Art for social change
The RSA Arts and Ecology Centre is an organisation whose role is to catalyse, publicise, challenge and support artists who are responding to the unprecedented environmental challenges of our era. Using their inspirations, RSA Arts and Ecology aims to create a positive discussion about the causes and the human impact of climate change through commissioning, debate, interdisciplinary discourse and a high-profile website.
The RSA Arts and Ecology Centre was set up by the RSA in 2005.The centre's head, Michaela Crimmin, says "Artists have always had a powerful relationship with the natural environment. Equally artists continually question and re-examine society's notions of progress. We need their unique perspective on the enormous challenges ahead - on the relationship between environmental issues, and not least climate change, and people."
Furtherfield.org: The Zero Dollar Laptop
Nice to see Bruce Sterling picking up on the excellent media arts collective furtherfield.org’s Zero Dollar Laptop project.
Working with clients from St Mungo’s homeless charity, they’re helping people break up old laptops and build new ones, adding free opensource software to help them build new computers for themselves entirely free of charge.
It’s a great project. [...]
On houses that fall into the sea
Earlier this week the papers were full of stories of Ridgemont House in Devon – a house bought for £150,000 by auction, only to see its garden plummet down towards Oddicombe Beach.
The story brought together the national obsession with house prices with the fact of increasing coastal erosion due to climate change. Artist Kane Cunningham is jealous [...]
Pothole gardens; opportunity from decay
This via Thriving Too:
“An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain’s roads by Pete Dungey, a Graphic Design student at the University of Brighton.”
On Dungey’s web page the photos are accompanied by the quote: ”If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the [...]
Arts
Monkey Chews Gallery: How very curious
Pangolin London: William Tucker
Somerset House: A Positive View
Sartorial Contemporary Art: LIZ NEAL: Solo Show
Wallspace: Envisage: a sculptural journey
Stanley Picker Gallery: Signature Series by Trong G Nguyen
Son Gallery: Eye Saw: Aesthetics and Ethics
Environment
50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta
What the Sami people can teach us
African land grabs, solar bets and extinction
Guardian's sustainability vision
What's the carbon footprint of advertising?
Half of all food sent to Somalia is stolen, says UN report
Feed-in tariff 'killing off' burgeoning UK small turbine industry
Green light: Extinction overtakes evolution, solar panels and polar photos