BRATTLEBORO — Post Oil Solutions is engaging the arts community to help expand the efforts to raise awareness about the growing climate crisis.
“Post Oil Solutions needs to find different ways to raise consciousness and engage people in a more active involvement with the growing climate crisis, the major issue affecting everyone now,” founding director Tim Stevenson says.
“Over the past 14 months, we have tried to begin a larger campaign to connect with people out of the reach of traditional activist endeavors. We realize that a powerful tool to engage more people is through the arts.”
So they decided to put on a show.
On Saturday, May 2, at 7 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Brattleboro, Post Oil Solutions presents Climate Change & the Arts (CC&A), an evening of poetry, music, and dance.
The event will feature two parts. A concert will be performed by two local bands known for their environmentally-focused repertoire: John Ungerleider & Co. and the Solar Sisters.
After intermission, artists from SoBo Dance Studio will choreograph and perform as poetic-dance the works of local poets writing on the environmental crisis.
An art exposition on climate change will simultaneously be held in the Hooker-Dunham Gallery. The event is open to the public, and admission and refreshments will be donation-based.
The first half of Climate Change & the Arts will be strictly musical.
“The musical side will be, to some degree, in the tradition of social activist folk music, with acoustic guitar and lyrics with a strong message,” says Linda Brown, an SIT graduate student who is organizing the event for Post Oil Solutions. “Both groups have a rich repertoire of original works dealing with environmental issues.”
John Ungerleider, Professor of Conflict Transformation at the School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute, is also a musician who will perform his original “co-opera” about global warming, Secret of the Seasons.
A musical, participatory experience that stimulates audience members to address their relationship to global warming and climate change, the co-opera engages the audience with the external and internal challenges that climate change is bringing to their lives.
He will be joined by the Solar Sisters, Valerie Piedmont and Jeanne Sable, who have been bringing their unique brand of “eco folk music” to the greater Keene, N.H., area for more than a decade. With tight harmony singing and fingerstyle guitar, they perform original songs of farm and garden, sustainable living, and contemporary issues.
The second half of the evening will merge music, dance, and poetry.
“This portion of the evening event is a bittersweet lament, full of questioning both of society and self, and reflects a large spectrum of emotions about how our relationship with nature has been, is, and could be,” says Brown.
Toni Nagy, Cyndal Ellis, Damon Honeycutt, Claire LeMessurier, and Alyse Landis from SoBo will choreograph and perform as poetic-dance the works of authors Nanci Bern, Namaya, Kevin Stine, Fred Taylor, and Michael Travisano.
A panel of judges from Write Action and SoBo Dance Studio selected the poetry from submissions by local authors to be integrated into the event. SoBo is a community center committed to keeping non-competitive dance accessible and a vital part of the community.
Write Action is a grassroots writer's organization formed in 1999 to nurture and promote the literary arts in the Brattleboro area.
Climate Change & the Arts is part of the Art of Climate Change campaign initiated in spring 2014 by Post Oil Solutions, a group founded in 2005 with a mission to empower and develop sustainable communities leading to a self-sufficient, post-petroleum society.
“Our first success in the arts was the partnership forged with the Arts Council of Windham County,” Stevenson says. “Through the efforts of Susan Rosano, a number of artists submitted paintings depicting their vision of climate change.
“This led to a an exhibit at The Works in January 2015. A second project, also coordinated by Ms. Rosano, took place at Brattleboro Union High School, where students painted climate scenes of what was originally oil barrels. Some of the artwork will be on display in the Hooker Dunham Gallery during the Climate Change & the Arts event.”
Stevenson wants to make clear that the mover and shaker behind this event, however, was not himself but Linda Brown.
“I was speaking on a panel at SIT last year and, at the conclusion, Linda came up to me and said she wanted to organize a poetry reading around the issue of climate change,” he said. “I thought the idea was great. Soon it blew up into this larger event. Linda has done a tremendous job taking an idea and running with it.”
Brown said she first envisioned the evening as an open mic poetry reading, but soon saw it had greater potential. She now understands the richness of the arts in Brattleboro and says she wanted to harness its energy to support this issue.
“I thought it fabulous to call on all the arts for an event,” says Brown. “I wanted to give people the opportunity to express themselves around this topic.”
Brown, who had lived in Paris for the past 30 years, came to Brattleboro to study at SIT two years ago.
“The school was only one of the reasons I moved here,” says Brown. “The town itself excited me. I met a couple in Paris who were from SIT, and they told me about the remarkable community of Brattleboro. They were right. I have lived all over the globe and have never found a place as diverse in the arts and its commitment to social issues as Brattleboro.”
What exact impact does Brown hope for from this event?
“My background is in experiential education for social change, and CC&A will reflect that to some extent. I believe that, first and foremost, climate change is the result of a crisis of relationship: our connection and relationship with the earth that sustains us, and our connection with each other as inhabitants of the earth.”
There will not be an outright educational message. Her hope for this particular event is that the audience and performers will experience connection with one another through the shared experience of local, heartfelt, creative works.
“The crisis of climate change is reflected in the performances, and the emotion evoked through them will encourage the community to come together, not just for a performance but because they care,” Brown continues.
Perhaps it is in this light that poet Fred Taylor of Dummerston wrote the following lines included in the event:
The day has been beautiful, but too warm.
The trees have been glorious, but late in their turning,
and now I turn toward the night, entering the dark.
How do I hold all this beauty in a broken heart?
Brown is convinced that as a community, there is much that we are called to do that is important and vital.
“But I hope that CC&A will inspire all involved to be honest about our emotions and actions (or lack of) regarding changing climate,” she says. “CC&A's goal is to provide the inspiration to become united in our lament as we connect with each other and the earth.”