As The World Tipped, one of the winners of this year's TippingPoint commissions. The reviewer, Mark Shenton, says the show is very timely indeed.

"Part very physical performance and part film, as aerial acrobats are suspended and crawl over a giant vertical screen that the stage becomes, and are dwarfed by the huge filmed images projected around them, this outdoor show is a lot more than mere spectacle. It does that rare thing - it makes you gulp with astonishment, but also think."


Five-minute YouTube clip here.

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what type of French person isn't going green?

The French paper Libération runs a piece today on les écolo-résistants who worry more about their car than the planet. Libération assesses the écolo-résistant type in terms of age, sex and income. The answers are: "50-65 ans environ ... Homme ... Hauts revenus." more ...

bottom gear

In a recent column Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson appears to be envying the life of the forager.

"If you do lose your job and you end up living in a barn, with just a fire to keep you warm and nothing to eat but what you can find in a hedge, be happy. Because you'll be having a much better life than me." more ...

new metaphors for sustainability would need to range from "resilience" and "symbiosis" to "anxiety"

In the second of her two reports from the Staging Sustainability conference in Canada, Wallace Heim reports on the reactions to our latest project: "New Metaphors for Sustainability"

Staging Sustainability also marked the launch of Ashdenizen’s and the Ashden Directory’s project to find new metaphors for sustainability, with the first showing to an audience of our online DVD ‘By Another Name’. The video is of four people suggesting four very different metaphors for sustainability and is the first stage of our project. Over the next weeks, we will be asking many more people, and presenting their responses here and on the Directory.

Clockwise from upper left: Carolyn Steele, Zoë Svendsen, Ansuman Biswas,  James Marriott

At the conference, the video was looped for the duration of the first day and I showed it in a panel session on the second day. Fortuitously, there was a generous amount of time. I opted for a conversation with the people there rather than the paper I had prepared – and that was a much more interesting turn.

The prospect of finding a metaphor for sustainability was challenging. No impromptu metaphors were suggested, instead, there was discussion about what it meant to ask the question. Conceptualising it in that way goes against the habitual languages of accountancy, management and measurement. There was resistance from some to considering sustainability as anything other than a hollow idea bereft of novelty, motivation or consistency.

More people, though, enjoyed the problem and whether sustainability as a concept could be revitalised. The combination of metaphor and sustainability was intriguing, a chance to draw out buried emotional and psychological aspects. For one person, trying to live sustainably in rural Canada, the effort is one filled with anxiety, uncertainty as to his survival, and his metaphor would have to express that. For others, it made more sense to think of metaphors for ‘resilience’ or 'symbiosis'. Another contribution brought out the importance of ‘deep’ metaphors to one’s world view and sense of meaning, and the effects of not having, or losing those metaphors. Could a metaphor for sustainability be a 'deep' metaphor? There was talk of when ‘nature’ is a metaphor, and when it is not, on the stage, in the garden and in everyday life.

It was a good start. Special thanks to Barbara Sellers-Young, the conference co-organiser, who was generous in her support for the project and the video.

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conference on 'staging sustainability' suggests another theatre database to complement this one

In the first of two reports from the 'Staging Sustainability' conference at York University in Toronto, Wallace Heim finds herself sustained by some "intriguing new developments" and the discovery that one of the talks was highlighting the Ashden Directory.

One only hears a fraction of the papers and presentations at a conference, and the rest are a blur of abstracts left in a dark room. Unexpected intersections sometimes light up, and the most surprising of these was meeting Lesley Delmenico from Grinnell College, Iowa at breakfast.

Lesley Delmenico was giving a paper on ‘theatre ecology’ at the same time as I was presenting our DVD, and a paper on our project New Metaphors for Sustainability. We didn't discuss our papers, the table was busy with people. Only later when someone directed her to me did the bells start ringing. About a third of her paper was on the Ashden Directory itself, and what an excellent database and resource it is. More than that, somehow, she had connected through or to Steve Waters with Robert’s interview, and with students had produced as theatre his single-play radio version of The Contingency Plan.

As a further project, she's going to suggest that students start compiling a database similar to our Directory for theatre productions in the United States and Canada. All this was in the context of her ideas of how the internet and media networks make possible the rapid dissemination of ideas and images that the environmental situation requires.

The presentations in the conference were a good indication of what's happening in Canada. Having been to many of these events, and organised a few, it's the repetitions that become noticeable, (...of the: 'we made costumes out of recycled materials', or ‘the local community was deeply engaged’ sort....) with a few spikes of intriguing new directions - like those on disability and what that means for perceptions of self-and-environment by artist Alicia Grace from the UK; on queering ecology, a plenary presentation by York academic Catriona Sandilands and dancer Michael J. Morris; and on a project that worked with native peoples on the west coast of Canada that saved some territory from clear-cutting when conventional forms of activism failed, by Nancy Bleck from Canada.

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