More 350

Here’s my attempt at 350 – some images that I made on my way to Uni in Thursday morning. A small gesture, but if mine is one of thousands, or even millions, that adds up to something – right?

Get involved, its pretty simple! For some inspiration visit the gallery at 350 org

Maybe you could make some art:

What do you get when you mix the arts and activism? Artivism!

With the International Day of Climate Action only a week away, now is the perfect time to start building some creative visuals for you action. You’ve been planning your action, making phone calls and having meetings: now is the time to have some fun, and get into the “hands-on” part of creating an action. The plan: organize an “Art Build”. Call your friends, or round up some local youth and set a time to spend 3 hours making art for your action. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 people or 20, we’ve got a few simple tricks that will help you make your action louder, more colorful, and more fun. A little art goes a long way! Fun events such as this are also great ways to strengthen your action community, and to get more and more people involved. You can even invite the press, and get some coverage before your action even starts.

There are lots of ways to get creative, and each day we receive new photos with all sorts of wonderful ideas. We’ve got a few things on our site that can help you, step by step, with the logisitics of making art for your action. Look at a few of the following pages, and let them spark your imagination. A good place to start is to make a banner for your action, this can appear front and center in your action photo: so everyone knows what your message is. You can create t-shirts for your action using these great stencils, or you can make headbands using potato prints. The possiblities are endless… Want to get some theater involved? Check out this script for a short skit that can be done quickly with groups of any age. Want to put some movement into this movement?  Look no further than this great idea for a dance performance. Don’t be afraid to push your limits – its all for the good of the climate movement.

Looking for more ideas? Check out our Spread the Word page for even more tips on how to create hand-made posters to advertise for your event, cardboard hats, instruments made out of garbage, and other fun ideas to get your action to stand out in a crowd. We are a vibrant, colorful and diverse global movement, lets show that to the world! Become an artivist today!

Or get involved in someone else’s action. Check out the actions that are happening near you. In Hobart, there are several events happening, including a plant collage at the Botanic Gardens, a procession on the waterfront, and the 350 photo challenge.

To find out and register to attend an event, search the map at 350.org

View Actions at 350.org

 

The Cascade Brewery & Tip Birds

From the top of the ridge separating the Brewery and the South Hobart Tip, I look down from above, and think of expansion and growth, and capitalism.

The Cascade brewery building is one of Hobart’s iconic buildings. From above, the Cascade Brewery is a different place to the one that is shown in the glossy tour brochures. A material symbol of the company, it has been expanded as the Brewery has grown, and eventually it has become a big messy group of highly functional, but pretty ugly, warehouses.

I had thought that a rubbish tip located almost in the middle of a city was a terrible bit of planning (of course, the city has expanded somewhat). The smell of the rubbish apparently wafts down the valley on a warm summer’s evening, into the houses of South Hobart. I see the tip birds flying overhead when I look out my window. Flocks of crows and seagulls fly to and fro from the tip. These birds are the carrion-eaters, the birds we instinctively recoil from. They are not cute birds.

On this particular walk I change my mind. For the tip is us. All of the objects we have discarded, our refuse, goes there. Perhaps we need to see it,  deal with it. For if it is out of sight, it is out of mind. That pile of rubbish is us. The tip birds, as they fly over in flocks heading towards or away from the tip are simply symbolic pointers to our bloat. We feed them with our waste, the increasing excess from our drive to grow and expand. The rubbish tip feeds these birds. We feed them.

So I suppose this rather rambling post is about change and expansion, and wondering if growth is always smarter. Sometimes the most elegant and beautiful solution may involve re-use, renewal and regeneration.

For some discussions about some new ways of living in cities check out ’smart growth’ and ‘new urbanism’, (new terms to me!):

New Urbanism Org

Smart Growth Org

Celsias

 

Fear and deep suspicion

The fog of fear

If we are coming to a crisis point on this planet, (and I believe that we are, but I also believe that crisis can be a catalyst for change), then reductive, linear ways of thinking are not going to deliver the transformation we need (Well, have they, yet?). For transformation on a planetary scale we may be required to create a bigger context than just you, just me, just your workplace.

A social network is non-linear. But is it an ecology?

The ‘ecologies’ of networks

Network Citizens (available as a pdf download from Demos) reports on the shift of power created by social networking and the rise of ‘network citizens’, who no longer respect hierarchical and bureaucratic structures.

The Network of Public Sector Communicators (NZ) blog has this to say about networks and public sector agencies:

Many public sector agencies view access to social networks, the likes of Facebook, Twitter and – incomprehensibly – LinkedIn, with what can only be described as either fear or deep suspicion. Some of them even go so far as to block access …As if, in the minds of the people that think blocking access to these sites will make people more productive (or protect them from themselves…), there is some sort of impermeable divide between what we do at work and who we are.

The message is clear. Understand the change that is happening inside your agencies. Ensure that you provide people the sorts of tools that will allow them to develop professionally and to invest and grow their social capital. Attempts to restrict the ability of your staff to build their networks (online or off) will only result in a disengaged workforce. (Networked Citizens)