We were over seating capacity for our Symposium on Art and the Communication of Climate Science!

We were delighted by the number of people that came down to Craft Victoria to share in our discussion with the panel. The audience participation raised some pertinent issues and topics. Professor David Karoly began the symposium by explaining the impacts and causes of the ozone hole in Antarctica. David’s presentation enabled the audience a clear understanding of the affects of ozone hole depletion. Following on was Professor Kate Rigby. Who discussed the importance of the literature, music and the visual arts to enable a greater understanding of climate change. Kate raised the importance of the arts to effect cultural change. Professor Lesley Duxbury and Harry Nankin discussed their practice, and how they research and investigate environment issues within their works.

One of the most rewarding parts of the symposium was the audience engagement and discourse following the panels opening addresses. Issued raised included “can art be political”, “Is art that concerns the environment a form of activisms”, “What is our Climate Change anthem? We have had numerous songs that discussed/ explore the Vietnam war and Feminism. Where are the anthems of Climate Change?”

We would sincerely like to thank all the members of the Symposium and Professor Linda Williams for donating their time for this important discussion. And thank everyone that attended. It was a inspiring and energetic evening.

Click the poster image to find out more information on the speakers and event.

We will try and upload some excerpts from the evening soon, so check back for more updates.

Public Forum Speakers Confirmed

We are thrilled to announce Scientist and Professor David Karoly, and Ecocritical Theorist Associate Professor Kate Rigby will be joining the discussion panel of Art and the Communication of Climate Science

Tuesday 20th September, 2011
6pm – 7pm @ Craft Victoria

Scientist- Professor David Karoly is Professor of Meteorology and an ARC Federation Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences. He is an expert in climate change science and was involved, through several different roles, in the preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2007, jointly with Al Gore, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".

Ecocritical Theorist- Associate Professor Kate Rigby is an Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Deputy Head of the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research ranges across German Studies, European philosophy, literature and religion, and culture and ecology. Among her many publications in these areas are Topographies of the Sacred (2004), an ecocritical study of European Romantic-era philosophies and aesthetics of nature and place, and (with Axel Goodbody) Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches (2011). She is a founding co-editor of the ecological humanities journal, Philosophy Activism Nature, and was the founding President of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture and a founding member of the Australian Ecological Humanities research network.