A new HOPE
Written for TEDxExeter 2017 “HOPE”: What was the last line we saw Carrie Fisher (albeit a CGI-reconstructed ever-youthful Carrie Fisher) deliver in a movie before she died?
Written for TEDxExeter 2017 “HOPE”: What was the last line we saw Carrie Fisher (albeit a CGI-reconstructed ever-youthful Carrie Fisher) deliver in a movie before she died?
Last week, I received the good news that “Green|Blue” has been selected for showing in the Garden Room Gallery at Dartington Hall. Today I got confirmation that the dates will be 30 March – 18 April 2017.
Fantastic coverage of both the “Little colouring books” and “Freefall Climate Graffiti” in the Winter issue of Green Christian.
This was a follow-up project to my consultancy work in 2009/10 on energy and climate change work in Exeter Diocese, to analyse progress based on evidence from Archdeacons’ Articles of Enquiry, and write a report for presentation at Diocesan Synod.
The idea for the “Little colouring books” originated partly in the games I made for my “Particulart: Up in the Air” show. It seemed a natural progession to create more playful engagement with climate change. Although the maps are of the UK, they can be applied elsewhere, and I am very happy that they have made their way to other lands.
Particulart features this month in the “What is Art?” issue of Average Art Magazine, 1 December 2016. In its use of knitting as a medium for a message, Particulart is an example of ‘craftivism’. But is it art?
What will you do now with the gift of your left life? — Snow
Clare Bryden. Particulart: the art of knitting, chemistry, and gentle protest. Average Art Magazine, “What is Art?” issue, 1 December 2016.
I created “One Fish, Two Fish, RGB Fish” in response to an invitation from Wool on the Exe and Theatre Alibi to participate in a community project benefiting Knit for Peace.
I introduced my new work and together we explored “GreenlBlue”, which uses flood risk data from the Environment Agency to question our knowledge and power in the face of uncertainty and the force of nature.
In modern times, origami has been used as a beacon of hope. I created the origami “Soul Cube” to help me get past that powerful critical voice in my head and access the deeper nurturing wise voice that speaks words I need to hear.
A series of things that interest me which have a TED or TEDx angle: The benefits of collecting so many statistics on the number of times a talk is viewed and the related web pages are accessed.
This week I’ve been geeking out at Graphical Web, “an annual, global conference that showcases the many new open source technologies available for presenting visual information on the web.”
The launch of a new magazine providing a space for slow conversation about beautiful and difficult things; a message from the editor, Gareth Higgins; and news that I have a piece in it!
In 2007, the Turnip Prize disqualified Banksy from competition for “trying too hard”. In 2016, I think I probably tried too hard.
A series of things that interest me which have a TED or TEDx angle: There are myriads of reasons why people watch TED and TEDx talks, and myriads of outcomes.
Clare Bryden. Notes for a small island. Church Times, 28 October 2016.
As sterling wobbles, Clare Bryden investigates revolutionary approaches to money and economics
An anonymous note from ‘A concerned neighbour’ and my response.
Five of the eight “Ghost Bees” I knitted for TRAIL and three of Cleo’s four remained at the end of the summer. My five are currently appearing in a gem of an exhibition at the Barnfield Theatre.
“Fun Palaces is a movement campaigning for culture by, for and with all – with a firm belief that community belongs at the core of all culture – and an annual weekend of events… Everyone an Artist, Everyone a Scientist.”
I’ve been doing some work for TEDxExeter on a new learning initiative, a series of education pods based around themed TEDxExeter talks. We’re calling it Let’s Explore… and so far have covered Happiness (ie mental health) and Nature.
Believe the compliments you are given. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Don’t doubt the benefits of being the brightest shade of you on the spectrum. — Take Up Space
I’m delighted that my Ghost Bees are going to appear during October in the Barnfield Theatre gallery.
It’s a toy shop that isn’t a toy shop, full of toys that aren’t toys.
I was at the Greenbelt Festival over the August bank holiday. As part of a fantastic weekend, I gave a Pecha Kucha talk about my art work, and “Particulart: Up in the Air” popped up in the Allotment Gallery.
For the second time, I was at Greenbelt giving a PechaKucha about my artwork. Last year it was about “Particulart”. This year I was showing “Particulart” in the Allotment Shed gallery on Sunday, and my PechaKucha on Saturday was about my work and motivations more generally.
I’ve finally finished my fourth and fifth “Little colouring books of climate mindfulness”. You can now get hold of “Winter Blues”, “Summertime”, “Middle Course”, “Grandchildren” and “Worst Case” in the shop.
Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which … Read more
You are welcome to download my instructions for making “Ghost Bees”, which includes a knitting pattern for the body, a size guide for cutting out the wings from milk cartons, and instructions for assembly.
This summer, if you happen to be wandering along the Teignmouth sea-front, you will happen across twelve “Ghost Bees” hovering in the flower bed between Pavilions and Pier.
A series of things that interest me which have a TED or TEDx angle. First up, Brexit and young people and how to get them to vote.
Some people suggested they would like to buy my artwork. So I have set up an online shop, where you can get hold of prints and greetings cards based on “Touch:Triptych”, “Green|Blue”, and “Little colouring books”.
The overall aim of Particulart is to engage people with environmental and social issues and challenge the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. In addition, “Exhausted” aimed to promote public awareness and provoke reflection on urban air quality, through a quirky display enabling playful interaction. It appeared at “Test Drive the Future”, an exhibition of electric vehicles, that will help solve the problem of air pollution.
The overall aim of Particulart is to engage people with environmental and social issues and challenge the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. In addition, “Greenhouse Effect” aimed to promote public awareness and provoke reflection on climate change and the underlying science, through appealing to different ways of accessing information – words and numbers, sight and touch – and enabling playful interaction.
This weekend, there are going to be not one… not two… but yes OK two Particulart events in Oxford as part of Low Carbon Oxford Week, and they’re both brand new exhibitions and both FREE!!
Whenever I have approached them, Reconnect have always been really helpful with publishing my news. Here’s their snippet about “Freefall Climate Graffiti”.
I confess to getting slightly confused by Exeter Life, Exeter Living, Devon Live, Devon Life … but we made it into a glossy!
And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, ‘Wow, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.’ — On … Read more
Just had confirmation that my new Ghost Bees are going to be appearing in Teignmouth Recycled Art in the Landscape… yay!
The visible results of Freefall Climate Graffiti at the Exeter Phoenix will be ephemeral. Have a drink in the café outside seating area, and ponder the graffiti climate maps of the UK, before they’re painted over. Help yourself from, and add to, the woolly wall. Pick up a booklet about the project from the Phoenix box office.
Repainting Exeter Phoenix’s graffiti wall with UK Climate Projections, with Miss*C and the Freefall Youth Group.
The other TED. The Exeter Daily bills itself as “your Daily: You make the news”, ie you contribute and write the news. I’m not sure how many people read it either, but it seems worth including in the press release list. So here’s something I wrote earlier…
Finally on the Saturday we could get down to the real painting. It was brilliant to see most of the Freefall group join us for a session outside their regular Thursday evening slot.
A nice piece on p19 of the Express and Echo. Pics of Cleo enjoying herself clearing up, and of me up a ladder in my paint-spattered oldest of old clothes, appropriately next to “Model agency searches for the next star”!
Making the stencils was a big job, literally. We are going to build up the images from a base layer of the main colour, and add the other colours as layers on top. It means we can be canny re what stencils we need.
While the Freefall youth group took it in turns to bluewash the Phoenix graffiti wall… the Met Office knitting group gave the others a crash course in crafting, and much crochet and more pompoms were created.
A few greenhouse gases and accompanying information are currently winging their way over to Wallingford. They will be popping up as part of an event under the Oxfordshire Artweeks umbrella.
This week and the next two weeks Cleo Heard and I are running workshops with the Freefall youth group in preparation for painting the Phoenix graffiti wall with the UK Climate Projections during Art Week Exeter. As well as climate science and street art, Workshop 1 also covered design for colour blindness.
Free Art Friday is a worldwide movement that has existed for many years. I started Free Art Friday Exeter in July 2015, and collaborate with other artists in leaving pieces in public places to be discovered and taken for free.
I’ve been working on a set of 21 images of flood risk around the south coast of England, from Sussex to Bristol. What has emerged is a beautiful forest of sometimes fragile, sometimes twisted trees.
In prosperity, may you grant perseverance to will one thing Amid distraction, collectedness to will one thing In suffering, patience to will one thing. — Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
Clare was honoured to be able to show Particulart at TEDxExeter 2016, in between a nice lot of Particulart-relevant talks(!) such as Danny Dorling on different ways of mapping the world, Alan Smith on how statistics are about Us, and the video of Al Gore’s latest TED talk on climate change.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: Even in football, it is possible to have dreams of community, to play as a team instead of individual starlets.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: How we can help shape the place we live, through local government and at the grass roots.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: Martin Luther King dreamed of a better world, and he had been to the mountaintop. And yet it wasn’t about the mountain, but about the view over the mountain to what lies ahead.
Here’s the thing, if we have goals and dreams, and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for … Read more
On 14th May, the route between the Exeter Phoenix arts centre and Exeter Library will be transformed, as the Freefall Youth Group wield spray cans and stencils to create a new graffiti artwork. The work, called Freefall Climate Graffiti, will feature maps of the UK showing how our climate could change in future decades.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: Some individuals have forgotten the songlines. They have become alienated from the land and cannot bear too much reality.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: What is your dream? Are you willing to let it upend your reality?
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: In his dreams, Einstein imagines many possible worlds, set in the towns of his homeland, in the valleys of the Alps, on the banks of the River Aare
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: When you wish upon a star, you’re a few million lightyears late. That star is dead. Just like your dreams.
That’s nothing to do with the 1980s pop group, but the Festival of Weather, Art and Music. The 2016 event was all about “Extreme Weather and You”, and there were loads of activities on the programme, from print-making to climate roulette.
The fantastic folk in Fore Street Exeter are holding a Cheese and Wine Fundraiser for Refugees, to include a raffle of artworks and craft. I am donating a carbon dioxide molecule, also under the aegis of Free Art Friday Exeter. Further donations from artists and makers still very welcome.
Exciting news! From nugget of an idea to almost fully-funded project in less than a week! Clare and Cleo present… Freefall Climate Graffiti.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: Tread softly because you might be treading on others’ dreams… or your own.
Clare Bryden. A hymn to bees. Third Way Magazine, March 2016.
As the first shoots and blooms appear, Clare Bryden welcomes the returning buzz of bees, and takes a year-round look at the complex threats to these and other pollinators so necessary to the interconnected web of creation.
Today I p-p-picked up a pilot from the University printshop. I am very excited to see my idea for presenting the UK Climate Projections 2009 as a colour-by-numbers booklet coming to fruition! So, I present to you…
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: For Carl Jung, dreams were a window on the unconscious, enabling the dreamer to communicate with and come to know the unconscious, and tap into it as a source of creativity.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: In the UK, the dream of suffrage has been succeeded by the dream of full equality for women.
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: “All we need to begin with is a dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.”
Written for TEDxExeter 2016 “Dreams to Reality”: An introduction to the series… Once upon a time, the Old English dream meant “joy, mirth, noisy merriment” or “music”.
Start a new project, set a new goal or find a way to inspire others, on your own terms. Don’t just use your talent, give it away at every opportunity. To share it is to feed it. — On Literary Envy