Storyhouse Climate Day
On Friday last week, I visited the Storyhouse to attend their Climate Day:
“Join us for an inspiring, uplifting and proactive day of presentations, panels, practical workshops, performances, activities and climate-led conversations, and one which will help empower everyone who attends to play their own part in protecting our planet.
We may all lead different lives, but one thing we have in common is that we inhabit the same planet – and how we treat our rapidly changing world is important, not just for us now but for the generations to come.
Storyhouse is proud to be staging a day of events – Storyhouse Climate – this autumn which will consider the climate crisis and what we can all do about it. Some of the leading scientists and thinkers in their fields will gather under the Storyhouse roof on Friday 4 November to share their knowledge and research, and explore solutions to the challenges currently facing the earth.
The day is also a chance for people of all ages and backgrounds who care about the environment to come together and get engaged in the conversation. Storyhouse Climate has been organised in conjunction with the University of Chester.”
The first lecture I attended was ‘What if there were no cars? Thinking radically about sustainable transport’ presented by Professor Peter Cox. He first spoke about the ‘In our hands: behaviour change for climate and environmental goals’ House of Lords report, October 2022. He discussed statements within the report:
“The reality is that behaviour change is a part of reaching net zero. It is unarguable.” Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief Scientific Adviser
“For a new behaviour to arise, people generally need to have sufficient capability to enact the behaviour, which includes: the physical capability to do it, the means, the time and so on; the opportunity to do it-in other words, whether that choice is readily available to them, socially normative and so on: and the motivation to do it. Do they want to do it?” Toby Park, Head of Energy, Environment & Sustainability, the Behavioural Insights Team
He talked about the switch to ULEV (ultra low emission vehicles), and how that is a good start but insufficient to be a sustainable long term option. This is due to the increase in overall demand for energy, especially hybrids using non-renewables and electricity, but also the issue of where that energy comes from.
“The forecasts for the increase in the size of the car fleet, as in the number of vehicles, combined with their size and the weight of those vehicles, puts such an enormous strain on the electricity grid even if they are all electric that it would take us longer to get a renewable electricity system to fuel those cars.”
He stated that we would continue to have increased problems with air pollution from particulates created by the tyres on roads etc. He suggested that we will need to change how we travel, not just the powerplants to power our vehicles. During Lockdown, traffic reductions transformed villages, towns and cities and made them a safer place for the pedestrian and cyclist.
The House of Lords report discusses some solutions:
20% reduction in car miles
Smaller vehicles
Improved alternatives
Better infrastructure for walking and cycling which includes safer streets-reduce speeds, low traffic neighbourhoods etc
Parking charges to reflect the cost of the land and carbon impact
Peter stated that they were the minimal solutions, he talked about radical solutions:
Streets for people-meaningful speed reduction with enforcement, residential areas where the car is a guest not the pedestrian and car free days
Changing planning policy to include car-free developments: housing for people who want to live car-free so have more open space instead of parking, building in cooperation with public transport
Support for localisation to reduce the need for travel
But is it achievable? Peter discussed that most people are physically capable of using a bike or public transport but investment is needed in public transport. Does everyone have the means to change? If you can’t afford a car currently, an e-bike or public transport is already more affordable than running costs of a car. Do we have the time? According to statistics, the majority of journeys are under 5 miles and the time saving from cars to public transport is minimal.
He ended by asking the question, ‘so….do we really want to change?’. It was an interesting talk but it was definitely from the perspective of a keen cyclist, Peter has written various books about cycling. We definitely need to change people’s habits when it comes to travel but cycling may be a bit more difficult for people than he believes. Theatr Clwyd have recently invested in an electric vehicle to boost accessibility by picking people up. It’s just one of the ways that the theatre is trying to change people’s travel habits. They also have a fleet of electric bikes for staff to travel between theatre sites. They are currently used infrequently so the habits of the staff at the theatre need to be changed too.
I then attended a workshop: how games and play can teach us about climate change. This was presented by Dr Konstantina Skritosavoli. She got us to work in teams, five in all. We were tasked with a role in coffee production-coffee farmers, exporters, shipping company, roasters and retailers. We were asked to decide in our groups how much we should be getting for a 100g jar of coffee with total price was £2.35. I was in the roaster team and we discussed how we knew we were going to be the bad guys in this, we are one of the big brands making a lot of money.
We all came back together to debate the prices we had awarded ourselves after listening to what each role involved in the chain of production.
The game was developed by Oxfam to create a conversation whilst playing a game. By playing the game we talked about social justice and equity, diversity, globalisation and interdependence, sustainable development, peace and conflict. There are benefits to the gamification:
Enhances engagement, participation and motivation for change
Leads to engagement with the content of the game
Brings fun, play and efficiency in learning
Embraces diversity and inclusion
It was an interesting workshop and I can see how some of these techniques might be useful within the workshops that the theatre delivers.
Estelle Woolley was situated in the lobby of the Storyhouse creating some pieces of art and discussing sustainable resources for art. She is an artist with an interest in the countryside and resources, after her family’s association with farming. She plays with our relationship with nature; how we work with or against it, how we intervene and how nature responds back at a domestic level and beyond. During the pandemic, she created face masks made from the found environment. Working with a photographer, the collection of images are intriguing, from a wasp nest masks to shells on a beach.
I sat and talked to her about her work. She then introduced me to oak gall ink; an ancient way of creating ink. Oak galls are produced as a result of wasps laying their eggs in the bark of oak trees. She had some with her and was showing people how to use it in for sketching etc.
Following this, I attended a talk about organic solar cells by Dr Theodoros Papadopoulos. Traditionally, solar panels are created using silicone; the talk discussed how they are also rigid but organic cells could be flexible, manufactured in a continuous printing process, used on clothing and possibly even as coatings on buildings. Unfortunately, the lifespan is lower than tradition cells, 10 years vs 20 years. The efficiency is also not as competitive, 18% vs 20%. I was intrigued by the uses in fabric and coatings-I can imagine fully wearable cells for charging mobiles on the go and pots with solar cell glazes.
The next talk was about ‘Personality & Well-being in Non-human Animals’. I attended to get an idea on how well-being is measured within animals. The two researchers involved are developing a system to measure well-being of the elephants at Chester Zoo.
“Personality is a fascinating aspect of the psychological life of any individual whether human or nonhuman” Murray (2011, p.130)
They discussed how they had been observing the elephants to create their own well-being measure to help the zookeeper's look after the elephants more effectively with well-being being high on their priority.
Next, was a presentation about rooftop gardens in urban areas given by the curator of the museum in Warrington. She started with this quote:
“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself…Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation, must come to terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves” Rachel Carson, Author of ‘Silent Spring’
The speaker was inspired by the Julie’s Bicycle, juliesbicycle.com, ‘Creative Spaces for Nature’:
How can the creative community nurture living ecosystems and our connection with them?
How can arts and culture create a regenerative relationship with nature?
How do we create a different kind of space for other knowledge systems and ways of understanding ourselves as inherently part of nature?
She created a rooftop community garden in Warrington on top of a shopping centre car park. The members of the community volunteer to maintain it and school children are brought there to engage with the garden and learn about plants etc.
Throughout the day, there were some really interesting quotes. I made a list of them:
“We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally-designed machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and serviced in total” - Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1969
“Extractivism is a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with earth, one purely of taking. It is the opposite of stewardship, which involves taking but also taking care that regeneration and future life continue” - Naomi Klein, Beyond Extractivism, This Changes Everything, 2014
“I thought I bought a home, but actually I bought a house. I’ve realised more and more what an argumentative thing this pile very poor assembled stuff is.” - Richard Wentworth, designmuseum.org
“Architecture made people dependent on industry more and more. Our built environment…[is] actually stopping people becoming resourceful humans” - Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow, ‘Architecture has been wasteful’- No Waste Challenge
“Hacking is a response to the intense occlusion and uncommunicative nature of the things with which we are now surrounded. Its practices are based on a desire for an intense knowing of our owned objects…There is a lot at stake, not only the obvious issues of sustainability and economy but also, to use another onerous term, of fulfillment, of actually caring about and for your possessions. That isn’t materialistic and it’s not indulgent…repair demands understanding and respect between people and things, and between producers and consumers” - Peter Maxwell, Understanding Repair, 2012
This quote is intriguing when applied to the theatre; they could easily have knocked down the original building and started from new but they aren’t. The building is being repaired and added to as the needs for the theatre have changed and developed since the 1970s when it was built. The building has not be fulfilling the needs of the community so therefore the renovations and repair is the most effective course of action. Then it’s the question of the materials used for the repairs and renovation; the theatre are trying to use as much sustainably sourced materials as possible and make the building run efficiently on renewable energy. Ticking the box for sustainability and economy; a more efficient building will be cheaper to run.
It was a very informative day. Theatr Clwyd could hold a similar event when the building is back open; sharing their experiences with the public of the renovations through a climate change and sustainability lens.
Comments
Post a Comment