Imagining the Future: The Arts in the Face of Climate Change
PD Session
ALT Hotel - Indigo Room
Sunday, 5 November
9:30am - 10:50am
Summary
Climate change is no longer a topic for debate or some distant threat. Its manifestations are now affecting us in our daily lives.
This situation challenges those of us who are part of the performing arts sector. It has a major impact on festivals and outdoor events planning. It can deter or completely prevent patrons from attending. It also forces us to reimagine creation, production and touring activities with a carbon footprint mindset.
The local and the global have taken on a whole new dimension. Are we ready to depart from established and learned formats? To take new kinds of risks? And to develop innovative strategies that allow us to care equally for the environment and for artistic creation and production?
Panelists
Sara Marielle Gaup – Sámi Artist
Sara Marielle Gaup is a traditional and modern north-Sámi juoigi (yoiker) who also works with duodji (Sámi crafts) and decolonization. She is a mother and an activist. She wears gákti (traditional clothes) every day, and she yoiks/sings daily.
Sara Marielle has been a full-time musician/yoiker the last 20 years and is one of the most known sámi yoik-artists. She is most known for being the vocalist and composer in the music groups Adjágas and Arvvas. Because of the colonization and christening of Sápmi that led to a severe decrease and almost disappearance of the sámi culture, Sara Marielle`s longstanding project has always been to learn and teach about traditional yoik in order to keep this endangered tradition alive.
Mhiran Faraday – Member of SCALE and Executive Director of Ottawa Chamberfest
Mhiran Faraday (she/her) was born and raised in K’jipuktuk/Halifax and has lived and worked across Canada. Her early career was spent in theatre as an Equity stage manager and technician but she has been working in classical and chamber music since 2007 with management and leadership roles at Banff Centre (Music/Banff International String Quartet Competition), Symphony Nova Scotia, and Debut Atlantic. She currently makes her home in Odawa/Ottawa as the Executive Director of Ottawa Chamberfest. She has served as a member of the board of directors for Arts Nova Scotia, a member of the Creative Nova Scotia Leadership Council (advisory board to the Nova Scotia Minister of Culture) and was a Canada Council Fellow for the International Society of Performing Arts. Mhiran is a founding board member and former Mission Circle member of SCALE (Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) – an organisation originally founded to bring together artists and arts and culture organisations and networks to build awareness and capacity in the sector around climate and sustainability issues.
Nathan Biggs-Penton – Circus Artist, Creator, Musician and Co-founder of Acting for Climate Montréal
Nathan Biggs-Penton is a circus artist, creator, musician and co-founder of Acting for Climate Montréal. He grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia but found his home in Montréal with the comfort of the same mountain range nearby. He was educated at the Circus Smirkus, the University of Dance and Circus of Stockholm, and the Ecole de Cirque de Québec. His deep connection to nature inspires a desire for imitation. Imitation of the beauty, flexibility, adaptability and ephemerality of nature. The movement of water in a stream, the bend of the trees in the wind, the patient determined path of roots and the fleeting colors of the sunset inspire his desire to create art. Not to replicate nature but to follow its movements and mannerisms to the best of his humble capacities. Nathan’s personal process of self betterment seeps through into the art he brings to the world; a state of calm that yearns for kindness, yearns for acceptance and yearns for consciousness. His work seeks to connect to human sensitivity, to offer space for calm reflection and is presented with tenderness.
Moderator - Facilitator
Devon Hardy – Program Director, Creative Green Tools Canada
Devon Hardy is an environmental specialist with a background in environmental sciences and water resources management. After working in the environmental field since 2011, she decided to pursue a career in the arts and began working on sustainability initiatives in partnership with different arts organizations across Canada in 2018. She managed the adaptation of Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Green Tools to the Canadian context, and is now the Program Director for the Creative Green Tools Canada program through the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.
Sponsored by:
