Artivism For a Sustainable Future: Meet Climate Artists & Get Yourself Creative Introducing the global Parachute for the Planet & Climate Poets
The Parachutes for the Planet initiative is a collaborative arts project, initiated by Kallan Benson, a young US FFF activist, in partnership with the non-profit Mother Earth Project. The Mother Earth Project was founded in 2015 by US artist and environmentalist Barton Rubenstein and his family.
Parachutes are a metaphor for bringing the planet back to a safe place, a sustainable world that is vital to our health, safety and future. Schools and local groups around the world are painting play parachutes (non-functional) with colorful artwork and collective commitments to sustainable actions and the SDGs. Decorating parachutes is a powerful activity of sharing and learning and it strengthens a community’s focus on taking action, demanding climate action and better environmental laws.
https://motherearthproject.org/parachutes/
There are currently nearly 4,000 of these parachutes in 79 countries and will encourage the global MEP community to put them into action locally and participate in the global Action Day on June 1.
In Stockholm, we also want to display a set of 17 parachutes with the wording PEOPLE OVER PROFIT, in a public space on June 1. These parachutes were painted by a coalition of more than 20 groups in Tacoma, WA, led by the local 350.org group.
https://www.350tacoma.org/2020/12/10/tacoma-climate-solidarity-event/
In the workshop, we like to introduce the project and show other parachute examples, and explore with participants if we can heal the world with arts and poetry and share other climate artivism and craftivism examples.
“Healing the world with poetry” is the title of the last poem of a climate poetry series called “And they left us a broken Planet”, that was launched by a Dutch climate researcher in the lead up to the COP26 in Glasgow. We will invite the scientist to join us virtually and tell us about his motivation to write climate poetry. https://andtheyleftusabrokenplanet.com/healing-the-world-with-poetry
Afterwards, workshop participants can write their own climate
haikus and paint together a parachute.