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New project hopes to unite creative technology with climate action
An exciting new project hopes to explore how creative technology can be used to support climate action.
Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, a £6.8m innovation programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has launched a six month pilot project to support those engaged with climate action in the region.
Grounding Technologies will invite those involved in climate action, together with creative technologists, artists, designers and creative practitioners, to propose new and distinctive ideas on how to create climate action.
is needed now More than ever
The programme is being headed by leading researchers and creative technologists from the Watershed team, including Furaha Asani, Watershed’s research lead in their Pervasive Media studio, and Jo Lansdowne, who heads up Watershed’s creative technology team.
Those in industries ranging from direct action and community gardening to citizen science and retrofitting, are being invited to apply for six available funding pots of £15,000.
The funding will support organisations in developing ideas and exploring the connection between climate action and creative technology.
One example of a company that has harnessed creative technology to support climate action is Pollenize, which uses AI to understand which flowers bees prefer, to support planting more locally.
Studio Hyte experimented with web-design to create low carbon, highly accessible web platforms, while Emma Blake Morsi used hybrid technologies to make nature experiences more accessible to marginalised groups.
“Often creative prototypes of new systems and ways of living are small and local, leading some critics to dismiss them as insufficient relative to the scale of the problem,” said Alexis Frasz, a cultural strategist for the green transition.
“But climate change has global causes and local impacts, so local adaptations might be just what we need to flip the paradigm on its head.
“Who knows which of these local experiments might carry the seeds of systems change — seeds that can germinate and spread?
“Regardless, we need more and more of us to practise living in new ways, to rewire our brains and build confidence in possibilities beyond what currently exists.”
Participants will be invited to attend two Ideas Labs on June 6 and 12 and can sign up here.
Main photo: Watershed/Bristol+Bath Creative R+D
Read next:
- Anger after plans to replace historic cinema with homes approved
- Community organisations across Bristol begin radical climate action programme
- Watershed changes prices for first time since pandemic
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