Clive Adams, writing to Sir Nick Serota (Chair of Arts Council England) on behalf of the Arts and Environment network at the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), says,
The latest UN IPCC report has announced that we have only 12 years to avert climate change catastrophe. Yet, despite the evidence of the human causes of precipitous change in climate, biodiversity and soils, social and political tendencies around the world are now adding to the crisis through denial. The situation calls for urgent attention and unusual approaches…
At this critical time, we feel that the important role of the arts needs to be promoted in practice as a whole ‘environmental arts’ ecology.
Clive goes on to say,
To affect societal change in any meaningful way, a new spirit of cooperation needs to replace the polarising effects of competition. Networking and collaboration within the arts is on the increase, but funding systems can engender competing agendas.
You can read the full letter here along with Serota’s reply. There is still time to contribute to Arts Council England’s consultation on their 10 Year Plan – the consultation closes on 2 January 2019.
The Arts and Environment network at the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management includes a wide range of organisations including the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, art.earth, Landscape & Arts Network, Julie’s Bicycle, Invisible Dust, ONCA, New Networks for Nature, BirdLife International, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, as well as ecoartscotland.
If you want to join this important network of networks, please email arts@ciwem.org.
CIWEM also makes the annual Nick Reeves Award for Arts and the Environment which ecoartscotland shared with LAGI in 2016 and Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison won for Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom in 2010 (the first year the Award was made).
Chris-thanks for this! Best, Clive
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Your suggestion that fundamental assumptions about competition need to be challenged if we are to address the challenge of the ecological crisis (global warming, extinction, pollution) and the water-energy-food nexus is critical. Challenging the dominance of ‘competition’ in the arts will make a huge difference to the ‘culture of opportunity’ which keeps artists constantly at the beck and call of organisations, and keeps organisations in false rivalries ensuring no focus on the greater good…