Artist Carrie Ziegler held an amazing online workshop called “Climate Action through Art” on April 19th to 21st. Luckily, I have attended workshop on the second day (topic as “The Transformative Power of Collaborative Art”) and third day (topic as “Leading your own Climate Art in Action Project”). I got fully inspired by this workshop thus I asked Carrier for permission to share my learning experience with environmental educators in Taiwan.
On the Second day, Carrie shared her experience as engaging people and students to complete art work together. Take drawing butterfly as example, she explain the transformation process of caterpillar turning into chrysalis and reforming all the cells and organs with imaginal cells to become a butterfly. Furthermore, by gathering all people’s butterfly art piece to form a big artwork as “The Butterfly Effect”, Carrie hopes to convey that with small strength from each of us, we can make big change, just like “Butterfly Effect”. Many people in this workshop felt connected and agreed with the importance to make changes. Through the process of creating art work, we are also changing ourselves to become better people. Therefore, when we try to communicate toward public speaking about climate action, we need to listen to our inner voice. Think about what is important to us, what is meaningful to us and set up the bridge between us to connect to climate change issue. More stories about the artwork “The Butterfly Effect” can be reached though website: https://carrieziegler.com/the-butterfly-effect
On the third day, Carrie shared many climate actions through collective artworks. The most impressive one is “Climate Conversations” installation artwork. This artwork invites publics to write down their feeling/thinking about climate change in order to let more people be more aware about this issue, also to provide more diverse way of thinking and increase more conversations. The artwork shows the coastal environment when sea level rises. There are detailed figures as barnacles, shells and crabs on the pillars which are made so real. At “I hope...” section on the blackboard, some people wrote, “We can change”, “We can start to act NOW before it’s too late.”, and “We need to change to reduce carbon emission.” On the other hand, At “I worry...” section on the blackboard, some people wrote, “I worry the world might sink”, “We didn’t do enough for our great grandchildren.”, etc. Speaking of climate change, most of the people feel negative, thus, with this chance to hear from other opinions, more possibilities and more empathy can be created. I think this artwork brings up positive impact to increase public environmental awareness so I am happy to share toward more people to know this artwork.
More stories about the artwork “Climate Conversations” can be reached though website: https://carrieziegler.com/climate-conversationa
Another artwork I would like to introduce is “Where are we going”. When discuss about climate change issue, most of the people would talk about what we’ve done in the past and what is happening at the moment. Few people think about what is the future we want. Thus, Carrie uses this artwork to express the direction we choose will lead to the future we want. Go to the left, the future would be green-energy-supply society with food garden and promoting girl education to reduce inequality. To the right, the world would be filled up with massive convenient public transportation and electric cars. Which way are we heading to? Is there any other choices or direction? There are spaces leaving for everyone to imagine.
Carrie’s artworks bring everyone lots of inspiration and connect more people to take climate action. Hope my learning experience can bring up more creative ideas and engage more educators to take climate action. In Taiwan there are also many international environmental art projects such as Cheng-Long Wetlands international environmental art project at Yunlin (https://artproject4wetland.wordpress.com/), Guandu Nature art project in Taipei (http://www.guandu-natureart.tw/), and “Keelung Ciao- International Environmental Art Festival” at Keelung （https://www.nmmst.gov.tw/enhtml/newsdetail/363/3319）. It is important and useful to connecting public power through art. People can realize that each of us can help, can support and generate big impact. I hope, in the future, there are more opportunities for educators, artists and public to work together and create more climate actions though art in Taiwan!