This conversation took place between Ben Twist, Director of Creative Carbon Scotland (a partner in the Cultural Adaptations project) and Dublin-based cultural consultant, John O’Brien in the recording studio of axis Ballymun (our Irish partner).
In March 2020, we had planned to host a number of workshops, conversations and events in Dublin to continue our work exploring the intersections of culture, creativity and climate change adaptation. Although COVID-19 prevented much of our activities from progressing as planned, we were still able to undertake some of the conversations we had planned.
The conversation discusses many aspects of the Cultural Adaptations project, as well as exploring emerging learning about how our embedded artist projects are developing, and how adapting to climate change might help shape new business models for the creative and cultural sector.
The conversation has been split into short sections for easy navigation and listening in podcast format, online or through Spotify.
In this opening episode, Ben and John discuss the circumstances which brought them together, and how we can reflect on societal response to COVID-19 to help us understand the challenge of adaptation.
In this episode, Ben and John discuss what we mean by ‘adaptation’, the intersecting aspects of equality for all, and a society truly adapted to the coming impacts of climate change.
Our cultural organisations and venues play critical roles in the social lives, local economy and place-making of our communities. So what role can they play when it comes to helping our communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, and the power dimension therein?
This episode focuses on the skills, knowledge and ways of working which artists can bring to non-arts contexts, and how this could help us in adapting our cities and places to the climate change to come. Ben also shares an update from the four ‘live’ embedded artist projects taking place in Glasgow, Gothenburg, Ghent and Dublin.
This episode focuses on how arts and cultural organisations can begin to think about adapting to the impacts of climate change and their motivations for doing so. Ben and John also concentrate on how such adaptation measures could generate or strengthen new business organisational models for the sector.
In this final episode, Ben discusses his career journey: from theatre director to climate change specialist.
Listen to the full podcast at Anchor.FM