Culture and Climate Change

The British Council and Julie's Bicycle, a non-profit making company, launched a campaign to encourage artists to get involved in helping to combat climate change. The publication, called 'Long Horizons', is a compilation of five essays written by Jay Griffiths, KT Tunstall, Antony Gormley (image below), Professor Tim Jackson and Professor Diana Liverman.

As Alison Tickell underlines in her introduction, each contributor 'has interpreted the relationship between art and sustainability personally, so that science and art, both calling on creativity of the highest order, blur as disciplines.' She also highlights the fact that in order to be effective, the effort should be collective. In this regard, art and culture are thought as a crystallization of contemporary issues and should be used as communication tools in order to convey a message. She emphasizes that 'Now [post-Copenhagen] more than any other time we need to bring some fresh voices, fresh perspective into climate change.'

The British Council and Julie's Bicycle's publication was launched on Tuesday 15^th February 2010 in the presence of Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who emphasized that Long Horizons 'summarizes the beautiful things that are at risk of climate change but also the positive aspects of life that we can benefit from.'    

Behind this communication lies an old question: 'What is art good for?', a question which was already in the air in Britain in the 1960s during the industrialization era. It had invited the critic Matthew Arnold to write 'Culture and Anarchy' in 1869 in which he stated that all great artists are imbued with 'the aspiration to leave the world better and happier than they find it.'

'Long Horizons' is available here.

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