How did 2 Degrees come about?

Individuals were thinking about these issues in a personal way, but it began really when some of the Artsadmin team went to the second TippingPoint meeting (of artists and scientists) and it was quite devastating; an extraordinary event for me on the arts side. I don’t come across scientists that often and they were very communicative. I walked out after two days in Oxford feeling 50% in despair, with another 50% of real positive energy because there were so many people doing so many amazing things, really engaging and doing stuff – scientists studying the weather on Mars, for example. Worries in the arts community often just come out as just Oh isn’t it terrible and it was encouraging to meet these science people. In general, the TippingPoint meetings have been a real inspiration, having a huge effect across the world.

The other thing was meeting people from across Europe and out of that came the idea to make a joint application to Culture 2000 [a 7-year European Union programme] from London, Brussels, Angers, Lubljana, Montpelier. The idea was to form a network which would encourage artists to make or programme work about the subject because there wasn’t a huge amount then (as there is now, which is a good thing). We’re also working on a website which will include really practical thoughts on how we can collaborate internationally, which is really important to all of us – without just hopping on and off planes.

You say that more artists are engaging with the subject, but is there also a reaction from artists who think that it’s becoming slightly fashionable…?

Some people are saying that it’s just jumping on a bandwagon and of course there’s the endless debate, particularly interesting in France, where it’s taboo to tell artists to do anything. Of course you can’t make artists do anything. We [Artsadmin] are 30 years old this year and all that time we’ve been trying to make happen what the artists want – we know that it has to come from the artists first. And that’s important because artists have a way of communicating that is so much more imaginative and interesting than just reading this stuff in the papers. If they can be encouraged, without telling them to do this or do that.

There are people saying Oh not that [climate change] again, but you have to ignore that because it’s just too important to not do. It’s not a subject where you can think We’ve done that (which, to some extent a subject like colonialism is) – the terrifying thing is that it’s potentially bigger than all the other terrible things you can think of.

And you have very explicitly made that shift from "urgent issue" to "international emergency" (as George Monbiot put it). That seems a deliberately new way of talking about it…

It’s because it’s sort of invisible here, for people getting on the Underground every morning: we haven’t had a hurricane Katrina, we haven’t had disastrous flooding, so it’s easy to put it out of your head and pretend it’s not there. But lots of the artists involved in 2 Degrees really live it [a sustainable life] as well – they don’t just make work about it – they’re very clear…

Running a climate change festival must put the focus on the sustainability of your own practice, too. Have you worked on making the venues etc. green?

Well we’re totally not green through and through and we wouldn’t attempt to say we’re like that, not like the Arcola Theatre in Dalston [London] or the National Theatre. We’ve done small, simple things – recycling, making sure windows can be opened and closed to save energy etc., but we’d never claim to be completely sustainable. The Slow Boat run as part of the festival by the British Council – which is about how we can continue to tour internationally, as often a huge element of theatre and dance company’s livelihoods is touring, more than working in Britain, so there are good reasons to carry on. but we can’t keep hopping on planes. The question is: how do you tell artists they can’t do that any more? Back when Artsadmin started the geography was greener somehow because the flights were much more expensive and you tried to do tours within places you could get to. Now you can go all over with cheap flights. The British Council has identified the companies touring the most and is getting them together to discuss how their impact might be improved. It’s also one of the things we’re trying to do with the 2020 Network.

2 Degrees seems like quite a British line-up, is that intentional?

Yes, I think so. In future it would be nice to make more of an international link, but this lot are local.

And all interactive and interventionist artists. Was that a choice too?

That was a choice. The activism thing was important, it’s the way many of these artists work anyway, rather than getting people in just to watch something. I’ve heard great things about The Contingency Plan [play at the Bush Theatre in London, review on the RSA Arts & Ecology here], but so far I think that the artists that have really connected with this subject have been filmmakers and visual artists, or intervention/activism artists. It seems quite a difficult thing to write a play about.

There was a great play at the Arcola Theatre, One Nineteen [by Tim Stimpson, see here] a while ago, which was set in a flooded Britain, but that may be true; perhaps it’s easier for visual artists to go at it from a slanted angle or something…

Yes, and this particular group of artists in 2 Degees are all getting the audience to participate in some way, whether that’s just having a picnic or eating aeroplane food, or obviously through the education work. There’s a big audience who like to get involved.

Were you tempted to include a specific goal or pledge for the audience associated with the festival?

We haven’t thought about that. I’d hate to think that we were taking the moral high-ground. Somebody from Greenpeace said to me, when I said “does that mean I can never go to Greece again?”, that “it’s just doing something that’s important”. It doesn’t mean we all have to beat ourselves over the head. We just have to really look at everything we do and make informed choices. I would hate us at ArtsAdmin to feel we were preaching at people, because we’re absolutely not the right people to do that.

And actually it’s not just a question of telling people they can’t do it like that anymore, but if there is no more oil, or very little, then on a practical level it’ll be much more difficult to fly, for example, and we want to show how that might look. It’s not a holier-than-though thing, but looking at the future in a practical way.

…and examining the past, too, as in Amy Sharrocks’ piece, which looks at the layers of our environment…

That’s a lovely project: it gets people’s imaginations going. And the other thing is something that a friend of mine always says, which is that we should be trying to present an optimistic alternative future, rather than the doom and gloom. It could be a much nicer life for nearly everybody if we found a way of doing it. And that’s what artists are so good at, getting across an imagination…

….so, for you, that’s art’s role in making social and environmental change: getting people to imagine other things?

There are those Arts Council tick boxes: education, community etc., and there is a reaction against that tick-box approach. I sit somewhere between the two: I don’t think that artists can be so precious that they can’t engage at all with the world, nor would I sit in the camp that says you’re an artist, you have a responsibility, you have to make work about A/B/C/D…you can’t do that either. I think that artists are in the world like you and me and everybody else and it’s good if they can deal with these subjects because they’re better at it than us – they’re imaginative, they get people thinking that’s interesting, that’s beautiful, that’s terrible in a way that perhaps even Al Gore’s film [An Inconvenient Truth] couldn’t.

There’s something to be said for having lots of different artists and artworks, because art is personal…some people might react better to Amy Sharrocks’ piece and some to Richard DeDomenici…

Richard’s piece will be very funny, and Amy’s will be really imaginative, and it’ll be a good balance.

Do you think you need to maintain a wit about these sorts of things?

Oh yeah, you’ve got to about everything. Artists have to. It brings people on board more. But there’s levels of irony and wit, too. I’m particularly looking forward to the family picnic thing from this lot from Liverpool getting people to confess their eco-sins [Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, 6^th June, 7-10pm, Toynbee Studios], it’ll be funny.

And the problem is that people will say that isn’t everybody who’s coming to this already on board…?

How would you respond to that?

It’s a worry. But I like to think the message spreads. It gets in the press, and people talk.

Are you deliberately trying to get along people who wouldn’t normally be coming along?

There’s a press campaign and we try to, although it tends to attract a certain, possibly younger, audience who are used to seeing work in strange environments.

Next year we hope it will expand. We’re meeting all the European partners here during the week to look at the scale of what we’re trying to do - we want to bring in other partners. Each country has its own approach, Ljubljana, for example, had a festival where every project was about recycling, and we’re grappling with how we join up all these projects with a real connection.

Are you personally optimistic about the future?

I go up and down like a yo-yo. But I have children in their twenties and you can’t sit around the dinner table being gloomy because it’s their future more than mine. I veer between total optimism when I see what energy people are putting into projects and working in this way; then when I hear about ski runs in Dubai it feels pretty pessimistic, or Boris Johnson not extending the Congestion Charge. Stupid things make me cross. But then you have to have some optimism with Obama in charge.

Do you see American artists engaging with these issues in the same way?

I think so. The British Council in Washington have been doing some good work, and there was a conference in New York last year about it. Probably a complete mixture, really.

Where do you think artists are engaging with it in the most interesting ways? Is it in the UK?

The [mainland] Europeans think it is. At a theatre conference in Bratislava people thought that the UK was miles ahead of everyone else. But we think that if we’re the best then what must everyone else be like?...there’s a long way to go.

A woman from The British Council said something interesting: an artist asked if they could be flown back to the UK from the US for only a few days between events and she said no, not even if they had the budget, because of the environmental impacts, which the artist hadn’t even thought about it.

My husband’s a jazz musician and almost all his work is abroad…it’s a big question that affects our lives, how do you look at that?

Artsadmin on Respond!
Download the full Artsadmin 2 Degrees programme [PDF 402KB]

See also: Caleb Klaces previews 2 Degrees for RSA Arts & Ecology

Caleb Klaces is a poet,and founder and Editor-in-chief of www.likestarlings.com, a website which pairs up established and new poets to create new poetic conversations. He is a guest blogger at the RSA Arts & Ecology Blog and recently interviewed Plane Stupid's Leo Murray for RSA Arts & Ecology.

Photograph: Judith Knight by Hugo Glendenning