The Library has pulled together some resources around climate change and the arts in the Anthropocene. Below are links to the library collections (print books, e-books, articles and videos), open access articles/publications and websites relating to this area. This page will be updated regularly.
Climate Anxiety
Practical Guides
Climate Justice
Books – performance and climate related
For more, a full list can be found here
Playscripts
Audio Plays
Music
Gabriela Lena Frank is a climate activist and many of their compositions link to nature or link to the climate crisis:
Video
Watch the BBC programme Climate Change – The Facts where Sir David Attenborough explores the science of climate change and potential solutions to this global threat.
Documentation excerpts for On Behalf of Nature, a multidisciplinary performance piece by Meredith Monk. Performed by Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble in 2013. Premiered at UCLA CAP, January 18th, 2013
Normal is Over 1.1: Innovative Solutions to Global Decline (available via the RCS Kanopy subscription)
Award-winning feature documentary about humanity’s wisest responses to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, income inequality and the connection between these issues.
Science & Art for Life’s Sake – Documentary
From 2015 – 2020 the IIASA Science and Art Project investigated how artists and scientists can work together effectively to support the transformation toward sustainability.
The Northern Opera Group Arts & Climate symposium – artists and companies who are responding to the climate crisis. Includes a session on sustainable practice and productions and another on artistic responses to the climate crisis.
Verified Sources of Climate Information on Social Media
(information taken from The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability Action Plan supplement 1)
Facebook Climate Science Centre – this help users find validated
information on climate change from authoritative sources including the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Google is working with the UN to offer verified climate information. When you search for “climate change,” Google will retrieve authoritative information from the United Nations. In addition, Google will surface short text blurbs and visuals on the causes and effects of climate change and individual actions people can take to help tackle the climate crisis.
Articles & Publications
General:
Exact Editions has opened up access to a group of articles to highlight the climate crisis, spanning a wide range of topics from climate activism and politics to agriculture and conservation.
Oxfam Climate Crisis eBook – you can download your free copy which covers:
What governments should be doing, and how you can help demand action
How to work with your local community to make change happen
Steps to take in your everyday life to help people and the planet
Narratives of the Anthropocene: How can the (performing) arts contribute towards the socio-ecological transition? by François Ribac
BOMB magazine article – Strangeness and Beauty: Dear Climate (Una Chaudhuri, Oliver Kellhammer, and Marina Zurkow). Interviewed by Louis Bury
Theatre:
Speaking the Anthropocene: slow writing in collaborative performance art – A documentation of a public performance artwork titled Speaking the Anthropocene which is located within a longitudinal performance art collaboration project called Illuminous that combines creative writing, music and live performance art practices.
Backpages 33.3 includes a piece by Laura Bissell reflecting on the Performance Portals at COP 26
TDR Volume 65 – Issue 4 – December 2021
This issue of TDR is the first of a two-part series exploring climate change and performance.
TDR Volume 67 – Issue 1 – March 2023
This issue of TDR is the second of a two-part series exploring climate change and performance.
“There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake”: Toward an Ecological Theater by Una Chaudhuri
Climate Crisis: Special Issue How the performing arts are addressing the great challenge of our time
Includes:
£1bn needed to make theatres sustainable
Long Read on the Theatre Green Book
How is climate change being tackled on stage?
What are theatres around the world doing?
Doing the ecological through performance by Sarah Hopfinger
Environmentalism, performance and applications: uncertainties and emancipations by Deirdre Heddon and Sally Mackey
Guddling About: An Ecological Performance Practice with Water and Other Nonhuman Collaborators by Minty Donald
‘This is the way the world ends, not …?’: On performance compulsion and climate change by Baz Kershaw
From Weather to Climate: A note by Carl Lavery
A house of weather and a polar bear costume
Ecological anthropomorphism in the work of Fevered Sleep by Lisa Woynarski
The Trans-Plantable Living Room by Lisa Woynarski & Bronwyn Preece
The Rise and Fall of Modern Water: From Staging Abstraction to Performing Place by Stephen Scott-Bottoms
Music:
Popular Music and the Anthropocene by François Ribac and Paul Harkins (published in Popular Muisc, volume 39, issue 1).
The Anthropocene and Music Studies by Jim Sykes
Classical Music in the Anthropocene by Nathan Currier (Ecomusicology Newsletter, vol 3, no.1, 2014, pp.8-12 & pp.30-51)
Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music blog on the topic of climate
Projects & Performance Artists
ClimateCultures launched in 2017 as an online space for creative minds to share responses to ecological and climate predicaments. It’s a network of artists, curators and researchers working across many practices, venues and disciplines.
A climate change project called ‘Music for a Warming World’ (MWW). It explores the use of music to address the climate challenge.
Sarah Nicolls is a pianist and composer who has a focus on climate change. The website includes a blog and information around their compositions.
One of their aims is to creatively explore Scotland and its relationship with its landscape, people, and natural resources, including sustainability and helping to protect the wider environment. They have a page showing recent environmental projects.
Dear Climate: Artistic Perspectives on Climate Change
Is an ongoing creative-research project that hacks the aesthetics of instructional signage and the techniques of meditation to lead viewers and listeners towards a better informed, more realistic, and more affectionate relationship to the more-than-human world, including geo-physical forces, and other species.
Sarah Cameron Sunde is an environmental interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video and public art.
Julie Sperling is a mosaicist making art about climate change and the Anthropocene
Dr. Lekelia Jenkins conducts research on SciDance which looks at blending dance and science to engage and communicate.
John Luther Adams: Music of the Anthropocene – John Luther Adams is a composer whose life and work are deeply rooted in the natural world.
Artists and Climate Change blog tracks artistic work about climate change. It is both a study of what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject.
Into The Mountain is a new place sensitive performance project by artist and choreographer Simone Kenyon. The project explores and celebrates women’s relationships with high and wild places (this includes cis women, trans women and intersex women).
Minty Donald’s research in theatre and performance attempts to put the stuff that is not human centre stage. For the past six years, their major focus has been on performance of/with rivers and other watercourses, such as canals and drainage systems.
An international performance artivist troupe dedicated to illuminating the global environmental crisis and supporting groups and organisations fighting to save humanity and all species from mass extinction.
The Arctic Circle is an annual expeditionary residency program bringing together international artists of all disciplines, scientists, architects, and educators to explore the high-Arctic Svalbard Archipelago and Arctic Ocean.
Arts Organisations & Sustainability
Scottish Classical Music Green Guide 2021
A free guide written collaboratively by over 30 orchestras, ensembles, festivals and individual musicians from across Scotland, it contains knowledge on how to reduce carbon emissions in all aspects of your work.
The Unicorn Theatre page on their sustainability work
Work directly with individuals, organisations and strategic bodies engaged across cultural and sustainability sectors to harness the role of culture in achieving this change to a more environmentally sustainable Scotland.
The Association of British Theatre Technicians has a Sustainability in Live Performance list of relevant resources and initiatives
Sustainable Approaches to Theatre Making – includes suggestions about how to improve the environmental sustainability of your performance work
The Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts is a Think Tank for Sustainability in the Arts and Culture
Theatre Green Book – Book 1: Sustainable Productions
Theatre Green Book – Book 2: Sustainable Buildings
Theatre Green Book – Book 3: Sustainable Operations
Theatre Green Book – Resources on Sustainable Theatre
Climate Museum UK is an experimental museum that curates and gathers responses to the Earth crisis
For schools: Environmental Musicals from Grumpy Sheep Music (watch this space!)