Your narrative and culture change roundup! 📢
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Hi everyone,
On Saturday night, I went to the Royal Albert Hall to watch Letters Live. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a performance evening which sees various famous people get up on stage and read out letters written by others throughout history - some are funny letters, some are obscure, some are heart-breaking, others challenging. It is one of my most favourite nights to be had in London and I highly recommend it!
On Saturday, actress Louise Brealey read an incredible letter by V (Eve Ensler, who wrote the play The Vagina Monologues), entitled Dear Mother - an apology letter to Mother Earth. I found it really powerful and incredibly moving, as well as being a reminder of the strength of the narratives that we swim in.
In the shadow of COP26, I’m linking a video of V reading her letter in case you’d like to listen:
With hope,
Ruth x
p.s. Far fewer links this week as all eyes turn to Glasgow.
THE LINKS
Articles, reports & podcasts.
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CartoonRalph strikes again!
The Future is A Territory We Must Defend If you missed the webinar hosted by Culture Hack Labs a few weeks ago exploring what narratives can be amplified in defence of cultural and ecological life in times of climate crisis, you can catch up with the recording here. Also, be sure to check out the narrative briefing ahead of COP26 [Culture Hack Labs] [Link contributed by Paddy Loughman]
The Long Time Academy - a new podcast! Narrative expert, Ella Saltmarshe, is launching a new podcast exploring how we engage with time and the ways that we can be good ancestors. Not one to miss! [Ella Saltmarshe]
To Build a Beautiful World, You First Have to Imagine It Mary Annaïse Heglar has written a beautiful, short essay for The Nation on the importance of imagination and world-building to help bring to life a new livable future (as I was writing this, my autocorrect kept changing ‘livable’ to ‘lovable’, which feels important too!) [The Nation] [Another corker of a link from Paddy Loughman]
Culture: The Missing Link to Climate Action Summary Report This report looks at how cultural policy could strengthen the creative climate movement and calls for ways to support the cultural community to move from positive intent to wide scale action. [Julie’s Bicycle] [Another great link from Paddy]
Words to Win By Season 2 of the brilliant podcast hosted by Anat Shenker-Osorio is launching on Tuesday 9 November! Get it in your your calendars! [Twitter]
Capitalism is killing the planet - it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction A great, accessible and darkly funny piece by George Monbiot in The Guardian, which challenges the deeply embedded myth of simple-and-painless steps when it comes to environmental transformation. It also includes some great examples of ways that corporations have deliberately tried to stop us from seeing what’s really happening by distracting us. If you like this piece, I really recommend ‘Monoculture’ by F. S. Michaels. [The Guardian]
Homo imaginatus Science writer, Philip Ball, writes eloquently in this piece for Aeon about the power, beauty and potential of imagination and how it is “the essence of humankind”. [Aeon]
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Things for the calendar.
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Creating change together
Join Melanie Goodchild at this RSA-hosted event, to explore how Indigenous wisdom and systems thinking might be woven together to create new possibilities for change.
Thursday 4 November
6.30 - 7.45pm UK time
Free
Online
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PopChange Salon Series: Bringing Lived Experience into TV and Film
The event will explore inspiring case studies from the UK and US where producers are making impact especially around migrant and refugee narratives.
Thursday 18 November
5pm - 7pm UK time
Online
Free
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In conversation with Anthea Lawson
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation is hosted a conversation with Anthea, the author of The Entangled Activist, a recently released book that explores the ways that activists perpetuate the very problems they are trying to fix.
Thursday 25 November
5pm - 6pm UK time
Online
Tickets are £5 or £10
Words to Live By
Clever people saying clever things.
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