After a delayed departure from Edinburgh on Sunday (due to a wheel balancing epic) our journey north west went well and I managed to to arrive at Ullapool Museum on time (10 am) to begin off loading the many packages making up the Future Fossil ‘consignment’ .
Now carefully arranging the space, and making decisions as to how the different elements will be configured in the investigation space.
The selection of the best ‘ fossils’ found on Lochinver, Badentarbet and Ullapool beaches last autumn with residents and pupils has been made and they are now all now carefully boxed and loaded up. It feels wonderfully appropriate for them to be the first ‘consignment’ to transported in my project van taking due care and attention to the vans Vehicle Tray Layout instructions left by the Royal Mail. The numerous boxes and display cases will be delivered to Ullapool Museum tomorrow morning to begin the installation of the ‘Future Fossil Collection’ the installation process can be viewed by visitors to the museum Monday to Thursday and will be complete on Friday The exhibition will run throughout May & June.
As I begin to kit out my mobile workshop for the project, I am breaking off to make notes about how to organise and carry out my expedition to Isle Martin. A wonderfully exciting prospect especially with the aim to tow the litter away from the island on World Environment Day. If anyone in the area has access to a boat and time on the 5th June (its a Wednesday) to help tow the ‘Litter Rafts’ to the mainland your support would be much appreciated and would help to make a big visual statement of what it’s possible to achieve. I am also looking for help/funding to film the ‘flotilla event’ on the 5th so that our event on the west coast can be seen on line as part of the United Nations Environment Programme ( UNEP) record of the 2014 World Environment Day events, they are looking for films to show case what can be achieved! Please contact me with any suggestions. Many thanks.
Measurements for making an ex mail van into a project workshop are rapidly taking place in order to kit out the space in time to return to the west coast to be able to install the ‘Future Fossil Collection’ in Ullapool Museum, which will open to visitors on the 2nd May. The van will also provide vital back up for my investigation on Isle Martin and shelter throughout May and June. Progress reports to follow.
Any hot tips on insulating and racking out a panel van gratefully received!
Plans are now rapidly taking shape for stage 2 of the project.
Exhibition of the ‘Future Fossil Collection’ has now been allotted a perfect space within the fascinating Ullapool Museum, designed by Telford. Space has also been designated for the inclusion of the beach litter ‘Timeline’ created by pupils of Achiltibuie Primary School upon which they will place their own birth dates and the objects they found on their beach. The exhibition will open at the beginning of May.
Beach Litter Investigation is now set to take place on Isle Martin the closest of the summer isles in Loch Broom thanks to the permission of the Isle Martin Trust. The Island was once inhabited and then a RSPB reserve before coming into ownership of the community. I am delighted to becoming their first ’artist in residence’. A big thank you to them. While in residence I will be mapping and investigating what I find on the islands westerly storm beaches over 10 days, I will be joined by pupils from Ullapool High School on 2 of the days. After the surveying and mapping I will be collecting the litter into different material categories from which I will be make my litter rafts.
Recycling Journey with the help of skiff rowers (with a few of whom I recently ventured out onto the loch with) I am looking to tow the litter rafts to Ardmair Slipway for collection by the Highland Council recycling team. My aim is to document the journey of each of the rafts through the waste services – for recycling or not.
This second stage of the project is being funded through Crowd Funding and private sponsors as Creative Scotland unfortunately declined funding for this stage of the project even though it ‘understands the importance of the ideas contained in the littoral project and is aware of your ambition to bring those ideas to a wider public through your artistic work. Your proposal was considered to have met all of the fund criteria and would be an interesting project and follow up to the research and development that was supported by CS. However extreme over-subscription of the budget meant other applications were prioritised. It has therefore not been possible to support your project on this occasion. The total request for this round of funding was £5.3million with a budget of £1.1million.’
Creative Scotland has encouraged me to apply again, which I will of course do for the next stage of the project, but for now I am focusing on setting up and running the project activities above. As a consequence of the short fall in funding I will be asking for as much support as possible from the Ullapool community and my sponsors. Many thanks in advance!
As my crowd funding appeal reaches its conclusion in 24hrs I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has backed this project with donations and who are supporting me in many different ways to make sure each of the this years events are a success. While I have just reached my target for this appeal any additional donations are very much welcome (as funding from Creative Scotland is as yet not assured).
The Sponsume link http://www.sponsume.com/project/littoral-sci-art-project-2014 to my project is open until tomorrow March 22nd at 12 noon after that donations can be made via PayPal using my project email littoralartproject@btinternet.com.
Please keep following the project here on the blog by clicking on the Follow button or on the https://www.facebook.com/LittoralsciArtProject all comments and ‘Likes’ are much appreciated !
Please take a look at my video appeal for funding this years project plans which I am working towards taking place in May and June on the north west coast. I am trying to raise £200 more by next Saturday 22nd March to reach my target of £1,000. To see more details and donate click on:
http://www.sponsume.com/project/littoral-sci-art-project-2014
Please pass on the link, there will be original relief prints as rewards for donations. Thank you to everyone who has already donated!
After the excitement of illuminating the plastic litter issue which is happening on our beaches, for the TEDx University of Edinburgh audience I am now head down working out how to make my 2014 Littoral plans happen.
All my thinking and notes lead back to the need to raise funds in order to make to following happen:
Hence my big sponsorship request which I have set up with Sponsume an on line crowd funding site, the link below leads you to my video appeal and details of what you will be funding and the relief prints I will be making and offering as rewards for donations. Please pass the link on to anyone you think might be interested. Any other ideas of how/where t raise funding would be much appreciated.
http://www.sponsume.com/project/littoral-sci-art-project-2014
…..in Abundance, in the company of 350 people attending the TEDx* talks on Friday at the University Edinburgh.
My contribution was to create an installation to spark discussion and catalyse debate about Scotland’s problem of beach litter
Talk attendees were asked to follow the sound of the sea to find the installation, along the way passing statements about the condition of the beaches and litter found. Reaching the installation room they were asked to Enter, Consider and Respond – by tweeting a picture and comment. On entering the room the viewer was confronted by a collage of projected images of seemingly massive floating plastic bottles which emanated from seven overhead projectors positioned throughout the room . Participants were encouraged to walk around, reposition bottles on the projectors and to ask questions about the issue. Many engaging in discussion with me about the major part that plastics plays in the problem.
A display of a few of the ‘future fossils’ helped to introduce the issue of the longevity of the litter problem and my new crowd funding appeal video gave an on the beach background to the project. In the centre of the floor a 1 metre square was marked out with plastic drinks bottles I had recently found in a similar area on a beach last month , bottles like the ones we use everyday for 5 minutes which might have contained water, juice, coke …. prompting the question why are we using bottles made of a material that lasts up to 1,000+years when the contents are drunk in a few minutes ? Prompting comments like:
It’s not even good for you to drink out of ta plastic bottle!!
Where does what you drop end up? Here One day the ocean will throw it all back at us
We’re paying today the price for a mind set from a time when environmentalism still didn’t exist in our vocabularies
Make rubbish valuable e.g. non throwaway bottles.
There needs to be an incentive to recycle. For example in Scandinavia you’re charged 20c per bottle if you return it , you’re given money back. In my time living in Finland I didn’t once see bottles lying around.
Please comment on the installation and the event
* TEDx is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TED’s mission is to freely promote “ideas worth spreading”. TED Technology, Education, Design. Talks are offered for free viewing on line in 2012 TED Talks had been watched one billion times worldwide
As I head North again through a submerged southern English landscape which is still suffering from this winters Extreme Weather events, I took time this weekend to stop off and join the Oxford Climate Forum an annual student led conference which provided a platform for a wide range of passionate expert speakers under the banner ‘Climate Change: An Opportunity’. Their goal like mine through the Littoral art project being to inspire people to play a role in the solution of tackling and mitigating the connected problems of beach litter pollution and Climate Change
The speakers from across the world and across the disciplines put forward evidence to show that Climate Change is a concern and opportunity for everyone to be looking to solve. The keynote speech from Dipal Barua was wonderful example of on the ground positive action of affordable solar power being able to improve living conditions of rural communities by providing electricity at the same time as cutting Green House Gas emissions kerosene lamps, plus the benefits of rural employment in the support training for solar maintenance engineers particularly for Women. The Bright Green Energy Foundation by putting into place affordable financing system means that by 2013 2.8million Solar Home Systems had been installed in Bangladesh in remote areas, their aim is to provide 50% population with polar power by 2020 becoming the first Solar Nation!
This amazing story was followed by an Energy Panel consisting a group of experts who are engaged in researching areas of energy generation methods, applications, demands, efficiency and sustainability, each gave their view of the energy situation in the wealthy nations. They agreed that the potential of solar power in the UK could only predictably play a very small role, renewable energy was seen as a smart but at the moment having only a small impact, with most power still coming from fossil and nuclear fuels. Points of consensus on the production side included the need to capture emissions, invest in better grid systems, invest in efficient power storage , integrate power sources and improve long term financing systems . On the demand side Dr Nick Eyre made a strong argument for social change as a means to reduce energy consumption as individual households consume 50% of energy used in Europe & the US. The biggest reduction in demand for energy so far has been attributed to energy saving light bulb measures! Another positive example of the effectiveness of social change has been seen in London with the introduction of congestion charges and improved public transport, a comparison of city commutes found that the cost of the per capita commute was of emissions was 50% less than in any other city!
The need to reduce the energy consumption of transport was highlighted many times by many contributors’ throughout the forum, with David Buckland (artist) sharing the disturbing grim details of the US’s daily consumption of fuel being 400,000,000 gallons with the added details that most of the energy in cars and vans is spent moving the vehicle and not the person .
Buckland is the founder and director of the Cape Farewell project which has immersed scientists and artists for over a decade in environments threatened in by climate change. Having recently visited Cape Farewell’s Seachange (Tionndadh na Mara in Gaelic) exhibition at the Edinburgh Botanics which celebrated the work of 30 artists and scientists who worked collaboratively and independently to consider the relationships between people, place and resources in the context of climate change on the Western Isles from Mull and the Small Isles, Skye and the Inner and Outer Hebrides to St Kilda, Lewis, Rona and the Shiants. Last year a follow up expedition to Orkney & Shetland found writer Gorm Ashurst posting a an expedition blog Nano Incursion about walking into a tiny bay on the west of Shetland. His record highlighting how even on this island with the sparsest of populations he found similar beach litter scenes to those we are familiar with on the mainland and all along the Scottish, UK and World beaches.
Buckland’s quest for founding the project was to understand and make the language of Climate Change more accessible, he and the artists that join the project expeditions create images, poetry, installations, films, stories that visualise what is happening to our climate. The artist’s work that Buckland shared in his passionate lecture was poignant, engaging and inspirational.
His own recent addition to the project being the installation of a ‘ready made’ which took the form of a combustion engine appropriately located in Texas, which brought home the significant part that this technology has in the debate . Cape Farewell with its scientific partners is presently focusing on the idea of visioning an ‘Energy Renaissance’ which develops the most efficient energy sources across the world capturing solar energy from the Sahara and distributes the power to populations through a super efficient grid. Here in the UK utilizing geothermal energy from beneath our feet and harnessing tidal energy from around the coast.
Plans for the first tidal lagoon are well underway for Swansea Bay, the vision being for the lagoon to generate electricity, and to be a conservation and cultural resource. It is estimated that five tidal lagoons around the UK could by 2018-25 produce 10% of the UK’s energy. Such bold projects in tandem with better transport systems and changes in social habits that reduce the demand for more energy would indeed be a great start to an Energy Renaissance.
From this talk in particular and from the many other fascinating contributions I have broadened my knowledge and understanding of Climate Change and topped up my own power store of enthusiasm. With which I intend to develop my practice as an artist working to inspire others about the issue of beach litter and our need to change our social habits that are its cause. I hope to share more of the CF contributions in future posts .
