Sustainable Future Centre opened at Queenswood Country park
Queenswood now has a Sustainability Centre providing information and resources, a pioneering space where we can explore and share the key part art has to play in making our lives more sustainable
The Sustainability Centre will host pioneering projects including digital art and sustianbility on-line workshops exhibitions and events.
The Queenswood managing Partnership, New Leaf Sustainable Development and Herefordshire Wildlife Trust has been awarded funds from Arts Council England, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Herefordshire Community Fund to host a Sustainability Centre at Queenswood, the Green Heart of Herefordshire. Linking art and sustinability, developing and creating exhibitions and educational sessions about how to live more sustainably, workshops and a hub where people can meet, access information and gain knowledge that can be shared with communities across the county.
‘What we want to do with the sustainability centre is really accelerate the engagement with people using visual art digitally, over the combined events of the City declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency in 2019 and the sudden and direct impact COVID-19 has had on the city and its citizens. The unprecedented actions by governments around the world to the COVID crisis has illustrated for all to see how significant step-change is truly possible. That much of the negative impact of the COVID crisis has been a boon for the climate and ecological emergency.
The Centre work with Birmingham city Council’s Sustainability Manager to link Herefordshire and Birmingham. We will work on AR VR Motion capture and digital animation art projecs on engagement projects with young people who have experienced the care system and/or are at risk of honlessness in Birmingham and the West Midlands in partnership with Crisis and BirminghamYouth Trust. Birmingham is a self-declared Biophilic City, setting a generational aspiration to reach this desired goal of every citizen being able to enjoy their daily dose of nature; even in Britain’s second city. The citizens response to the COVID crisis has seen the unprecedented popularity of parks and green spaces, that serve as a de-stressor and health restoring city assets. This is where the Centre will link with the City’s efforts to better connect with its citizens, its anchor institutions and its strategic future. This initiative will enable digital engagement across communities of practice, with the freedom of thought that the field of the arts can achieve. The unprecedented actions under COVID have demonstrated the real potential for change in this world. Through this artist- led initiative we want to source and capture people’s feelings and thoughts about their lives, in their city, and what needs to change to best deliver their futures.’
Nick Grayson, Climate Change and Sustainability Manager, Birmingham City Council
We will link art and sustinability around the climate change and ecology crisis and:
- Provide a young person led digital art and sustainability hub responding to COVID-19, focused on digital on- line engagement with young people. Organise and facilitate an inclusive on-line focus group of young people who will engage with the venue in ways that are relevant to them, leading to a digital art and sustainability portal and youth webinar. We will run a series of engagement artist-led workshops, with the group, where the young people will work with us to test our new empathic art practice in relation to ecological crisis. The focus group of young people that we work with in this project will take part in Arts Award (Arts Connect advised) training.
- Research and plan for new dynamic ways to engage our audiences in the art and climate change dialogue. To develop and research environmental responsible art and climate change work, including our network of leading scientists and researchers in a series of on-line, person to person artist-led interviews. Asking how they came to embody themselves into these subjects; we will discuss beauty, symbols and how they deal with the prognosis of catastrophic climate change crisis and its relationships to human behavior
The centre will build on New Leaf’s Public funded art and sustinability programs in nature spaces like Queenswood including Treeline and Den
The Lock down has stressed the value of making all art outputs digitally available, accessible and presented in creative ways to reach isolated people. This work is vital for our venue’s resilience. We have been developing our arts and sustainability network over the last year, building trust and shared ideas and ideals with new partners, based on our network of England and Europe’s most accomplished climate related scientists. The centre will place an artist focused empathy approach to environmental-based loss and trauma. It will develop organizational resilience by strengthening future applications in the future to develop this work.
We are part of the new immediacy amongst a growing network of artists and sustainability experts and climate scientists, collaborating across disciplines to bring creative, visionary methods to bear on environmental challenges that includes responding to Covid.
If you are interested in being involved with the project, either within sustinability generally,or specifically with art and sustainability, as a volunteer or workshop provider, or wish to donate to help us please email jaimejackson(at)herefordshirenewleaf.org.uk and
wendy(at)herefordshirenewleaf.org.uk
