The Offer Programme May 2020

Dear CDE community,
The Offer continues to grow as a valuable and vibrant online forum and platform for knowledge exchange, networking and creativity. Over the weeks of lockdown the number of declarers in the community has exceeded 1000 and is increasing each day.

The Offer will continue through June –  in the coming weeks we will be sharing Culture Declares recently revised strategy, discussing a Culture Declares statement in the context of Covid-19 and the Earth Crisis and considering post Coronavirus reset opportunities and threats.

The remainder of the May programme is so rich – we hope you are able to  be a part of it.
With love from the Anchor Circle

The Offer Programme May 2020

Declarer Voices: A movement of movements

Wednesday May 20th
The Offer 11-12.30pm

Culture Declares sits as one of a family of declarer initiatives, within and beyond the cultural sector. Music, Architects, Heritage and Health Declares are just some of the movements that have grown up over the past year.

This session brings together representatives from these and other groups to discuss common goals, collaborative working and how to spread the spark to other sectors.

Speakers include:
Farhana Yamin, climate lawyer, speaker, author and justice activist
Music Declares: Maddy Pryor and Fay Wilton
Architects Declare: Michael Pawlyn
Health Declares:  Abbie Festa
Business Declares: Fiona Ellis and Robert Wavell
Citizens Declare: David Betteridge
Scientists Warning: Alison Green

We will be exploring what can be done together that cannot be done alone and a chance for everyone participating and attending to engage in smaller groups to explore what we consider to be essential in protecting and fighting for the commons.

Rebel Writers: The People of the River Rise

Wednesday May 20th,
The Evening Offer, 19.30-21.00

Chaired by Novelist Toby Litt

‘We stand united against the threat of floods. In the next 80 years, large parts of London could be underwater due to increased rainfall and rising sea levels. Before that, regular floods – like those wreaking destruction in other parts of the country – are likely to become the ‘new normal’ for many Londoners.’

Originally planned as a performance outside Tate Modern but cancelled due to Covid-19 Lockdown, The People of the River Rise, curated by Writer’s Rebel bring together specialist authors on the impact and ravages of flooding for an evening of readings on Zoom.

Readers include: Jeff Goodell, (The Water Will Come and Rolling Stone), Clare Morrall (When the Floods Came), Edward Platt, (The Great Flood), Monique Roffey (Archipelago), and Chloe Aridjis, a London-based Mexican writer and novelist, who will read a river poem from her father, Homero Aridjis, a reknowned Mexican poet and environmental activist.

Find out more

Indigenous Cultures: Representation and Mis-Representation

Wednesday May 27th
The Offer 11.00-12.30pm

Facilitated by Polly Gifford from Complicité.

In the global response to climate and ecological emergency, indigenous communities are very much on the front line, but their voices are rarely heard and they have little control over how they are represented. See work by indigenous artists and communities, Join a discussion with, Jeremy Dennis, contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, whose work explores indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation, Thiago Jesus, People’s Palace Projects, who will talk about their work in the Brazilian Amazon and Sarah Shenker, Senior Researcher with Survival International who work alongside tribal peoples around the world.

This session has been inspired by Complicité’s production The Encounter, that will be available to watch online for free, from 15-22 May (see Complicité website and further details below).

Watch a recording of the event

The Evening Offer with pianist Sarah Nicolls

Wednesday May 27th
The Evening Offer 19.30-21.00

This event is a chance to watch and listen to some of Sarah’s piano and text work and talk generally about making artistic pieces about the climate and ecological emergency, engaging a variety of audiences and how the current crisis might shape future making and sharing.  

Sarah Nicolls is a leading UK pianist, composer and inventor of the ‘Inside-Out Piano’, a re-shaped grand piano designed so that Sarah can play using the strings as well as the keys to make other-worldly sounds. In 2018, Sarah began composing ’12 Years’, a one-hour recital-story about climate change in which she uses spoken headlines, real interviews and speeches mixed with fictional phone calls between family members who urge each other to worry less or do more. Sarah has also been working with cellist Maja Bugge on a stand-up/concert/audience interaction piece and Maja will join in the conversation.

Background Reading: sarahnicolls.com/the-musical-activist/

Related events

15th-22nd May 2020 Free screenings of Complicité’s The Encounter.
Following the success of Complicité’s multi award-winning production The Encounter, a recording made in 2016 will be available again for one week during the Covid19 lockdown in May 2020 on Complicité’s website and YouTube channel.

The Encounter online is supported by The Space, is free to watch and will be available from 15 May until 22 May 2020. Audiences will need to wear headphones to experience the show’s extraordinary binaural sound design (3D audio). Any headphones will work, but playing the film out of speakers will not give the same effect.

A live discussion event and public Q&A will take place on Wednesday 20 May, 7.30pm, with Simon McBurney and guests, including filmmaker Takumã Kuikuro on a link to the Xingu region of the Amazon.

On Wednesday 27 May, 11am, The Offer led by Complicité discussing the representation and mis-representation of indigenous cultures.

“We are, as a consequence of this pandemic, bodily cut off from one another. Disconnected. Isolated. But perhaps this sense of our separation one from another, is simply a heightening of what we felt before this all began. We are thinking now, not only about how long this will last, but also what happens on the other side. To reconnect we need, perhaps, to learn to listen more closely. To each other. To our communities. To other cultures. To nature itself.

The Encounter is at its heart a story about ‘listening’, not ‘hearing’ but listening; to other, older narratives which, at the deepest level, form who we are, and if we do, we can imagine how we can ‘begin’ again.”

Simon McBurney, Complicité Artistic Director

Coming up in June

Art, Ecology, Emergency: Sustaining Practice
Wednesday 17 June 2020, 11.00-12.30 and 19.30-21.00

This two-part event will explore the intersections of artistic practice and ecology, bringing together artists, producers and academics to share their experiences and their research.

Organised by Eden Project Ltd and the Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter.


#stayindoors #TheOffer #AloneTogether

Presented as part of The Offer – a series of regular online events from Culture Declares Emergency. Discover upcoming events and watch any past events you’ve missed.
Find out more

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