Monthly Archives: January 2019

The Call to Climate Action

The science is in: climate change puts our entire civilization at risk, and scientists warn us that we only have 12 years to avoid a global catastrophe. Global warming has become the defining issue of our times, and it’s up to all of us to solve it.

And yet it seems most of us are still in a state of denial and are not doing enough to fight this climate crisis. A majority of Americans now think global warming is happening, but only 40% think that their own lives will be harmed by climate change, according to a recent Yale study.

Our main challenge is psychological: we are irrational creatures, swayed by our emotions, we don’t care much for facts, and our cognitive biases discount this urgent threat. Because we don’t feel the effects of global warming in our own lives, we assume it won’t happen to us and we don’t make the radical changes needed to turn this crisis around.

How can we help people overcome this psychological challenge and take climate action? Can creativity, playfulness and human connection make a difference?

Throughout 2018, I tried to answer those questions by organizing or participating in a series of art and activism events about climate change.

Here are a few that inspired me, because of the creative ways in which they engaged people to take climate action.

Earth Day 2018

I started this quest by co-producing Earth Day 2018 in Mill Valley last spring, hosting an afternoon of art, music and talks about protecting our environment, with hundreds of participants of all ages. Our community celebration featured the Art Float for Social Change, young singers like Emma Spike and the Twinkling Stars, musician Reed Fromer, informative speakers like Mark Squire and Crystal Chissel, young activists from the Marin School of Environmental Leadership, and environmental partners like Drawdown Marin and Sustainable San Rafael, to name but a few.

People told us they really enjoyed this event, its creative energy, and the combination of entertainment, information and community. Survey responses show they liked the art, music and meeting people the most, and also liked the partner tables and speakers. The majority of participants thought the event helped build a community of activists, promoted environmental causes, welcomed young people as citizens and helped each of us take action.

So this mix of art, information and personal connections seems really effective for stimulating personal and collective climate action. Kudos to our lead partners Eco Warriors of MVCAN, Good EarthTam Makers and Tamalpais High School for making this wonderful event possible!

Later in the year, I joined a number of other climate events that also broke new ground, each taking a slightly different stab at combining creativity, community and activism. Here are some of my observations, photos and videos of these promising innovations.

Art and Activism at the Climate March

Climate action took center stage in the Bay Area this September, as tens of thousands of people joined the inspiring Rise for Climate March in San Francisco, to coincide with California Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit and thousands of affiliate events.

All around San Francisco’s City Hall, climate activists created some of the largest street murals ever made, covering five blocks of city streets with dozens of colorful scenes illustrating possible solutions to global warming and inspiring us to fight for climate justice.

Each mural was designed by a different community group, and painted on the ground in large 35-feet wide circles, with washable tempera paint. For example, the Sierra Club’s mural invited us to “Keep close to Nature’s heart”, while the UC Berkeley student mural asked that we bring on the light (“Fiat Lux”). See more mural photos in my Art and Climate Action album.

Everyone was welcome to join and it was a sight to behold. Participants ranged from veteran environmentalists to young activists, with very diverse backgrounds, coming together from all across California and beyond.

This wonderful blend of art, music and activism brought us closer together and engaged us to challenge our leaders to cut back on fossil fuels. Kudos to art director David Solnit and his team at  350.org for guiding the creation of these murals and many of the signs for this march — inspiring a diverse community of citizens of all ages by showing them how to make climate art.

Coal + Ice

A stimulating combination of art, science and politics took place at Coal + Ice, an amazing multimedia installation and event festival, held in September 2018 at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco.

Curated by Susan Meiselas and Jeroen de Vries, this large-scale exhibit visually traces the trajectory of climate change — from coal mines and the burning of fossil fuels to the melting Himalayan glaciers, rising sea level and extreme weather events — showing the costs of climate change through immersive images, videos and thought‐provoking events.

Coal + Ice featured the work of over 40 photographers and video artists, such as Gideon Mendel, who took moving photos of flood survivors in their homes, waist deep in water (see photo above). His “Drowning World” collection of submerged portraits explores the personal impact of climate change within a global context.

Clifford Ross’s monumental “Digital Wave 9” featured dramatic, computer-generated videos inspired by hurricane waves, displayed on two 18 x 18 foot LED walls. This pioneering artwork was mesmerizing and offered a powerful visual reflection on the impact of global warming (see video).

The Solutions Zone (shown above) displayed interactive exhibits about solving climate change, created by our friend Nancy Hechinger and the Humans Of Tomorrow design team at NYU ITP. Solutions on display included an algae globe that lights up when you breathe your CO2 into it, as well as solar silk and a playful waste recycling activity, all spread out in a bright room filled with natural light, plants, and optimism. View more photos and videos of our visit in my Coal + Ice album.

This amazing space was also used to host a wide range of events, including seminars, panels, symphony and opera. One event was an fascinating talk about Art, Activism, Activation on Wed. Sep. 5th, featuring conversations with artists and activists from #Dysturb, Magnum Foundation, and CultureStrike, discussing how art and culture can engage people to take climate action by reaching their hearts, not just their minds.

Another stimulating talk was the Long Conversation on September 9, featuring some really interesting speakers, such as Stewart Brand, Orville H. Schell, Peter Schwartz, Alexander Rose, Paul Hawken and many more leaders from the arts and sciences, discussing what our world may look like thousands of years from now.

Together, these Coal+Ice exhibits and events offered a stunning call for climate action, aiming to amplify the conversation about climate change, masterfully organized by the Asia Society. This visionary, multi-disciplinary production broke new ground in many ways, by touching our hearts and our minds to help us understand the scope of the problem and do something about it.

Youth-led Town Hall for Climate Action

Young activists from Generation Our Climate hosted an inspiring Town Hall for Climate Action in September 2018. They spoke passionately about the current state of our climate and the need for more environmental activism and education. I found them more effective in engaging us to take action than many adult speakers I have heard on this topic.

Watch this video of their full presentations, which I shot and edited so they could share their work with others — as well as develop their presentation skills.

These high school students have testified in front of state, county and city governments, urging them to adopt renewable energy policies and help consumers switch away from fossil fuels. Our own Mill Valley Mayor Stephanie Moulton-Peters has even asked them to consult on our city’s climate action plan.

Speakers included Nick Morgenstein, Milo Wetherall, Mimi Lawrence, Luci Paczkowski and Caroline Schurz, who study in different high schools in Marin — from San Domenico to Tam High and Branson. They were drawn together by shared concerns about climate change and a deep sense of responsibility for addressing this critical issue. Consider making a donation to support their work.

Their free town hall took place at the Mill Valley Community Center on Tuesday, Sep. 4, at 6pm, attracting a diverse group of citizens of all ages. View more photos in our ‘Generation Our Climate’ album, which also include pictures of their protest at the Climate March (see below).

Kudos to their mentors Daniel Heagerty and Donna Rogers Lawrence for coaching them, with multimedia support from yours truly. I volunteer for these young leaders because of their commitment to curb climate change, and to take responsibility for our world.

I think young activists can play a very important role in engaging people to take climate action. They usually speak from the heart about protecting their future, and can be quite effective in getting governments to support good environmental policies. They can also inspire other young people to join our cause — and nudge their own parents to change their ways. 🙂

Resilient Neighborhoods

Recently, I joined the wonderful climate action workshops led by Tamra Peters and her team at  Resilient Neighborhoods in Marin County. I am really impressed by this unique program, which supports both individual and collective climate action, combining behavior change, practical information and team interaction in a playful way.

Their free workshops work a bit like Weight Watchers, helping people reduce their household’s carbon footprint by gradually changing their consumption habits and tracking their progress. And they add a creative twist: workshop participants get to work as a team, scoring points together, based on their combined reductions of CO2 emissions. Each workshop team picks a fun name like “Creekside De-Carbonators” (our team’s name), or “Gerstle Park Carbonnaughts” (Tamra’s team, see photo above). Teams from different workshops compete informally with each other for bragging rights about who reduced the most carbon and scored the most resilience points.

But the real winner is the public: altogether, over a thousand people have reduced over 6 million pounds of annual CO2 emissions in Marin.​ That’s enough to keep an acre of Arctic Sea ice from melting every year — or taking over 800 homes off the grid permanently!

Besides offering a very creative and effective on-ramp for people to take climate action, they now have a large group of trained activists who can coach others to do the same in our area. I hope we can help them scale this invaluable program, so more people can benefit from it.

In December, Tamra and her husband Bill Carney hosted a fun holiday party with community members in their lovely home (see above). We celebrated all their achievements with a wonderful group of environmentalists and activists, who are working hard to help solve climate change in our area. See more party photos in our Resilient Neighborhoods album.

The party also featured sing-alongs with the Freedom Singers, a political singing group led by my climate mentor Marilyn Price, with Greg Brockbank and Wayne Lechner. We joined our voices together to sing classic tunes for a better world, as well as original songs like ‘One Small Planet’ by Dave Fromer. This fun activity is another example of how art and music can engage people to take action, as you can see in these videos of other Freedom Singers performances, and in the Earth Day photo below.

Insights

After reviewing all these promising approaches to help people take climate action, I’ve observed a common thread that could be helpful to other groups seeking to fight global warming.

It seems that experiences that bring people together and engage them through creative, playful and rewarding activities can be more effective than the negative messaging of some ‘calvinist’ environmental organizations, who sometimes scare people with too many doom-and-gloom warnings, overwhelm them with too much information, or shame them with stern moral imperatives.  

I think this negative messaging is one of the reasons that the environmental movement is having a hard time getting their point across, even if it’s factual, well-reasoned and clearly urgent. The typical disengaged citizen is likely to tune out and recoil in horror as soon as they hear about apocalyptic news or if they feel they are being forced to make personal sacrifices.

As a rule, human beings respond better to positive messages that make us feel good about improving our lives — rather than negative messages that make us feel threatened and overwhelmed by global warming. Most people want something positive to look forward to, like feeling appreciated, saving money, getting a job, or just doing something fun with others. When we see the positive benefits of climate action, we are more likely to do something about it.

So I propose these general guidelines for future community engagement programs. In today’s society, it’s better to use a carrot than a stick, and to reach people’s hearts, not just their minds. Solutions that make it easy for people to connect with each other through creative and community interactions are likely to get a lot more people to act, especially if we give them some form of reward when they do. More on this later. Onwards!

Best of 2018 at Tam Makers

2018 was an exceptionally fun and busy year for Tam Makers, the community makerspace which Geo Monley and I co-founded a couple years ago!

We welcomed new teachers, including our first student teacher. We created an award-winning art float for social change with over a hundred volunteers. We started a teen maker club and other activities for high school students. Our community members amazed us with cool new projects.

Here are just a few highlights of what happened this year at Tam Makers, with photos and shout-outs to community members who made them happen. If you live in the Bay Area and would like to join the fun, sign up for our new classes and workshops for adults and teens in 2019.

We’d like to thank all of our community members who made Tam Makers so special this past year! Your energy keeps our shop alive with activity and it brings us great joy to work and play with all of you. Happy New Year!

January 2018 – New Teachers and Classes

Several of our community makers took on new roles as regular instructors at Tam Makers. Furniture maker Pierina Dell’Avo led our You Can Build It workshops. Creative director Chris Krueger taught CNC Router classes at Tam Makers and made many improvements to our makerspace this year.

To learn more about our teachers, visit our Community page — or just sign up for their classes.

February 2018 – Community Table and Benches

A group of volunteers organized by Julia Dorn built this picnic table and benches, and set them up by Tam High School’s music building. This was just one of the community projects that took place at Tam Makers this year. See photos of our latest projects in our Tam Makers album.

March 2018 – Creating an Art Float for Social Change

In spring 2018, we created an Art Float for Social Change, to inspire people to participate in democracy. This community art project was built by a team of over a hundred volunteers, led by Fabrice Florin and Geo Monley at Tam Makers. We are grateful to them all — and to Tam High School for hosting this project and presenting it at the student center on Earth Day. To see how we created this float, view our project slides and photo album, as well as this Independent Journal article.

April 2018 – New Shop Tools

This spring, the Tam shop acquired new equipment for machining metal and plastic. Students used these Sherline milling machines and lathes to make a variety of parts, such as marble mazes and these handmade joints for our Art Float. See more photos in our Tam Makers album.


May 2018 – Art Float at Memorial Day Parade

The Art Float for Social Change made its debut at the Memorial Day Parade in Mill Valley. Our unique parade float featured Mother Earth and a circle of waving hands, spinning on a carousel of art pulled by a giant feathered serpent. Dozens of volunteers marched with us and our partners at Good Earth, MVCAN, Pataphysical Studios and the Youth Poster Contest. We received the Best Community Spirit Award for this collective art project, which invited people to vote and create a better world! To see the Art Float in action, watch this video and event photos.

June 2018 – New Student Projects

Tam High students created a variety of cool projects this year at Tam Makers, under the guidance of Geo Monley. Rebecca designed a beautiful bowl on Adobe Illustrator and cut it out on the laser cutter. Will designed and built this practical desk out of incense cedar and epoxy resin. To learn how to create projects like these, sign up for one of our classes for adults and teens.

July 2018 – Art Float on Fourth of July

People loved our Art Float at the Fourth of July Parade! We strolled down the streets of Larkspur and Corte Madera, showing off our giant earth and dragon of change to inspire thousands of spectators. Tam High student Emma Spike and the Freedom Singers performed classic protest songs on our float podium. Folks sang along, cheered us and responded to our call to “vote, speak up — and be the change!” See more parade pictures in this Art Float media page and in this photo album.


August 2018 – Planning Our Next Steps

To plan our next steps for Tam Makers, our core team held a retrospective this summer, with Chris Krueger, Fabrice Florin, Geo Monley and Meryl Rubinstein (shown from left to right on the photo above). They are holding the First Prize trophy we won for our Art Float at this year’s Fourth of July Parade in Corte Madera.


September 2018 – Our First Student Teacher

Tam High student Niles Wertz became our first teenage instructor this fall, with his ‘Introduction to Wood Turning’ class. An experienced wood turner, he showed adults how to make objects such as wooden pens, mallets, candlesticks, spinning tops, and bowls. He sells his own creations at local arts and craft shows, such as the Mill Valley Fall Arts show, where the photo above was taken.

October 2018 – Teen Maker Club

This fall, we started the Teen Maker Club, a new weekly afternoon workshop for students ages 12 – 17. As a result, many young makers have started to use the shop to create their own projects after school. They get to learn laser cutting, 3D printing, electronics, robotics, woodworking and more in activities supervised by Tam Makers director Geo Monley.

November 2018 – Automata Workshop

Last November, we led a fun workshop on how to create automata — or kinetic sculptures. Geo Monley hosted a group of North Bay Maker Educators, who learned how to make their automata move round-and-round, side-to-side or up-and-down. They designed their own animatronics, such as this animated cat, using bamboo sticks attached to foam cams, sliding through 3D-printed guides in their wooden boxes. We hope Marin students will enjoy creating their own automata as much as their teachers did! See also our short video, photos and lesson plan.


December 2018 – Meet our Community

Meet some of the folks who make our Tam Makers community so special! The week before Christmas, a few of the regulars joined open shop sessions to build projects that made us happy. For us, the best holiday gift of all was the act of creation, in the company of like minds.

We’re a community of makers and artists who like to build things together and learn from each other. To meet some of our makers, visit our community page. To learn about our activities, visit our classes page. And to stay in touch, sign up for our newsletter.

Happy New Year from all of us at Tam Makers!

This page was created by Fabrice Florin and originally published here on the Tam Makers site.