On Wednesday 16th October, writers joined the Stirling University Art Collection and Paperboats for an afternoon of creative writing workshops responding to This Fragile Earth.
We asked how can we make creative responses to the climate emergency and persuade, nag, cajole, encourage, inspire, challenge and even shame decision-makers from the worlds of politics and business to take urgent, practical and meaningful action?
By engaging with the ‘This Fragile Earth’ exhibition and participating in creative writing workshops we wanted to get people thinking and writing (poems, stories, letters) about what matters to them when it comes to this ‘pale blue dot’ — home to so much wonderful, astonishing life.
This event was a collaboration between the Art Collection and Paperboats delivered by Sarah Bromage, Head of University of Stirling Collections and Chris Powici, Poet and Teacher, Paperboats.
Here are some photos from the day:
As part of the event, Chris Powici led the group in a poetry workshop and crafted a collective poem from the event. The poem is addressed to Scotland’s First Minister, urging rapid action on the climate and nature emergency.
Dear First Minister
Redemption
We are seeing the oceans bled dry, coral left in ruins
mearl beds dredged. In Florida sea cows are giving way
to golf parks. And everywhere the heat is rising.
Climate change is not approaching. Climate change has arrived.
Sparrows and song birds are silenced.
What songs will we sing if we lose them?
Who would deny such beauty?
This does not make any sense.
Landscapes are crumbling and drowning.
Whole topographies are being lost, ripped up like maps.
But they are not maps. They are the earth itself.
We too are landscapes. Our blood is the salt of the sea.
Our bones are like trees, our sinews and muscles the roots
holding us together. The earth holds us together.
Hope holds us together.
For how long? For how long?
We are losing track of time.
We are losing track of love
for the holding, giving earth.
Dear First Minister
Put Scotland on the right track.
Give redemption a chance.
Support rewilding.
Sign the Fossil Fuel Treaty.
About This Fragile Earth
This event is part of a series of workshops to complement the exhibition This Fragile Earth: How Scottish Pioneer Artists Anticipated the Climate Crisis, on display in the Crush Hall, Pathfoot Building from 26 September 2024- 8 August 2025.
See www.artcol.stir.ac.uk for more information.