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A few weeks ago, the phone rang.
“How are you?” I mumbled, trying to work out if my headphones were connected.
“Well, you know. I just read the news.” The person on the other end of the line sighed.
A moment of silence.
It was March 1 – the day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report.
Its dire predictions of “unavoidable multiple climate hazards” came amid news of the fifth day of war in Ukraine, following on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin gesturing at the use of nuclear weapons. Parts of NSW and Queensland were also disappearing under metres of water, leaving many communities to manage their own survival in an era of acute crisis.
A little over a week later, the Adelaide Festival presented its Climate Crisis and the Arts Forum in collaboration with the UK-based Julie’s Bicycle.
Across almost a dozen sessions held in the generous shade of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens, industry leaders, activists, artists and scientists grappled with the weight of our current reality, and the role of the arts in navigating the blurred path ahead.
The collective cry for help emerged from the voices of commentators who were all deeply aware of the ecological crisis.
Instead of despairing, the speakers presented concrete and realistic actions that could trigger a series seismic shifts. The arts were a key conduit for society-wide transformation in their vision of a new future that is urgently needed.
Panellists in the Adelaide Festival’s Climate Crisis and the Arts forum (L-R) Filmmaker Damon Gameau; founder and CEO of Common Ground Rona Glynn-McDonald; South Australian coordinator of Seed, Tiahni Adamson; and Berish Bilander, CEO at Green Music Australia.
Seven panels discussed the role of creativity when setting a new agenda.
Presented under banners as potentially divergent as ‘Creative Responses to the Climate Crisis’ and ‘Is it Possible to Party With the Planet?’, the speakers’ voices nonetheless coalesced around a handful of powerful key insights.
Early in the day, Rona Glynn-McDonald – a Kaytetye woman and the fouder and CEO of Common Ground – spoke on The Power of Storytelling panel and set the stage for much of the discussion to come.
“Storytelling is an act of healing and an act of resistance,” she said.
Glynn McDonald and many other speakers made repeated and direct connections between the narratives that we prioritize and the values that we live by. She called for decolonisation. This became a frequent theme on stage. Many guests highlighted it as a shift which would rapidly eliminate entrenched systems that can lead to ecologically harmful decision making.
“The climate crisis is, in reality, a cultural crisis where we thought the values that built the modern economy – of championing consumption for the benefit of the minority – would make us happy,” said Alison Tickell, founder and CEO of Julie’s Bicycle, in her opening address.
“We invented a myth of what nature is to suit our economy. We positioned it as hostile.”
Glynn McDonald believes that there are readily accessible methods to support the rejection or unpicking other colonial structures. These tools are especially accessible to the arts industry which makes daily decisions about who gets a platform to speak.
“The first storytellers were First Nations people and our stories are a way of understanding how we exist and the world we exist in,” she said. “The power to tell stories has been taken away from First Nations people – those voices need to be re-centred.
“We are seeing a shift. We’re seeing more voices in places like TikTok and on traditional platforms, but we need to use our mechanisms to prioritise these voices.”
Decolonization was discussed in conjunction with pointed calls for artists and arts organizations to engage in education about the systemic issues that fuel climate crisis.
Although neoliberalism might not have been accessible a decade ago, many speakers stressed the importance of allowing people to trust these ideas.
“Climate change isn’t the issue. The issue is neoliberalism, capitalism and white supremacy,” said the UK-based actor, theatre-maker and activist Fehinti Balogun, while in conversation with Dwayne Coulthard about his film work Can I Live?
“If it didn’t make people – often rich white men – money, it wouldn’t happen.
“There needs to be an acknowledgement of the structures that brought us here… in order to educate and have a dialogue.”
Other speakers discussed macro trends in storytelling and the disruption of dominant narratives that allow for dangerous activities to be allowed socially.
Mirning artist and academic Ali Gumilya Baker advocated for the importance of nuance, and stressed art’s unique ability to express indeterminate emotions and thoughts. She said art’s complexity was a necessary and powerful redress to overly-simplified political rhetoric that often positions climate action as impossible or radical.
“It’s part of the issue of modernity that we have a fragmented society,” she said. “The complex whole isn’t being spoken about anywhere.
“We need to have really big philosophical conversations going forward. What does it take to live ethically with the Earth?
“Storytelling is the only way we’re going to transform our communication.”
Many speakers also addressed climate despair in art and culture. Many artists struggled to express hope for the future while simultaneously addressing the problems of today in their work.
Damon Gameau – the filmmaker behind 2040 Regenerating Australia – sees this as a pivotal responsibility for the arts industry at a time when nihilistic narratives are commonplace. He believes there must be a strong counterbalance to the prevailing post-apocalyptic pop culture.
“Otherwise it seems too hard. It seems too existential,” said Gameau. “We need to keep alive the feeling of what it would be like to get on top of this crisis.
“We outsource our imagination, we outsource our dreaming… we need art to get us back anchored and to thinking about a future we can inhabit.”
It was well-recognized that this added burden is a significant burden on an already stretched industry. Speaking on the ‘Is it Possible to Party With the Planet?’ panel, musician Montaigne expressed a sentiment that had hovered over the entirety of proceedings.
“You do want to play your part as an individual, but it’s very difficult when you live in a capitalist world where there’s no support for what you’re doing,” she said.
The topic of government funding is a constant in the arts industry. Here was a fresh dimension to the call for greater support, as Montaigne’s co-panellist Berish Bilander – the CEO at Green Music Australia – explained that public funding was being leveraged into sustainable progress overseas.
“There are interesting things happening in Germany,” he said. “They’re offering grants to artists who come up with innovative ways to tour that are more sustainable.”
Within the same hour, Montaigne offered a consoling thought for arts workers and artists questioning if they’re doing enough. She emphasized the inherent value of the arts, and its ability to undermine climate crisis-inducing ideals such as consumerism, simply by being there.
“The thing that is good about music is that it’s evident that you don’t need to have physical things to have joy,” she said.
This sentiment was simple and sat well alongside the more philosophically-framed calls to action that were made throughout the day. Each panellist appealed to their audience to form a collective movement using whatever tools they had.
“Everyone has a place and a part to play in these conversations,” said Tiahni Adamson, the South Australian coordinator of Seed, during the ‘We’ve Got This’ session.
“People have the power to affect those in their direct circle. It’s just about doing what you can.”
The audience at Adelaide Festival’s Climate Crisis and the Arts panel.
The Plane Tree Stage featured a tighter program with four panels. This was created to provide arts organizations with very practical guidance on how to do what they can.
Among the many topics that are more familiar, such as finding alternatives to single-use materials, managing waste responsibly during events, and decarbonisation of operations, was the powerful potential for money being used as a weapon in the climate crises.
As one of the most powerful tools that members of the arts industry could use, divestment was suggested.
In her opening address, Adelaide Festival director Rachel Healy listed switching staff super accounts to an ethical fund as one of her organisation’s wins in the quest for sustainability. Market Forces panellist Lewis-Gurr Stephen enthusiastically supported the impact of withdrawing funds from banks and investment firms that continue to fund the fossil fuel industry.
“You just need to get back to the core principle,” he said. “It’s our money that enables these things to happen, and we don’t like it. So, we’re going to arc up about it.”
The acceptance of support from fossil fuel corporations is a much more serious financial problem. On the ‘Untangling: Breaking up with Fossil Fuels’ panel artist, filmmaker, producer and activist Alex Kelly spoke with writer and former politician Scott Ludlam about the problematic relationship between the arts, fossil fuels and weapons.
Kelly briefly outlined the diverse ways this connection is enacted – through direct funding, patronage, board membership, and prizes, among other methods. This is how the arts can be used as a shield to some of the largest contributors to the climate crisis.
“We’re trading our cultural capital as artists… for them to hide behind,” they said. “There’s a big responsibility here that hasn’t been taken by arts managers and festival directors.”
The problem is that arts budgets are left with multi-million-dollar and sometimes even billion-dollar gaps due to the absence of such supporters. Kelly suggested that proper cultural investment from the government is the solution.
Kelly knows this is a tired call. But – in this time of crisis, they said – there is more chance than ever that these debates, which have been stuck for decades, could rapidly resolve.
“There’s a lot of fear and emotion and engagement, so it does feel like a time we can accelerate change,” they said.
It’s not yet time for the moment of silence, but it is time for a maelstrom of action – in the arts, and everywhere else.
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