Art and Design to Create a Sustainable Future

Instead of spreadsheets and strategic plans and business plans, consider the part you can play in designing a sustainable future for the world, guided by existing art – dance, poetry, storytelling, humour, gardening, culinary arts, essays, paintings and … and -? Here is my Canadian template that highlights fempieces over masterpieces as my guide.

1. The just released poetry collection by Celeste Snowber, Creating in Dangerous Times: https://tryhealingarts.ca/product/creating-in-dangerous-times/

Designed to stir the memory of our shared humanity, Snowber explores themes of presence and the healing arts, gently nudging us all the while to reawaken, reflect upon, and reconnect with our latent creativity. A beautiful and necessary guide and a deeply empathetic approach to healing and reconciling ourselves, one another, and the planet.

2. Koren Smoke’s representation of All My Relations in ReReading Catharine Parr Traill: Stranging the Familiar: https://tryhealingarts.ca/product/book-rereading-cpt/

The All My Relations image re-casts the Mohawk girl Indiana and re-imagines the Canadian Crusoes narrative.

3. Kyla Heyming’s Poem, which KPH created for the launch of her poetry collection For Those I Have Loved in Antigonish, Nova Scotia :https://tryhealingarts.ca/product/for-those-i-have-loved/

Forgive Me, Mother

Sorry won’t save us anymore. 

We’re so beyond

well wishes, half promises,

and talking about talking about change,

that generations of us

are running ourselves ragged

trying to mitigate a tipping point. 

Our Winters are getting worse,

Spring melt floods our cities,

Summers set fire to our forests,

and our Falls are spent feeling sorry

we missed out on so much.

We grieve what we didn’t get to do.

We are afraid to start grieving

for what we won’t get to do.

The first generation to end up with less

than that of the previous one;

though we work to care for our elders

and help our youth.

The world is burning up

and we are burning out,

and there’s no time left

to take care of either of us.

How can we hope to heal

any of this,

any of us

when we spent the last few years

learning to survive,

learning to love what we have,

learning that loss can be quick

and abundant. 

But we are trying to heal

all of this hurt

with the hope

that what we learned

will help us change,

so that in a few years

we aren’t begging for forgiveness

of a world that can no longer grant it.

4. Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s scholarly essay on Joni Mitchell’s “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8&t=47s
 

5. Anna Quon’s climate grief poem and animated film Polar Bear: https://nsadvocate.org/2020/12/26/polar-bear-a-climate-grief-poem-and-animated-film-by-anna-quon/