Collective Rhythms, Creative Strategy and Imaginative Resources
Sunlight Liberation Network's Spring update
Click On: Zine for Climate Adaptability
Can we make art that supports a liveable future for all?
Last year I set up a slow working group called New Rhythms (Jan 2024–March 2025) with Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Louise Hargreaves and Ruth McCullough. My aim was to carve out some time to do some shared work and deep reflection on art production and collaboration across borders in uneven and uncertain times.
Check out the Zine we made! → HERE.
Since 2022, I have been telling anyone that would listen that precarity and vulnerability is unevenly impacting people’s ability to engage in the types of climate action needed right now. Many people I know - including myself - are falling into doom loops trying to navigate creative censorship and political protests, visas and the right to remain, unhealthy and sick bodies, low-income and precarious work. The list goes on. There is a climate science term for this downward spiral, ‘risk derailment’. Climate impacts are pushing society off a path to very worse outcomes, and these derailment risks are only getting worse. Right now we are not on a rail, but we are consequently being derailed to stop us even getting near to it. It was one of the motivating factors for this year’s Sunlight edition Tending Waste, Cultivating Life.
In New Rhythms, as a group, we started looking at green art practices - community economies, resource-sharing, and closed loop systems - and ended up on a wild journey that took us through miracle plants, samba schools, eating seaweed with seals, and playing in hidden alleyways. If we began by exploring regenerative practice, we ended with a renewed understanding of how urgent it is for artists to reconnect to the concept of liveability, for all. The word ‘liveability’ refers to the degree to which a place is suitable for living, encompassing factors like quality of life, access to amenities, and a safe and healthy environment. Working towards liveability for artists and their communities is one of many pathways art workers can adopt and adapt to in the Climate Emergency.
To support others in their own journeys and configurations we created a zine and a set of Divination for Climate Adaptability cards. Illustrations by the inimitable Luiza Prado.
Check out our zine on AND’s site → HERE.
New Rhythms is a slow working group dedicated to art and collaboration across borders in uncertain times. New Rhythms was supported by the Four Nations fund from Creative Scotland, and in partnership with Abandon Normal Devices.
Check Out: From the City to the Coast
Last week, my brilliant artist friend and environmental lead at Castlefield Gallery, Jane Lawson sent me this podcast and brought to my attention Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s wise words “Fuck hope, I want to see your strategy”. Yep. If you are following the science, or the news, I’m guessing this is pretty much where your head is at too.
A few months ago, I had the DREAM JOB of creating Furtherfield’s Environmental Policy - From the City to the Coast. I love working with this organisation. They have always been an outpost for people wanting to experiment with doing it with others. Next year is their 30th birthday(!), and the start of a new chapter. It sees them being led by Felixstowe’s young people and community to explore the town’s future through immersive storytelling and eco-social Live Action Role-Playing (LARP). Erm. Yes, please!
The Environmental Policy we put together has some unique takes on energy efficiency and labour practices for small arts charities, as well as some sticky questions and hurdles that others are most likely thinking through in their own lives. Starting on 25th April, Ruth Catlow and I have put together a series of Instagram posts sharing our learnings and resources. Check them out on Sunlight or Furtherfield’s IG pages.
Check out the policy → Here.
Image: From the City to the Coast, policy illustration by Sajan Rai.
Download: New Imaginative Resources
If you’ve not seen, Sunlight released three GORGEOUS imaginative resources, designed by the fantastic Public Tactics (flematu sessay).
Imaginative resources → HERE
With everything that is happening all around us, it is easy to forget how agile and powerful we are as artists. In this latest edition of Sunlight, we felt it was important for us to share our learning as widely as possible and commissioned Public Tactics (flematu sessay) to create a set of imaginative resources – tools to help others to do their own work, wherever they might be. The three posters came out of our ‘Tending Waste, Cultivating Life’ workshops by the inimitable Angela YT Chan, Bóxī Wú (who works with ESEA Green Lions), Manual Labours (Dr Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards), and Maya Chowdhry.
There’s so much to say about the latest edition. It started off in 2023 as an ambitious idea to bring the Sunlight art and climate network to Sheffield art workers in the form of holistic creative training for adaptation in uncertain worlds. Because of many things, including the UK’s trash fire of a public funding landscape, it ended up being an edition experienced through the lens of waste, with each artist focusing on the domestic scale (a microcosm of someone’s values and beliefs that can be grown), and worked within their own or a local Sheffield community (as an antidote to overwhelm and despair).
flematu attended all three workshops as a visual note taker, and developed three hand-drawn colour posters documenting the workshop exercises, communicating the learning that took place in a visual language based on gardening, glossaries, orchestration, and relational mapping. These posters are NOT ANOTHER MANIFESTO. Sessay brilliantly refers to them as “hints of an instruction for people to take.”
Download the imaginative resources and read all about the project → HERE
And if you are interested in hearing more about what I am calling Everyday Adaptations I wrote a short piece on Art Catalyst’s blog → HERE.
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