Creative Climate Leadership Podcast

Creative Climate Leadership Podcast Trailer Bonus Episode 6 Season 1

Climate Arts

00:00
The sixth episode centres around the transformative power of the arts in addressing climate change and how the arts can open spaces for experimentation and innovation in imagining new realities and societal models that integrate ecological awareness and sustainability. The episode features Dr. Jen Rae and Sarah Suib. They discuss art and design highlighting the need to learn and respect indigenous knowledge systems for a societal shift from extractivism to relational and interconnected ways of living. Dr. Jen Rae, an artist, researcher, and advocate for rewilding practices, emphasizes the role of the arts in community resilience, particularly in adapting to and preparing for climate-related disasters. of indigenous and nature-informed wisdom

Dr Sarah Suib 
Sarah is a consultant and the founder of Hint Studio, Brussels. She is also a designer and mender with years of experience in sustainable design and product development projects, user experiences, cleaner productions, ESG research, and frugal innovations. Her expertise lies in design thinking, design for sustainability, user research, and the circular economy. She works with small and medium sized companies to integrate sustainability and circularity strategies in their products and practices. Sarah is an alumnus of CCL Benelux (2023).

Dr Jen Rae 
Jen is an award-winning artist-researcher whose practice-led expertise is situated at the intersections of art, speculative futures and climate emergency disaster adaptation and resilience. Her work is predominantly articulated through transdisciplinary collaborative methodologies and multi-platform projects, community alliances and public pedagogies. Jen is Co-founder and Creative Research Lead at the Centre for Reworlding, a member of the Australian Task Force for Creative Recovery and a 2023 Creative Australia Fellow. Jen is an alumnus of CCL Australia (2023).

Links and references:
Centre for Reworlding - https://www.centreforreworlding.com/
Hint Studio - https://hint-studio.com/
Alfred Russel Wallace - https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-was-alfred-russel-wallace.html
Maria Campbell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Campbell
Refuge (2018) - https://www.doherty.edu.au/news-events/events/refuge-2018-pandemic
The Past is a Sustainable Country - https://www.creativeclimateleadership.com/alumni/sarah-suib/
The Relationship is the Project - https://therelationshipistheproject.com/

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What is Creative Climate Leadership Podcast?

This is a podcast about the leading role of the arts in this age of converging crises. It features remarkable stories of individuals navigating the climate crisis and leading transformative creative projects in music, performing arts, galleries, film, and independent organisations across the world. As demands and solutions evolve, what kind of leadership is needed? Who does that involve? And what is leadership in the creative sector context anyway?
Over six episodes, Emmanuella Blake Morsi hosts a diverse array of alumni from the Creative Climate Leadership programme (CCL) – artists, activists, academics, and professionals from various disciplines, exploring crucial topics like climate justice, effective communication, emerging technology, policy, and artistic practices. Produced by Hum Studio Interactive and Julie's Bicycle. Cover art by Emmanuella Blake Morsi

{Emmanuella}
0:03

Hi and welcome to the Creative Climate Leadership podcast. This is a podcast about the radical leading role of the arts in this age of converging crises. I'm your host, Emmanuella aka Emma Blake Morsi and in this series, we speak to those doing remarkable work behind the curtains and on stage, generating systemic change in the creative sector and beyond.

In this sixth episode we’re going to be talking about the Frontier of Climate Arts. And I’m excited to talk about something that's really close to my heart, which is the idea that the arts is a vessel for experimentation. It allows us to innovate and practise new ways of being and doing. By embracing an ecology of change, we're able to create works that can capture moments in time, as well as propel us into new realities.

How do you platform both Indigenous and nature-informed wisdom in this purpose-driven work? And how can we embody risk-taking and relational accountability?

On this episode, we are joined by two pioneers in climate arts, Sarah Suib, who's a consultant and founder of Hint Studio in Brussels, who took part in the CCL Benelux last year, and Jen Rae, who's an artist, researcher, and re-worlder, who took part in CCL Australia in 2023 as well.

{Sarah}
1:27
Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Sara Suib. I'm a consultant from Hint Studio Brussels. And right now I'm working with startup and SMEs, so small, medium-sized companies to integrate sustainable strategies in their businesses. So one of the areas that I'm working on is actually to understand how the past can be used to inform our sustainable journey today. And this is where my futures and where the idea of climate, how we can influence climate change by understanding what have been done by the previous generation. So this is where I'm coming from, like looking at the past in the process of actually building our future.

{Jen}
2:17
Hello, everyone. I'm here, Emmanuella and Sarah. I'm Jen Rae, Dr. Jen Rae. I'm calling in from unceded Dja country in the central gold fields, central part of Victoria, south end of Australia. But I'm a Canadian Métis. I come from Treaty Six territory on Turtle Island, otherwise known as Canada. And I've been working at the intersections of climate and arts for just over 20 years now. And since about 2015, it really occurred to me that there's so much work in the mitigation space, but there's going to be increasing disasters. And so I've moved into the adaptation space and really around disaster-preparedness and disaster risk reduction and working with communities. And that's through our work at the Centre for Reworlding, where we prioritise intergenerational justice and Indigenous pedagogy.

{Emmanuella}
3:16
As I can open it, I guess it's really great to kind of contextualise what that even looks like. When you think about frontier of climate arts, what does this world, what does this kind of envisioning look like? And so my question to you both would be, what kind of society are you building for? And almost who do we want to become in that way?

{Sarah}
3:38

I read recently a book by Alfred Russel Wallace. He was a naturalist in the 18th century. So this is during Darwin time. And he wrote his experience in the Malay Archipelago. And one of the notes that he wrote was about the society then in the 1800s, they are too focused on commercialisation. They are too focused on commerce. We should take into consideration of nature how that has been done by the Indigenous people. And he already wrote these in the 18th century, no, in the 1800s. And when I think about what kind of society that we are trying to build, I think it's not just a society of people. It's also a society that includes other entities within our planet, the nature, not just the human, even the artificial things that we have, like the plastics, the buildings. So it's like our world are actually consist of people, the nature, like the natural environment, as well as the artificial environment. So this is all the things that human create. And those are often forgotten because you kind of look at nature and then you look at people, but these artificial items that are around us, these products, these things around us, they are also part, should be part of the consideration as well. We create something, we should think about how that particular thing will go, to die or how it works. We didn't finish the story. Every time we design something, we develop something, we didn't think of the whole things, how circular, how it will be, how the life cycle of that particular thing is supposed to be. And it's often like, oh, this is something new, this is a new technology. Everybody let's put money in this and then we build this. And then this is the story that we have at plastic right now. We have so much plastic. We were so much dependent on it, whether we like it or not. But we also don't have a full answer of what do we do with billions of pounds of waste that we have right now and that we are going to create more. I mean, it's not stopping tomorrow. And I think this is the society that I see that I hope we can build is the one that, like we think in a circular render where things don't just stop halfway and nobody wants to think about it just because like I gained something from this stage and whatever happened next is not my problem. But we all know now that is not the right way, not the right mindset to start, to kind of not a right mindset to have in for the next generation.

{Emmanuella}
6:50
Thank you so much, Sarah. And also Jen, what kind of world are you building for?

{Jen}
6:57
I draw my inspiration from Métis Elder, Maria Campbell. And she said that, you know, thinking about the world that we're living in, a starting point is to imagine a world that could have been before colonial. And as an Indigenous person, you know, we've seen climate change being called, you know, an environmental crisis, a cultural crisis, a communications crisis. It's actually a colonial crisis. And in that, you know, colonialism is all about severing relationships to land, to people, to plants, to all the non-human world as well. And so the world that I'm trying to build is one that really thinks about deep time and long time, multiple generations. We know that our elders hold the key to the future.
And so how do we reconnect the storylines? How do we reconnect the relationships? We are in a world that is just so focused on extractivism and the individual, right? So the way in which we sort of, you know, our resistance and our way of healing the world is actually about that deep relational being that we are, that we start relating to everything that's around us because that world is just constantly, you know, focused on the individual, focused on extractivism and, you know, money and the value of relationships is just really, it's forgotten in many ways.

{Emmanuella}
8:30

That's so powerful. And I think that's such an incredible relevance to contextualise, I think, for this conversation, especially because we know that we haven't just suddenly found ourselves here. It's been very intentional. I mean, is it too much to call it a design process? I mean, it's almost like it's been designed to be this way. And I think this oftentimes is about understanding how did we almost get here and actually recognising, which is that question you just almost shared, who was that from, just to make sure we all know that.

{Jen}
9:02

Métis people are one of the First Nations people to Canada, so M-E-T-I-S, and her name is Maria Campbell.

{Emmanuella}
9:11

Incredible. Maria Campbell as well. Cause I just think that's such an important one, I think often in everyday lives and situations, you're so bogged down that the ability to reimagine is so difficult and I think having real tangible references like that, aid that. And I think, you know, to open up generally, how would you say the past has influenced the present day and also what can it teach us about the future?

{Jen}
9:37

Well, maybe just sort of just building on what I just said there. I mean, one of the ways that as a First Nations person, we start with abundance, right? We look at what we have, not what we don't have, right? And when we think in abundance, then we actually, we're sort of, it's expansive, right? You're thinking outwardly, right? And you're seeing all the different connections and it's a way in which we can look at the complexities of, and all of the different systems and how they all relate and how massive changes in one affects everything else. But in this, especially in the arts, where, you know, let alone humanity, you know, the biggest threat to the arts ecosystem is climate change, right? We're already seeing funding cuts, we're already seeing all sorts of, you know, impacts to the arts. One of the ways in which we can actually work together is actually collaborating, deepening our collaboration through relationality and seeing how, you know, by collaborating, you know, what we can do together and focusing on the how-ing.

{Sarah}
10:44

Yeah, I think in the more first to continue with the how-ing, like, you know, how important it is to realise how we do things sometimes, like, when we learn, when we look at how we do things, then we can actually know the impact of that actions. Because, of course, everything starts with a what, like, okay, to understand what comes out, how it works, but the how is actually where the actions come from. And then those are the ones that are measurable. And if we keep on, like, this is why, for me, in my work, like, I look at the past and also to see how this can be implemented in our world today, like, you, we have this whole, like, the past, whole context of it. And, of course, you can't bring everything. You can't keep the same thing as is now because things also change.

But so, the first thing is to kind of understand them, like, what to reflect to what Jan was saying, that the abundance to see what we have and to see what we need to understand what we need right now and then to bring those things together. Like, for example, to know, like, the way people, like, in the old days that how people use ceramic to cool water, to cool fruits and stuff. And also to understand those and then put it in our society today, how would our home look like? And this is where we come in from a design perspective, where design can play a role in building this together. You don't need to bring the exact bottles or, like, the exact item from the past to the modern interior home. But we can understand how we can actually use or leverage this knowledge to design the world that we want today.

And the second point is to also make this very explicit and very conscious. And this is, I'm very sensitive on this because it's not just an inspiration, it's a reference. So as a designer, I think it's important to know what is your source of reference or to differentiate between what is your source of reference and what is your source of inspiration. Because if you take this knowledge and then adapt or integrate that in your design, then you are using it as a reference. You know, it's a little bit like writing. Writing has already like, has quite an established way to do things. Like you can identify where people are paraphrasing or whether you are like quoting. So I think design or art should also build such an understanding because then when the audience or when the public look at this, then you know that this is actually a reference from the Indigenous people. So the knowledge people continue to remain like we are safeguarding this knowledge. So it's not just, it doesn't stop halfway like, ah, this is my design. This is, and I got this inspiration from this community, for example. Even though they are actually copying exactly the same thing, like the same pattern. Like it should not be like, you should understand if it's the same thing. Is it the same pattern? Then it is a source of reference instead of your inspiration because the connection or like the translation is very clear. It's the same like when you are quoting someone, if you take it word by word and then you can't really say this is actually coming from you. And I think this is important when we want to start looking at the past and bring it in the future because we don't want to, to kind of, you know, like we need to keep the connection going, to need to know that where this knowledge is coming from. And this is how also we kind of appreciate the knowledge of the past, the knowledge of the Indigenous people that are well kind of safeguarded in the right way. And that's like the two things, the two points that I kind of, that is really influencing my work and how I do things right now to kind of like make this like something to kind of strive for in every project.

{Emmanuella}
15:20

You both kind of briefly touched on this, this how and this methodology approach and actually developing new methodologies and processes has definitely a reoccuring theme in both of your work. But I just wondered for yourself, what is it about innovating on the how that makes the intangible more tangible?

{Jen}
15:43

There is also like something that does happen in design, which is, you know, it is acknowledging, right, or it is, you know, saying that this comes from Indigenous wisdom and so forth. But there's a lot of extractivism that does happen in design, right? Where it's not enough, right, to just say that this comes from an Indigenous group. We have complex cosmologies, we have complex relationships and so forth. If you are inspired by Indigenous wisdom, connect, connect, try to amplify those voices, bring them with you, right? In our knowledge circles, you know, we always say, you know, like if you're going to, if you've learned something in this circle, if you're going to take it and do something, you hurt us all if you don't bring us with you, right? So that is a critical part because I'm continually seeing, you know, you know, the rebranding of Indigenous wisdom for different corporate or government agendas. And so going into sort of your question around methodologies, like, I mean, we have to stop thinking in terms of these models, these extractive models that we can duplicate and replicate and sell, right, and start thinking about changing thinking and working with approaches that change thinking. And when we are at sort of methodologies, we're considering context over content, right? So we are, we have to, it's deeper, it's longer, and if you put a price tag on it, it takes, it costs more, but it has greater impact, right? Because as an artist working in this space, I know that when I leave, the work will continue and I can come back anytime, you know? And I don't do work in other people's communities that I wouldn't do on my own.

{Emmanuella}
17:35

You touched on the significance of that healing, of that meaningful connection as being so integral because we all needed to get each other along the way together to ever have any kind of real impact. And, you know, within some of your work, how do you incorporate Indigenous and nature-informed wisdom?

{Jen}
17:50
I learned from the Dandelion. The Dandelion teaches me lots. The Dandelion is a medicine plant and it pulls toxins out of the soil and then knows how to act. And whenever you see a whole group of Dandelions, you know that they're doing really deep work together and you don't eat them.

So I think, you know, in this time, you know, in thinking about how do we change people's thinking? We are living in experimental times. We've never been here before, right? We don't have the answers, but the answers exist in everybody because it took all the skills and knowledges to get us into this predicament. We just need to shine the light in this darkness and find, find others, you know, that, that have some of the skills and knowledges and figure out what ours are, do our own auditing and figure out how we contribute to the whole.

{Emmanuella}
18:52

That's beautiful. And I mean, it's obviously, this is kind of the theme and I know even with your work Sarah as well, like we've discussed before how it's crazy when you think about how like 80% of a product's emissions are decided at the creative design stage, you know, right at the beginning. So much of that harbours so much of the, the decision making around not just materials, but also the processes, also even the who's like, there's so much in that. And in what ways do you reimagine new systems and design processes?

{Sarah}
19:25

I think there's like, so two, two parts of it, again, to look, so the one part, like you mentioned, like, okay, earlier that whenever you, you do a lot of climate actions in one part of the world, but if you don't take into consideration the other side of the world, then, then nobody will benefit from it. And, and I think in, in that, in that sense, it's like, so there's like one effort is to kind of really reduce the impact that we have, kind of really like Jen was saying to kind of heal, making less, use less, or use, like, if you, if you don't need to use everything, you don't need to deny anything. So it's like, if you don't, like we try to reduce, we try to kind of heal, like the design that try to heal our current predicament where we are right now. So that is that one part.

And the other part of, like, I think design should look, it's also for resilience against climate. So this is, we are doing this as well, like we call it design for resilience. And in the studio where we look at how we help community to, to manage their livelihood, like, like, like their home against flood, against like, you know, because these changes are happening right now. We have more rain, there are more floods in expected places, there are more unexpected extreme weather, like there are more like the house, like the area that used to be cold, become very hot, or like, so vice versa. And, and we, right now, I said, like, I think as a designer, we also need to look up how we help the society to build resilience with design, because we can manage that knowing what's going to happen. Of course, doing that doesn't mean that we stop the first part of healing. So while we are healing, we also need to kind of safeguard our current livelihood. So this is how I see the both ends are important in terms of like approaching design for the futures, approaching what we are doing in the future, because I think having understanding like, we need to save the world and also understanding that we need to live today is important. So and I see there's like both ends are apparently like, it's an ongoing challenges that we need to do. And it's also in in terms of how I can see like, the climate art is changing is to kind of, like what Jan is saying, for us to change people's perspective, like, you can't deal, you know, this flood is coming every year, it's just going to get worse, or it's just going to get more frequent. But to kind of bring people the understanding, I think this is at least from my view, where arts, where like culture play a role to kind of like play with people's mind to kind of see these are the changes that are coming, like show them the extremes, and they kind of like relax the muscle to actually then take the action more easily, you know, like you don't get too, too big of a change, because you kind of first, you have the awareness, then you have the understanding, and then when the action comes, you can like start it slowly. But if suddenly you were asked to change things, because at that point, there's nothing else you can do, because you need to do it, then it's tough also for the community, for the person itself to actually do those changes. Because you know, everything is a prop, like, you know, we don't like change, we're human, we're like, in like our comfort zone. And, and I think that's how I look at, like, I think how design should approach things to kind of like, you know, also help the society to kind of move forward in a more comfortable more, like, yeah, make it make it comfortable or less painful, at least.

{Emmanuella}
23:25

And I definitely know what you're saying in terms, I think oftentimes when people talk about climate action, or even embodying more sustainable practices, it's done in a way that it's like a change that it's like having to give up something. I think that the significance of understanding that actually, you know, the transition that we're going through isn't just one that kind of leaves us with in place of lacking, but it gives us a real opportunity to really start to build, and to really start to think about what that alternative could be. And I think in both of your work, there's obviously so much referencing and inspiration. And I wondered if you would like to share even more about some of the projects or communities or even regions you maybe personally take inspiration from as well.

{Jen}
24:08

That's an interesting question. I've had the privilege of working with lots of different communities. And I'm a Gen Xer, right? So I'm like this, I'm a sandwich generation. And so I've had the privilege of learning from elders, right? Where they didn't have all of these modern technologies. And then I have an eight year old and spend a lot of time with young people and they’re pure geniuses on both spectrums. And it's like, what happened in the middle? I draw so much from both of them on a regular basis, because it's like the middle has become too complex, right? It has become too complex. And pure genius exists in the most simple things. You know, I've had stories, you know, about fishing and like the ways in which commercial fishermen, capture abalone and like, and then tell me how the Indigenous people, you know, ate it and what it does to the meat in the way that it's done in this sort of extractive capitalist sort of way of fishing. And then you have a car ride with my daughter who says, you know, we need to, you know, the world would be much better if we didn't have, you know, words for boy and girl and mosquitoes and the word perfection. And I'm just like, yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, some of this stuff is just context and reframing, you know, there was an exercise done by Zamzam in the CCL Australia and it was, and it's one that's been done, you know, in different sort of collective spaces and workshops before and I unfortunately don't remember the reference, but it's the privilege exercise, right? Where you are asked a bunch of questions, you step forward and you step back and so forth. And in ours, it was a lot of the Indigenous people that were stepping back, it was the people of colour, it was the LGBTIQ people that were all at the back. And we were standing there going, we actually don't feel vulnerable here folks. Like we actually, we have an abundance, you know, we are connected to our culture, we are connected to our land, we're connected to our elders, you know. So some of this is just reframing, you know, and it's where do we place our values right now? And it is my general, from our perspective as an Indigenous person, we have roles at different times in our lives, right? And so my role at my age is to stop thinking about myself, don't take the risks that, you know, that I was allowed to do in my 20s and 30s, but actually start thinking about how do I lay the groundwork and the scaffolding for the next generation. So they are, the reality is that they're going to be impacted by different climate disasters, right? But how do we still cultivate a sense of wonder in them? Because how are they going to fight for these things when they're rapidly being lost if we traumatise them now? Right? So we've got to take that abundance approach and keep cultivating that sense of wonder and connect them to their elders so that they are learning these valuable skills that are at the thresholds of being lost.

{Emmanuella}
27:35

That's so poignant. I think that's why the deep need for intergenerational connection, and especially in a lot of Western society is so fragmented and it's harming a lot of us because we don't understand the value of, you know, young voices in the spaces, but equally the wisdom that can be shared by elders and almost that sweet spot where people can meet in the middle and be able to learn from each other. And it's that disconnection that we are so often, we just have the refuel within our kind of very capitalistic worlds. And generally speaking, I know for yourself, Sarah, that you often embrace co-creation and collaboration in your work too. And I wondered, yeah, how do you do this and why is it important to you also?

{Sarah}
28:22

Yeah, so like what Jen is saying, like the middle is complex. So that's actually where most of my work is situated right now and just the complexity of it because of so first, why is it important to bring all these different stakeholders or voices when they are like, like you have co-creation, why is it important and also powerful? Because all the actions are in fact, like everybody plays a role within this spending chain. Like you need to understand what the users are doing, what they need, what they want or doesn't want to do and why. And then you go into the productions and to understand like every stakeholders within the process, like from user production, investors, the technology itself, like not just the people, but also the technology and the impact, the nature of collection, like the local nature that are impacted.

So why is it important to try to bring this together is because we understand that we cannot do things in silos anymore. You can't just make that decision in the design phase without thinking what happens along the middle chain. And this is why it's important for design to kind of have this approach to bring people together. And there's one, a well-known one is a systemic design approach where you actually bring all, map all the stakeholders and bring them together and then understand, like just to understand first, not going into like we should design this, you should like this. No, there's nothing about like we are making this. It's really about understanding the ecosystem. And this is where we start, like understanding the ecosystem. And sometimes we say, maybe this is not a good idea to have this technology in this because it doesn't work. Even though you have a pattern on this, it's just maybe we need to think about a different strategy. And that's, I think it's why it is important to bring, to have a collaborative approach, to have a participatory input, including kids, because kids also bring the brightest things, the easiest things, like why don't you look like, why don't you think of this? And I have the privilege of working with master craftsmen in Malaysia during my research. And I learned a lot from them of the simplest thing, but just the deepest, deepest knowledge. It's like one master, that he's a lion dance master. So the first time I went, the first day I was in his workshop, and then he asked me, have you ever enjoyed music with your breath, with wild breathing, like with breathing? Like, I've never thought of that. And I started to explore that, you know, just that one sentence, it takes me like, until now I'm still like, trying to really feel that like, you know, it's really about you feeling the music. And usually, what I learned then is like, sometimes these master craftsmen, the things that they do look simple, like they're like really mastering their art. But, and they give you one sentence, and then it takes you years, like, like, and then I realised the depth of that one sentence, it doesn't just, you know, it's, it's really what we can learn from, to really reflect on this knowledge. And sometimes we should not take whatever we learn, or what we, what is written by the previous generations as is, to really look deeper, because sometimes they write it simpler. But like, there's so many layers of knowledge behind it that we can, we can also explore. And that's, I think, where I'm, where I see it's kind of the different way of processing knowledge, the different way of transferring knowledge as well. And in this context, by bringing all these different stakeholders in one table, we see and we manage to understand their differences and, and how we can actually bring them together. Like, you know, not to just say like, okay, this one doesn't work, but to really bring all these voices together and, and kind of like, okay, we have all this, this is the abundance, it’s the abundance that we have. Where do we move from here that enables the future to flourish. And that's how I think that's where the approach is, like, at least I hold myself like the principle that I have in my heart to kind of like, this is how we work. And then this is how we push all these people to kind of go here. I mean, as a consultant, I also have an invitation in terms like that, you know, you can propose, you can like, these are the directions, these are the impacts, these are the advantage, and these are the risks, the threats, and at times the decision comes like from, like, yeah, not, not just also from one side. So you kind of need to have more data to convince the more, more arguments to kind of state the case, like why this is better than the other. And I'm quite happy that I have this understanding from also from the previous generation, like what they've been doing, and, the history taught to us also.

{Emmanuella}
34:23

And I wondered, for either of you, like, what kind of impact has your work had already, and almost in what other ways would you like it to?

{Jen}
34:23

After going, you know, that decision that happened in 2015, for me to say, you know, disasters are going to be coming, and thinking about sort of a volatile future. And what ended up happening is I started working with a team of people, and we started rehearsing climate related disasters in Melbourne for six years. So we did a flood, we did a heat wave. In 2018, we worked with the Peter Doherty Institute, which is the largest Institute in the Southern Hemisphere around virology and immunology, and we rehearsed with emergency services, artists, Indigenous knowledge keepers, and academics. We rehearsed a pandemic in 2018. And then we all know 2020, right? So that project was called Refuge. There's a lot of information on Refuge because, you know, like over the six years, we rehearsed and learned a lot about working with communities and in a disaster context. So fast forward in 2020, I was supposed to do a lot of work overseas, lost all my work with the pandemic, ended up having the largest outbreak in Australia of COVID on the other side of my fence, of my back fence. And so just sitting there in my studio, looking at a four year old at the time and going, you know, I've trained for this, right? I've learned a pandemic, right? I also have another parallel body of work around food justice. And so I understood that my community was going to be impacted before the outbreak, right? And it was around food insecurity. And we thought we were, you know, putting our finger in a bucket to sort of help in terms of food relief. But what ended up happening was that every food relief organisation in the north of Melbourne ended up closing. And there were no reinforcements. 14,000 people, largely multicultural, English being the fifth dominant language group. Majority of the people were from equity denied groups. And realising that we needed to act quickly. And so my partner was running a community garden with a colleague. That community garden was turned into an urban farm. We took over the bowling club, a lawn bowling club and turned it into a food hub. And what we did is we worked with abundance. We worked with three questions. What do you have? What do you need? What can you offer?

And it was, we had 80 volunteers and pretty much it was messy. And that's, if I want to articulate anything to everybody listening, it's like the messy is beautiful. It's absolute. And it is something like when we engage in this and we understand that we've never done this before, we are connecting with each other. So you're looking at what you have, how does it fit with somebody else? And what ended up happening is we supported our community for 21 months. And we moved that sort of food relief model to a food justice model. So we couldn't tell who was paying for the food. There was bartering, there was innovation, there was sharing resources. There were a group of mothers that delivered food boxes when their kids were napping in a car. People gave what they could give. And in that mobilised response, we were able to support our community. And a lot of it was creative methodologies, dramaturgy, making it fun, creating momentum, that sort of stuff. And so people wanted to be a part of it.

{Emmanuella}
38:26

And I think as a last kind of closing question, what would you like to see more of? Maybe Sarah can start with you and then we'll have obviously like a call to action for everyone afterwards. But I think it'd be nice to kind of hear from both of you for this question.

{Sarah}
38:42

Yeah, I think for the call of action on my side is to really explore the past. So right now in Hint Studio, we have a project called The Past is a Sustainable Country. So right now, we are collecting stories of the past and we did this workshop in CCL Benelux, where everybody sits down and then I have like a canvas where they share like what are the sustainable stories that they have either from their community or from their grandmothers. We have a lot of stories from the grandmothers. And then we kind of build that in and then everybody share their stories. And it's always heartwarming for me because everybody has their own either memories, either important knowledge that they get from someone. It doesn't just like the grandmothers, but the ancestors, like these are the stories from our culture. And I felt that like I always enjoy having those sessions and we have it in our website at www.hint-studio.com where you can learn more about this project. And if anybody is interested to do these sessions as well, feel free to contact me and then we can take it from there.

{Emmanuella}
38:42

Amazing, that's incredible. And I think that's so special as well, being able to really deeply collectively start to archive these multitude of stories and learnings and histories and wisdom. And I think what you're doing is so incredibly special. So thank you as well for sharing and yourself, Jen.

{Jen}
40:28

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, the world that we're living in is, you know, it's going to be more volatile as we wait for sort of our world leaders to take a stance in terms of climate and to have greater action. So the reality is that we are going to have greater frequency and impact around disasters. We have wars that are happening, you know, conflict with trade partners that causes a sense of trauma in us, right? And post-COVID, like we're still in that sort of state. And so I think, you know, having a care perspective, understanding that everyone else is in a state of trauma, we need to stop eating ourselves, right? We need to be able to hold the complexity. You know, the World Economic Forum said that one of the greatest risks in the next two years is misinformation and disinformation, right? That is a threat and it is creating divisions between groups that were once unified. And so that's one thing is just to centre that sort of relationship, the relationality, how do we reconnect? And then there's a book that I think is really fabulous. It just came out on the first of March, it's called The Relationship is the Project, which I think is the best title for a book. It's edited by Jade Lillie, Kate Larsen, Cara Kirkwood and Jax Brown. And it's available internationally. But what's so amazing about it is it's a guide for working with communities. And it's some incredible thinkers and writers and doers that have just put this book out. So I highly recommend it. And there'll be a bunch of things online that people can watch as well. So it's The Relationship is the Project.

{Emmanuella}
42:26

That sounds like exactly what we need more of is understanding the how and what does that look like? And in a tangible way, it's something that can feel so meaningful. So also thank you so much for sharing that. As we go through this journey of climate breakdown, we need to be asking more questions and be working together to kind of collect and answer those. And I think collectively, you know, it's been an absolute journey to be able to kind of get to where we are now. And I'm just so grateful, both yourself, Sarah and Jen, for being able to kind of have this incredible conversation.

Thank you to our listeners for tuning in and also hope that this has been one that has brought you so much food for thought.

Thanks for joining us! What have you taken away from this episode? Feel free to share your thoughts with us using #CCLPodcast

And you can find links to resources mentioned in the description of this episode by visiting the CCL website at creativeclimateleadership.com for more information.

This podcast is constructed by the Creative Climate Leadership alumni network - an evolving network growing from the CCL programme led by Julie’s Bicycle - a pioneering UK-based non-profit mobilising the arts and culture to take action on the climate and ecological crisis. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe to the Creative Climate Leadership podcast and get in touch with us on ccl@juliesbicycle.com.

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