Failed Supporting Statements - New Writing North, Oct 2019

Climate Emergency Writer In Residence 

800 words on why you want the role and what you’d like to achieve with it

I was delighted to learn of this opportunity from my friend and colleague ___. I am a freelance writer, researcher and podcaster with a background in humanities academia. This residency offers an ideal chance for me to develop and hone my writing and research skills with a view to publishing for general audiences on important topics. The challenge of communicating pressing messages about the ecological emergency offers a testing ground for my communication skills – one for which I am ready and equipped.

My academic interests centre around social change with emphasis on intersections between society, culture and politics. My PhD research examined ways that artists and filmmakers respond to ongoing issues stemming from conflict and their continuing implications in post-conflict society. Place and human interaction with landscape are recurrent themes, and are rooted in my lifelong interests in geography, terrain and the environment. I frequently wrote poetry as a teenager, including ecologically themed shape-poems when I was studying the Metaphysical poets whose learning in the sciences informed their art. I revived this practice earlier this year as writer in residence on the Yorkshire Sculpture International engagement programme which involved witnessing and participating in the festival’s outreach workshops. Ecological concerns emerged in pieces by secondary school pupils, which I included in my final write up (a video of which can be viewed at https://youtu.be/k1MluHnBa9o). I want to continue engaging in creative-critical inquiry into the ways young people are confronting the climate crisis and demanding systemic change with the Climate Strikes. I also want to investigate creative approaches to analysing culture and its negotiations and tensions with sociopolitics on climate-related issues.

My range of experience since my studies places me well to undertake this residency and is a great match for my expertise and skills. From my time as a researcher and lecturer, I have extensive experience in public engagement and speaking. As a freelancer, I am highly disciplined and used to self-management. Even in slack times when I have little or no contracted work, I manage my time to maintain my regular podcast and to develop and progress my ongoing research and writing projects. My self-motivation and dedication meant that I completed my PhD to a very high standard in three years. Through the local and regional Green Party, networks such as Extinction Rebellion and the Tyne and Wear Public Transport Users Group, and my continued friendships with relevant researchers associated with Newcastle University, I have a strong start with appropriate connections and access to knowledge. I am a regular user of social media; as well as personal use, I use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share my research and promote my podcast. I maintain a blog at https://peablair.blogspot.com/, which I used to write up and share my process while writer in residence as described at YSI. I consider social media posting to be an extension of my writing and broadcasting, and I find Twitter to be useful for research capture and dissemination as well as for networking.

Practically speaking, the position offers more professional and financial stability than I currently have as a freelancer by providing a respite from the constant hustle for work, allowing the time needed to concentrate on a meaningful project. This firmer footing for future possibilities would undoubtedly advance my career development. I aim to become established as a writer while making clear the process of being part of something bigger and more significant than oneself. I am an environmental activist for whom textual and verbal communication are the primary forms of protest. It is through the informed, persuasive and empathetic receiving and transmitting of information and stories that I feel most able to contribute to raising awareness and lobbying for action to confront climate change and ecological disaster. At a time when it is common for individuals to become overwhelmed and feel that there is not enough we can do alone to initiate real change, I see this residency as an opportunity to facilitate and foster others’ creative potential alongside my own to combine as a louder voice and a stronger force to effect necessary systemic change.

Above all, for me the environment has been a lifelong concern. I am currently writing coordinator for the Newcastle Green Party, a role involving drafting and copy-editing articles for ward newsletters and the local website, letters to residents, and help with press releases. While I appreciate the commissioning panel may prefer political impartiality, our climate is not a neutral issue, and it is because the Green Party puts the environment at the top of the agenda and understands that environmental crises are at the root of so many societal issues that I am a member and use my skills to be an active agent in raising awareness of the realities of ecocide.

800 words on approach to the residency and how you would use the time

Because I enjoy engaging with people and would want to centre the residency around ways to communicate concerns and problems affecting people within the bigger picture, I see the residency as a facilitating role. Writing and research do not happen in a vacuum, and as my previous residency work indicates, the voices of other participants ought to emerge and become part of the fabric woven from the range of experiences that will amount to the residency. I would use video and audio recording as research tools to collect information and experiences that would become transmittable, digestible stories. I am an editor as much as I am a writer; I plan, document and write continuously and often find the finished piece while editing from the collection of gathered materials. I would blog continuously to maintain momentum and share my progress, with the posts as part of the drafting process for final outputs. From my background in studying film and visual culture, I propose making a vlog series along the style of the essay film, a mode of artistic documentary that intertwines the personal with much larger issues.

From my Green activism I know that listening to what matters to people and connecting their concerns to broader issues often helps them understand that their worries are part of a bigger problem, solutions to which can be found through collaboration. Seeking out and telling personal stories grounded in evidence-based information about the climate crisis and what we can do about it on individual, local, national and global levels, could be the approach that encourages people to take action they would not otherwise consider to bring about necessary system change. To achieve this, I would centre the residency around the main theme of communication with the aim of: (1) finding effective ways to convey the urgency of the crisis and what to do about it tailored to different audiences; (2) studying the ways protestors communicate messages, for example, Strike for Climate and Extinction Rebellion; and (3) exploring how to combine creativity and critical thinking in ways that also address the mental and emotional challenges presented by activism.

Following an initial preparatory period involving establishing contacts and outreach opportunities, I would organise a series of workshops with varied community groups and guest facilitators around the region. I propose shaping these around participants’ responses to a set of provocations, that is, statements sparking debate and discussion, for example: ‘I can’t do anything about climate change’, or ‘the climate emergency doesn’t affect me’. Although basic, such statements could instigate observable debates to assess levels of knowledge and awareness in safe spaces with mediated discussion, presenting an opportunity to monitor shifts in conversations as sessions involving such provocations evolve. Further provocations could come from invited provocateurs from across the sciences and creative practices. Sessions might begin in community group meetings with a view to building towards larger, more centrally organised events as the year and project progress.

As the voluntary work listed in my CV might indicate, groups I would want to involve include the elderly and refugees/asylum seekers, as well as the young, women’s groups, the disabled and those at an economic disadvantage, as these are all the most vulnerable in our society and are often at most risk from increasing health complications stemming from air pollution, for instance. I am keen to tease out links between today’s children-led movements and the identification of ecofeminism as a way of thinking in the 1970s. In areas with remaining indigenous populations (in the Americas, the Antipodes and Arctic regions, etc.), it is the most marginalised people who have long warned colonists and settlers of the impact of their ‘progressive’, ‘civilising’ actions on the living world and environment. We have been warned against anthropocentric ways of life and have not listened. It is only now that a young white European is leading the way that awareness is spreading, and much too late. The racial implications of this must be examined, as well as the misogynistic and neuro-typicalist abuse directed at sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg. For these reasons I would aim to focus events around illuminating the ways the climate emergency is adversely affecting the most marginal and vulnerable in society, and that examine it as a local as well as a global issue requiring empathy and action to combat. The emphasis will be on experimenting to find effective ways of educating individuals and all kinds of organisations on holistic ways of understanding and addressing the issues at stake, which include poverty and inequality, and which are driven down the agenda even more by prominent and persistent climate change denial.

As I mention in the previous statement, these will be challenging undertakings, and I look forward to demonstrating that I am equipped with the knowledge, adaptability and experience to carry them out.

South Shields, June 2015