The project is one of three funded UK projects exploring how societies have understood and adapted to climate change in the past – and how we can learn from them to become more resilient to the impacts of future climate change – have been funded by the UK Climate Resilience Programme “Living with Climate Uncertainty” call.
The call, worth £1million in total, seeks to understand how communities have experienced and learned to cope with change and loss from climate changes, and the skills, attitudes, values and approaches needed to live with on-going uncertainty.
Anticipating how people will be affected by and will respond to future climate changes is a priority concern that informs the focus of this call. The call is led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) but, like all the SPF UK Climate Resilience programme (UKCR) funded research, the projects take an interdisciplinary approach.
“Community Climate Resilience through Folk Pageantry” offers a creative, imaginative and interdisciplinary practice-as-research project focusing on community knowledge to deliver a Manchester-focused case study responding directly to its climate action policies and community contexts. The project builds on existing research practices of the PI and Co-Is across intersectional areas of geography, mapping, performance, music, socially-engaged arts practices, and intangible and material heritages.
We work with partners Manchester Climate Change Agency (MCCA), Manchester City Council (MCC), Neighbourhoods North Manchester (Miles Platting & Newton Heath ward), Northern Chamber Orchestra (NCO) and National Trust North Region (NT), with advisory and impact-related support from Manchester Arts and Sustainability Team (MAST) and the EU C-Change Project, Manchester Institute of Education (MIE, UoM), Manchester Environment Education Network (MEEN), and the Black Environment Network (BEN). A Bird in the Hand Theatre‘s puppet maker and director Alison Duddle is a co-creator.
We investigate these questions:
- Q1. How can socially-engaged arts and community-based performance methods identify barriers and solutions to initiating climate mitigation and adaptation strategies?
- Q2. How can creative methods offer improved and new processes, tools and skills by which community climate resilience and adaptation targets can be more effectively attained?
- Q3. What is the transferability of creative techniques, processes and spaces for holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation locally and nationally?
- Q4. How can creative practices be embedded within local policy consultation processes toward inclusive engagement on climate action?
- Q5. How can research learn about modes of resilience from residents in areas of high deprivation?
- Q6. What new “artivism” forms, spaces and outcomes emerge from interdisciplinary approaches around climate action?
The issues we explore include:
- how a community articulates its perspectives on social justice and equality with regard to climate resilience;
- how interdisciplinary creativity can be researched and applied to activate community climate resilience;
- how a community can create, own and embed creative outcomes for resilience; the means to best transfer these methods to policy-makers for wider implementation.
We define resilience as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events” (Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions 2019).
Key words:
Arts Methods
Folk Arts
Material Culture
Pageantry
Socially Engaged Arts
Urban Geography
Climate Change
Resilience
This website will be used to document and share the project.
Follow us on twitter: @CreativeResMcr.
Link to easy-to-read summary slides on the project.
