Editorial/Rant – Page 40

Speak Up

On Saturday over 2,000 people came to stand up against a new dirty coal power station on the Kingsnorth site in Kent. A mix of people of all ages, families with babies, old ladies, teenagers, university students all came together to form the mili-band – a direct call to Ed Miliband to hear our collective political will. Back at the fete afterwards we heard a few speakers and a couple of musicians (see the end of this post for a video of Sam Duckworth from Get Cape Wear Cape Fly [apologies for poor quality of the beginning of the video]). I was glad to see there was a decent balance of female-male speakers. And I was also really moved by a speaker from Bangladesh.

Shorbanu Khutun, a survivor of Cyclone Aila from Gabura in Bangladesh, had been brought over by Oxfam especially to speak (through a translator) at the event. She barely made it to the middle of her speech before bursting into tears, but she stood on the small stage, her head high – as if it was all she could do to stand up – and talked. She told us about the flooding, the cyclone that destroyed her land, the loss of all of her possessions and clothes, the subsequent land grab, and how her husband had to go into the jungle to make their living. How he was killed there. She spoke directly about our actions – how it was the developed west that had wrought these changes on her life and about our responsibility – how we are ending people’s lives.

“It used to be cold in the winter but it is not anymore. All year it is hot, too hot. The levels of the rivers are always rising and previously we used to grow vegetables and rice, but because of the salination in the water, nothing will grow anymore.”

She used her sari to dry her eyes and stood tall again as she carried on talking, only her voice wavered as she told us that she is the proof that climate change kills, and that it is our responsibility to stand up, to speak out. It was powerful stuff.

Speak Out

And then on the journey home, as two people were wheeled out of the train station, unconscious with heatstroke, to a nearby ambulance. I picked up a magazine to pass my journey home, the New Scientist, in which this article caught my eye: “Sea level rise: It’s worse than we thought“

“In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast a sea level rise of between 19 and 59 centimetres by 2100”

Apparently this figure is now thought to be a gross underestimate, “even before it was released, the report was outdated. Researchers now know far more”

Combine sea ice melt, with thermal expansion and the gases released from glacial melt, and you get between a 50cm and 2m rise in sea level. What does that get you? Well it knocks out most of Lincolnshire, much of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and a good amount of London when the storm-surge protection is no longer viable.

“most conservative estimates are now higher than the IPCC’s highest estimate. [The scientific] community is comfortable expecting at least a metre by the end of this century […] about 60 million people live within 1 metre of mean sea level, a number expected to grow to about 130 million by 2100.”

We are coming up to one of the turning points in the tale that is humanity – in Copenhagen this December governments from all across the world will come together to work out a global deal on climate change. It is recognised that the key to keeping us from ‘catastrophic climate change’ is the 2°C mark. What does that mean in terms of cutting emissions?

“To obtain a 50% chance of preventing more than 2°C of warming requires [an] 87% cut in global emissions per person. If carbon emissions are to be distributed equally […] The UK’s emissions per capita would need to fall by 91%” (source)

The UK is currently aiming for 60% cuts , when we need 91% cuts by 2050 for a 50/50 chance of securing the survival of the human race.

A 50/50 chance.

Would you get onto a plane with those odds?

But what action can we take? I mean you recycle, right? You turn off lights, and unplug your phone chargers – but you’re just one person, what can one person do?

Take action

Speak up. Shout out. Government exists, primarily, to stay in government. They will only ever be as strong as the will of the people. Attend marches, make yourself heard, agitate if it’s in you – scale power stations and stop trains – and if you’re not up to that – demonstrate. Hold banners, write letters, attend marches, make contact with mainstream organisations like Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. They have emails you can send, pledges you can make, all of which will get your political will known.

Act out. Grassroots action is change from the other direction. If the government won’t build you an eco-town, make your town as environmentally friendly as you can. Organise better recycling and swap meets, work on your councillors and mayors until they provide bicycle lanes, get employers to provide showers and facilities to sort yourself out after a bike to work in the rain, reclaim land for allotments. There’s so much you can change with a bottom up approach.

Live right. We do not live sustainable lives. We simply don’t. Even if we were to get all of our power from a combination of renewable (on and offshore wind, tide, hot rocks, solar power fields taking up a 1/3 of Britain) and nuclear power stations combined, we would be nowhere near supplying all of our transport, power and consumable needs. If you want to see the science/maths behind that I urge you to watch this video by Dave Mackay, speaking at Warwick University.

What we need is a complete change in the way we live and structure our lives. We cannot afford to continue eating meat in the way we do, building and discarding goods and clothing the way we do, travelling and consuming power in the way to which we’ve become accustomed. Yes we need massive changes, but they start with little ones. You could eat meat only a couple of times a week, you could buy fruit and veg off the market, you could give your clothes to charity shops, and buy good quality clothing, less often. You could take the train, or the bus, or bike. You could not fly. You could buy solar chargers for your gadgets, or install photo-voltaic panels on your roof. You could cultivate a veg patch. These are not impossible things. These are, in fact, things that between us, me and my mum are doing. We do a lot of bad things too. But it’s something, it’s a beginning.

We have to make ourselves heard, by the government, by Ed Miliband, in the run up to Copenhagen this December. We can’t wait; the decisions and connections are made in advance of these summits. Time is really, truly, running out. For people like Shorbanu’s husband, it already has.

Our generation is bearing the last and greatest of this burden, we change, or we die. Take action.

Sam Duckworth (Get Cape Wear Cape Fly) at Miliband nr Kingsnorth from Hannah Nicklin on Vimeo.

“PR folk are always asking how do you measure the value of social media? I’m glad I don’t have to rate every conversation I have.” @Documentally

Over the past few weeks I have been to two ACE Get AmbITions, and the Shift Happens conference regarding the use of digital media in the arts. Get AmbITion I’ve already blogged about, and I did say that I was going to wait until this Sunday to do anything about Shift Happens, but I really want to address something that’s come up, several times, at all of the aforementioned conferences, and I want to talk about it now. Here it is:

‘Bums on seats’

Several times that phrase has come up, and even oftener has the general sentiment been expressed:

‘This is all very nice, very modern. But how does this translate into our making money, how can this be measured?’

Let me just add a brief caveat before I get into this. I am not just a consumer of art. I am not longing after some ideal world where the arts get the equivalent of the defence budget (or at least the money that’s supposed to be going to renew Trident), nor do I think ‘real’ art comes out of people living off a pittance in some squat in whatever part of London is next going to become fabulously cool and bohemian. I understand the material realities of theatre-making. Granted I’m young, but I have worked in two theatres (Terry O’Toole and Loughborough Town Hall Theatre) as well as working for just over a year in a mid-scale company (Foursight Theatre), and (currently) freelancing for another (Theatre Writing Partnership). I also write for theatre, and through that have been involved with Nottingham Playhouse, the Royal Court, and smaller non RFO companies like Box of Tricks and Scary Little Girls. I am telling you all this because I want you to take me seriously. I may be young, may be idealistic, but I do understand the intricacies of funding agreements, I have seen boards poring over budgets, I understand how hard it is, and how much has to be justified, how RFOs have to prove themselves in ‘deliverables’, I also understand that ACE have to have something to measure, otherwise how do they know who do give money to? I understand all of this. I just don’t think that is how things have to be in every inch of our art.

A theatre company operating now, with no involvement in social media, is like a painter having no involvement with the colour blue.

‘But how does this translate to bums on seats’

This question was asked at the Shift Happens conference, during a Q&A after the Hoi Polloi video diary/twitter presentation. It was asked how all of the social media involvement ‘translated to bums on seats’. I was one of the people who responded to the question. However I am a little concerned that I put my point a little awkwardly, I was sitting in the circle, and so had to bark my answer down, I’m worried that I may have sounded harsh. If I sounded exasperated, it’s because I was, but not at the questioner, rather at the imperative to measure that casts its shadow over the whole discussion of social media. So I want to try and put my ideas across to you

This is how I see it: I know that you need money to grow art. It’s like manure, it works ok without, but much quicker and shinier with it. But this does not mean that everything in art should be measured against the money it cultivates.

“Marketing people are talking about the wrong bit, the product, you should be talking about the process – make it accessible” DK @mediasnackers at Shift Happens

The value of social media can and should not be measured against old, analogue-world ideas of promotion and product. Speaker after speaker told us this.

“Digital distribution has changed everything. It’s no longer about pushing product. The consumer will pull what they want” Charles Cecil at Shift Happens

The idea of ‘bums on seats’ is no longer relevant, in the context of a digital universe (and make no mistake, your future audience is certainly living in one) you cannot sell, you cannot push. Old ideas of marketing just wont wash. If you are worried about getting people to your performances or exhibitions, then you should not be shying away from social media, you should be jumping in feet first, wading around, making a splash, because the arts don’t just need to be involved in the digital world, they need to be at the roots of it, prodding, seeing where it goes, asking where it might take us. What is the value of being involved in digital worlds? Because right now it is the only thing that will keep us alive, it is the only thing that will keep us relevant. What the online-conversation dramatises is the connection between art and its audience. One which, if you look at our typical audiences, is beginning to be lost.

“Old ideas of narrative are Newtonian, the internet is reality according to Einstein” @billt

People exist now as many different aspects, in many different contexts, as people are finding new ways to love, laugh, lose and cry, each moment is simultaneously created, destroyed, viewed through a lens. If you don’t understand these new ways of being, how can you make art? If you dismiss a generation’s way(s) of being (including the worst of it, Youtube comments, trolls, the proliferation of paedophilic material, as well as the hardest to fathom, WOW and 4chan) how dare you tell people that you have anything worth saying? How dare you?

I believe art should speak to us of ourselves. I believe that we should try and learn about every moment, every second, I believe we should talk about the future, in order to look at now. I also believe that the digital world is an almost entirely untapped source of story. Where better to explore the relationship between avatar and RL, than on a stage, framed, where people play characters? Where better to ask how it is that groups of people consent to pretend that the on-screen, framed [bracketed, if we’re getting phenomenological] world they are looking at is somewhere else, an alternate reality, with alternate concerns, aims, multi-string narratives, and people represented by avatars than where it is already happening? Where better to tilt-shift the digital world so that we can see it anew, distanced, objectively emotive, questioning?

“Using an open source model of work reduces the cost of collaboration and provides you with a skillset limited only by your network” Alex Fleetwood @ammonite at Shift Happens

You might argue that I’m being very airy, very conceptual, perhaps even a little conversational? Well here’s what else social media can get you: more resources than you could ever dream of. What do we do when we can no longer ‘push’ – can no longer try and convince people that the story we’re telling them is what they want to hear? Well how about we listen to them, we let them in on the process, tell them that they’re worth listening to, engaging with. And how about we look at the world–changing concept of open source working- the WIKI, the dev environment.

“Why do people need your walls and stage when they’ve got Youtube? They’re you’re competitors” DK @mediasnackers at Shift Happens

We are fighting for the attention, now, of a generation who have become used to being their own protagonist, accessing their own world, controlling their own characters. If you open your process up, if you engage with people, if you tell their stories, ask them questions, offer them involvement, ownership, they will want to see the work you make. You will have made participants, not an audience. If you can make them laugh, if you can make them wonder, if you can connect to them in a human way, in conversation – you will not just have a bum on a seat, you will have a heart too. And hearts come back.

Don’t just join in now, look to the future. Is open-source, wiki developed work the next step in devising? How does theatre writing exist in a wiki-world? Is streaming a new testing-ground for new work? What is the potential for using these tools to find new talent, to help people, to reach out the disenfranchised and disaffected? How can the digital world work on stage? Is the digital world a stage?

Social media is a conversation, not a piece of equipment. This is a call to arms, for democratisation, for anarchy, consensus. Be exited, embrace your fear, jump in. There’s almost always a back button. If you are exciting, if you are relevant, if you engage, your social networks will not be a task, your participants will create them for you.

“[The world of ideas is changing] the news is becoming mutual, Obama’s politics was mutual- not driven by spin, broadcast control and brand […] It’s all about the pull […] Think pirates. Think mavericks, think renegades [They will re-form our world, they can tell us what the future might look like] It’s critical that artists are engaged with the digital world, not for marketing, but to ask difficult, big questions of it” Charles Leadbeater @wethink at Shift Happens [brackets = paraphrasing from my twitter feed]

So find the new stories, ask the big questions. We’re heading to a new universe of narrative and being, someone needs to throw ideas around, ask big questions, to “make a mess so we know where we are”, to ask who we are, who we might become. Let’s keep art vital.

Further reading: I have also written a short, all-in introduction for tweeting for artists and arts organisations. Twitter is a very easy, cheap way to get started. You can download my document here. Share and share alike :)