'Creative Climates' LIAS-Funded Pilot Project

This pilot project was kindly funded by the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies. 

The project allowed us to:

1. Invite a number of local arts organisations to discuss a future project "Creative Climates: Creatively Communicating the Environmental Crisis", which will commission art in a variety of forms, based on local environmental research, and run a social science audiences response project alongside. This will look at ways for the arts better to participate in effecgively communicating the environmental crisis to help invoke pro-environmental bevaviour.
2. Create this blogsite as a home for the future project.
   
3. Invite artist Lucy Stevens and spoken-word artist John Berkavitch to join the meeting, and then freely choose how they wished to interpret the project’s themes.
   

Lucy picked a current scientific investigation into Leicester air pollution. John responded by thinking more generally about our current predicament. 

The art is currently being exhibited in the ground floor reading room of the Unievrsity of Leicester David Wilson Library.

• John’s Poem is titled ‘No Answers’. Hear him perform the poem HERE. See more about John HERE 
  
• Lucy’s painting (pictured left) is titled ‘Air Pollution Exposure (Morning Commute)’. See more about Lucy, and about the painting itself HERE
• Watch Lucy interviewed by me (Harry Whitehead) about how her painting came to be:
  

• Read about the air pollution in Leicester research that inspired Lucy's painting HERE. The project was designed by the Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability. See more about the Centre HERE
  

Watch this animation by Dr Calvin Jephcote that shows the rise and fall of nitrogen dioxide concentrations in Leicester in 2019 through an average day: 

 

We invite you to offer your thoughts on the artworks by answering an very short and 100% anonymous questionnaire. You can find it HERE