Climate Connections media and climate workshop: 2pm-5pm, Sat 27 March 2021
by Crossing Footprints for Oldham Libraries in partnership with Community Arts North West
– a FREE SPECIAL ONLINE EVENT for anyone aged 10+
Can social media bring people together to educate and tackle climate change? Find out how to make quick social media micro-videos that can have impact against climate change and also bring different communities together. Work with a group of artists and activists to generate action to tackle the damage being done to our climate. Combine images, video clips, text, spoken words. Connect your experience here with other parts of the world, be a part of a powerful collective film made up of many voices.
REGISTER YOUR PLACE at www.climate-connections.eventbrite.co.uk
With artists Kooj Chuhan, Emmanuela Yogolelo, Rabia Begum, Klaus-dieter Michel, Maya Chowdhry, Ricardo Vilela and leading writer and researcher Alex Randall from Climate Outreach.
**INCLUDES LAUNCH OF COMPETITION WITH PRIZES incl. shopping vouchers**
Climate change is affecting us everywhere – the UK, Pakistan, West Africa, Bangladesh, South America, Syria, China, the USA, you name it. This is an afternoon of hearing from experts, activists, community members and artists about the problems and the solutions we are facing, then creating your own short slideshow film combining photos, videos and text. We’ll be putting these out on social media and they will become part of a collective film over the next few weeks. If you have settled in Oldham from outside the UK then we’d love to hear what you know about the environment in your country of origin.
The speakers at Climate Connections media and climate workshop will explore how the arts can be part of fighting against global warming, how climate justice connects with migrant justice, how we can amplify positive activities already happening and asks whether Oldham can influence COP26.
- 2-4pm Main Workshop:
- an ongoing discussion with a panel of speakers
- breakout rooms in small groups each with an artist helping out
- finding photos and video clips and making a slideshow film
- adding your own words about actions and solutions to the problems
- 4-5pm Training Session and Screening
- a training session on how to create short social media videos
- the launch of a competition and open call for more video contributions
- a screening of all the media we create to close the event
This will be an opportunity to bring together a diverse range of people in Oldham from different backgrounds. Oldham Library is a part of the Libraries Of Sanctuary movement and we particularly welcome people with experience of having been refugees.
International participation: Communities close to libraries in Bremen and Hamburg, Germany are collaborating with Oldham on this project and limited tickets are available for them.
Look out for the follow up Climate Connections social media competition!
Full details about this project at https://crossingfootprints.com/climate-connections/ .
This event is included in Peshkar’s Young Digitals Festival 2021. Climate Connections media and climate workshop is presented by Oldham Central Library in partnership with Community Arts North West as part of the national Libraries of Sanctuary movement.
Artists / Activists who will be running the media and climate workshop:
Maya Chowdhry is an artist, poet and activist. She creates immersive and democratic experiences for participants, drawing from creating work in radio, poetry, web, video and Installation. Her current work utilises transmedia storytelling, digital poetry and augmented reality. The themes of her practice interrogate the areas of seed sovereignty, world water scarcity and climate justice. She is currently working on ‘Galvanising Change’ – an interactive audio Installation that uses sensors to measure audiences’ emotional responses to climate change narratives.
https://interactiveartist.org/
Alex Randall is the Programme Manager for both Climate Outreach and the Climate and Migration Coalition; a network of refugee and migration Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) working together on issues around climate change. Alex was lead author on the Moving Stories report, which explores the real lives of people displaced by climate linked disasters. He has written frequently for The Guardian newspaper and other outlets on climate change and migration.
https://climatemigration.org.uk/alex-randall-climate-migration/
Emmanuela Yogolelo is a singer-songwriter, music facilitator, cultural leader and producer originally from the world’s second largest tropical rain forest, the Congo basin. Her interest in climate justice activism started when she was commissioned by HOME in Manchester to create and perform a new interactive performance as part of the annual Horizons Festival. She chose to use her personal experience of climate change as a refugee and third world citizen to create an interactive performance
https://emmanuelayogolelo.com/
Klaus-dieter Michel – I am a conceptual artist; Ideas and concepts are my capital; My work-styles and outcomes are interdisciplinary.
Installation : to convert spaces into monuments
Performance : to fit the artist-self into the process
Video : to play with time, duration and montage
Digital : to make virtual machines
Objects : to infuse meaning into things
Materials : to use matter as expression
https://art.memetic-tv.net/
Rabia Begum is a student, artist and activist. She is a board member on Manchester Climate Change Youth Board and artist working on the newly formed Manchester Art Gallery Climate Justice Group. Rabia has worked on a number of projects with young people in Manchester. These include creating and organising a free four-day family workshop based on the theme ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Refuse’, working as a Youth Co-Researcher, collaborating with Local Alternatives, which set out to reimagine local environments with children and young people. Rabia has written an article on Art UK on Winston Churchill in Gallery Oldham: a complex legacy.
https://www.manchesterclimate.com/youth-board/rabia-begum
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/winston-churchill-in-gallery-oldham-a-complex-legacy
Ricardo Vilela is a Digital Strategist and Producer based in Manchester under the name of Sagitta Media. “Tell the Whole Story” is his motto, which he has been doing over the last 25 years, with a strong focus on Video Production and Live Streaming, and more recently in Immersive Media (Interactive 360 Video and Photography). He has produced award winning work for theatre and drama, and featured on Channel 4, ITV and BBC 2. Delivering Digital Consultancy services, Sagitta Media supports organisations to better engage with their communities of interest through developing a clear Digital Strategy and producing captivating Digital Products.
https://www.sagittamedia.co.uk
Kooj Chuhan Kooj artistically interweaves racial justice with climate resistance using a range of approaches including interactive media, theatrical VJ work and augmented reality combined with a critical cultural democracy practice. He is a founding member of artist collective Virtual Migrants, won an award for digital arts connecting refugees with climate change, curated the exhibition ‘Footprint Modulation’ on climate migration across five venues in Durham and other stuff he’s done for over 30years including previously working as a musician. Currently director of Crossing Footprints CIC which connects creativity with issues of human rights, environment, inequality and wellbeing.
https://crossingfootprints.com/
