Recreate: A place to discover inspiring climate-focused arts and culture projects happening in Gloucestershire
Of Earth and Sky, is a large-scale poetry installation by artist Luke Jerram, that was first commissioned by the Gloucester Culture Trust in 2020. Poetry and text created by the public through workshops and online submission, is curated and installed across dozens of sites across a city forming a temporary sculpture trail for the public to discover. Whilst the landscape affects the interpretation of the text, the text animates and influences the interpretation of the landscape.
We know the information surrounding the climate crisis can often be upsetting and leave us feeling overwhelmed.
Yet, we also believe that arts, culture and creativity have a huge part to play in creating change.
On this page we hope to share some of the brilliant activities and organisations that are established or emerging around the county to address the climate challenge.
We hope by sharing this we can inspire more involvement in climate positive action and uplift each other along the way. By tackling climate change locally we can help make a positive difference to our global community.
JUMP TO:
SHARE A CLIMATE POSITIVE STORY
CLIMATE FOCUSED GROUPS, OPPORTUNITIES & EVENTS
Are you creating art works addressing climate change?
Are you creating art works addressing climate change?
Or have you facilitated a creative project in your community addressing climate issues?
If so we’d love to hear about it.
To share your work with us, please send your content to Cal at caroline@creategloucestershire.co.uk. You can send us photographs, video footage, or simply tell us the details of your projects – past and present, and we’ll add your contribution to this page.
Image Credit: Abi Nicol
Tree beds in Cheltenham seed bombed by local residents.
LOCAL ORGANISATIONS
GLOUCESTERSHIRE AREA
HabiMap
The Nature Recovery Network map is one of the key projects of Gloucestershire Local Nature Partnership. The resources include detailed ecosystem service mapping and opportunity modelling. This is a brilliant interactive map resource for Gloucestershire, detailing our most valuable habitats, and the ideal locations to create new woodland, wetland or grassland habitats.
Gloucester Wildlife Trust are one of the organisations feeding into this mapping project with the aim of tackling the ecological crisis with a citizen science programme called HabiMap. People are key to nature’s recovery and HabiMap gives people the opportunity to map and monitor the county's habitats. Knowing what grows where is fundamental to restoring nature and protecting against climate change. Taking part is also an opportunity to experience wildlife and to develop a connection with it, as well as to learn skills to enhance and protect it.
Image Credit: HabiMap
Alt Image Text: Image shows a Gloucestershire landscape overlayed with a map and map key to it’s layers.
STROUD AREA
Stroud District: the natural place
Stroud District is the natural choice for businesses involved in green services and innovative thinking, so 'Stroud District: The Natural Place' launched last week to stimulate investment in the district by helping people find out what makes Stroud's location, people and businesses so special.
The website showcases amongst other things, the district’s green economy, innovation and case studies featuring some of the great businesses and projects already based there.
Nature based practice and simple craft activities to support physical health and mental wellbeing.
Through mindful nature based practice and creative activities with natural found objects, participants can experience a sense of calm and restoration. The sessions are facilitated by experienced practitioners and aim to allow participants, a place to be out in nature, within a group to support positive wellbeing. The Place Outside CIC Natural Health and Wellbeing sessions aims to foster a relationship to the natural environment to support self care as well as promoting pro nature behaviour.
Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking
Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking has a growing national & international significance as a place offering high-quality, innovative creative opportunities for those in the arts & cultural sector, connecting them with global thinkers in sustainability & wellbeing.
CHELTENHAM AREA
Planet Cheltenham
Planet Cheltenham is a hybrid online and physical hub space, created in partnership with Vision 21. They connect people to community initiatives that help tackle climate change, fight social inequality and build a sustainable, resilient future for the town.
The Planet Cheltenham Climate youth group (16-25 year olds) meet fortnightly at the School House Cafe, St Paul's Road, Cheltenham GL50 4EZ, and engage in many creative activities.
The Regeneration Repair Cafe is a collaboration between the University of Gloucestershire, Vision 21, St Andrew’s Church and the Gloucestershire Joint Waste Team.
People are invited to bring in their broken small electrical items, textiles, knives and tools for sharpening. By sitting with the volunteers as they carry out the repairs, you can pick up valuable skills which will mean less and less items being discarded as ‘unfixable’.
St Paul's Vintage in Cheltenham (Albion Street) are a family-owned vintage store selling vintage clothes, including garments that are reworked and screen printed.
They also sell online and are available for pop-up events!
Combining sustainability with community and creativity, FRONT includes a gallery and shop with a plant-based café and is located at 197 London Road, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham.
FRONT plant-based café is open for drinks, cakes and light lunches 10am – 4pm Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Trudi Price, founder of Serging Ahead runs workshops in craft and sewing projects recycling old clothes and repurposing fabric scraps.
She is also one of the volunteers offering sewing repairs at Vision 21's monthly repair cafes.
NATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
Julie's Bicycle: Board Environmental Champions
The Board Environmental Champions programme by Julie’s Bicycle is designed for National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) or Investment Programme Support Organisations (IPSO) and aims to empower you to prioritise environmental goals in your governance, invest in Environmental Responsibility and support you to take action against the climate crisis.
This self-paced programme is aimed specifically at members of your board or your equivalent. You’ll get online carbon-literacy training, guidance, and access to a supporting peer network. The goal is to help Champions collaborate with senior management and integrate environmental responsibility into your organisation's governance.
Translating Nature
Founded by Julie Freeman who works with natural systems and emergent technologies, Translating Nature - in collaboration with artists and scientists, produces artworks that use data drawn from nature as an art material — creating new ways to experience and understand the living systems around us.
They have been building trans-species communication systems
since 2005 and a concise taxonomy for describing data as an art material. This taxonomy is designed for artists, curators, and consumers of any art which incorporates data as a material.
Invisible Cape
Invisible Cape are redesigning online culture for a zero carbon web by applying the same sustainable design principles to digital as they would to physical materials for a more equitable web.
In their very first website conversion they reduced the carbon footprint by 82%.
Every website, every online activity, has a carbon footprint, but just a tiny fraction of the 200 million websites that exist are created with the health of our planet, and our future, in mind.
Image Credit: Invisible Cape
Alt Image Text: Image shows Invisible Cape logo against a yellow background with a white smiling face icon
Craftivist Collective has helped change laws, policies, hearts and minds around the world through their slower, quieter and more intimate form of activism rooted in neuroscience and positive psychology that uses handicrafts as catalysts for critical thinking and compassionate correspondence with power-holders.
Set up in 2009 by award-winning activist, author and Ashoka Fellow Sarah P Corbett after demand from individuals, groups and organisations around the world wanted to take part in her unique methodology to craftivism (craft+activism) she coined as ‘Gentle Protest’ in 2014. Craftivist Collective prioritises engaging audiences that are nervous of and not already involved in activism.
The Theatre Green Book is an initiative by theatre-makers to move theatre towards sustainability, in response to the climate emergency. It has been developed by theatre-makers of all kinds, working at all scales to provide a shared pathway towards zero carbon.
It has three volumes; Sustainable Productions provides guidance on making shows more sustainably. Sustainably Buildings demonstrates how to improve theatre buildings. Sustainable Operations covers everything from foyers and catering through to rehearsals and construction workshops.
POWER is a show and do project—tracking the real-time progress and pitfalls of building a solar power station across the rooftops of North East London via enacting a grassroots Green New Deal. It’s mass participation art project that also aims to create cooperative energy through a solar power station on a street's rooftops. It's mind blowingly radical and totally inspiring.
This is a public work of art involving practical thinking through making—collaborating with people and photons to explore and expand our relationships with each other and the sun we all live under.
The first Festival of Thrift positioned artists as inspirers to action and encouraged change through workshops, exhibitions and performances giving families the confidence to create while having fun on a budget. That first Festival was a huge success and we have continued annually ever since, establishing Festival of Thrift CIC in 2015 with a mission to benefit the community and advance public awareness of sustainable living.
Good reads
Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend – such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.
Her internationally best-selling book Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist has been translated into over 20 languages and has been widely influential with diverse audiences, from the UN General Assembly to Pope Francis to Extinction Rebellion.