Art and Design in the Age of Climate and Ecocide.

The cultural shift required to address the climate crisis calls on the cultural sector to look closely at the sites of ecocide globally, to understand the relationship between white supremacy, colonialism and ecological degradation. Frontline communities resisting extraction have been at the forefront of challenging the current rate of exploitation and exposing the absence of monitoring and restoration of vital ecosystems that have brought us to this planetary tipping point.

In this talk, Suzanne will explore how the climate crisis intersects with the ongoing colonial exploitation of crucial ecosystems such as the Athabasca Delta in the Canadian Tar Sands to the Niger Delta. She will share her practice as a climate justice creative to expose the webs of corporate and financial power that have led to the current crisis. Through working in international, intergenerational solidarity her work has sought to uplift those challenging the paradigm which has led to the devastation which characterizes the Anthropocene.

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The Ecologies in Practice Conference invited abstracts from educators, practitioners and researchers in fields of arts, learning and ecology, to present their projects within a supportive forum for exploring such questions. The conference intended to energise interactions across fields, to empower new voices and to reach towards new research collaborations.

Initiatives in the arts and learning that respond to the Earth Crisis are gathering momentum. Can learning how to position responses to the crisis, and how to act to disrupt the root causes of extractivist and colonial practices help to create system change? What is the role of arts-based learning for reparative action in local, global and more-than-human communities? What are the possibilities of inviting people with diverse perspectives into ecological arts practices and sustainable learning?