Art for Climate Action: Community Projects Part 2

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Friday 15th March – Sunday 28th April 2024

God's House Tower, Town Quay Road, Southampton, SO14 2NY

Art for Climate Action: Community Projects Part 2

Explore the role that art has to play in encouraging people to connect with environmental issues and bring about meaningful change.

Part 2 of our Art for Climate Action Community Projects programme that was launched earlier this year.

 

Art for Climate Action is a programme that explores the role that art has to play in encouraging people to connect with environmental issues and bring about meaningful change in perceptions and behaviours, leading to climate action and climate solutions. We believe that art has the power to make change and encourage radical thinking, enabling us to imagine and build a better future together.

Art for Climate Action: Community Projects is an exhibition of two newly commissioned projects led by artists Lizzie Jones and Harry Meadows. Acknowledging the need for collective and collaborative approaches to climate action, the artists have been invited to connect with communities in Southampton and co-produce new activities or artworks. The outcomes of these projects will be on display at God’s House Tower in March 2024.

Lizzie Jones is part of a group called Puppet Back Up. Over the last year, Puppet Back Up have connected with youthful people over specific issues. Together, they have been actively, playfully and artfully involved with these issues, grappling with challenging topics about climate breakdown and climate action. They have backed up locals over river ecology and pollution issues and faced off major polluters with intrepid puppet pets in pursuit of global environmental justice. Randomly, they stopped in local spaces to listen to youthful voices and were confronted by the appearance of a giant bird who told stories of travel and migration. For this exhibition, Puppet Back Up present two new films and documentary photography by young collaborators, alongside new puppets and prints, from and for action.

Harry Meadows has spent the last 12 months working with community gardeners in green spaces across Southampton. The outcome, Personal Ecologies: The Community Gardener, explores the imagination of an ecosystem. In response to the conditions of global warming, there is a call to all for ‘Climate Action’. The video game and sculpture in this exhibition respond to this call through partnership between art and the ecological practice of a community gardener. Through an interactive game environment, you are invited to explore entanglements of people, plants, animals and machines. As these characters spill from the screen into the gallery’s ecosystem, novel narrative imaginaries render us as actors in a new ecology.

 

Art for Climate Action: Community Projects is on display from Friday 15th March and will be free to visit.

On Friday 15th March we will be holding a Community Projects Launch Event  so book your free ticket on Eventbrite here.

 

Associated Events as part of the Art for Climate Action: Community Projects Part 2

Caustic Bloom: Wildflower Workshop
Saturday 23rd March, 2pm-4pm
Join artist James Hewins to re-wild a patch of land near GHT as part of his project, Caustic Bloom. Re-wilding is a form of ecological restoration and conservation with an emphasis on recreating an area’s natural, uncultivated state. Caustic Bloom encourages biodiversity in reclaimed grasslands across the city, by cultivating wild flowers.

Book a spot here.

Puppet Back Up: Alternative (Human-Powered) Cruising
Saturday 6th April, 2pm-4pm
Calling all human-powered cruisers: cyclists, skaters, scooters, buggy boarders: All low cost, carbon free, leisurely, roam-able wheels welcome! Meet up, celebrate and make a scene. With young soapbox poetry platform and Southampton Water puppet happenings at Vokes park, followed by a tour and informal discussion about Puppet Back Up’s exhibition at GHT.

Book a spot here.

Puppet Back Up: Open End-Event
Sunday 28th April, 2pm-3pm
Puppet Back Up facilitates a session of mutual sharing around each others creative involvements and artful ideas for Climate Action locally, including around how we may help to raise the voices of those in the Global South. Find out about what comes next for Puppet Back Up, and opportunities for collaborations and puppet interventions.

Book a spot here.