How Do We Create Positive Change?

I hadn't planned on going to George Monbiot's talk at the SU last Thursday. I'd watched the videos, I'd read his articles, I'd done the research, but I'd pigeon-holed him as another facebook-feed philosopher, powerful rhetoric captioned in white font, lots of finger pointing, love-reacts, and "THIS." commented thousands of times.

Turns out, he's a pretty cool guy. His talk in the Anson Rooms was a hugely popular event - some of the audience members bought their admission in February - and it composed of a lecture, workshops, a Q&A and (awkwardly enough) a dancing section. Alongside Monbiot were fellow environmental activists,  Peter Macfadyen, Wendy Stephenson and Suzi Martineau. The talk was based around interdisciplinary discussions of how we can make positive change in a world so deeply embedded in neoliberal consumerism that only just last week were we told we only have twelve years left till we reach the point of no return, the point where we relinquish control and let mother nature wipe us all out.

Well, hopefully not, as is proposed by Monbiot with his famous espousal of "rewilding" policies. Monbiot discussed the influence of art, media, and celebrity culture and how it locks us into a state of constant consumerism and desire, alienated from ourselves, our communities, and our environments. He suggests an outright abandonment; that we shut the doors on the culture that has been pushed upon us by a liberal elite, and, much like an abandoned factory is left to allow trees, flowers and weeds to take their rightful place, we allow ourselves to return to nature - to reacquaint ourselves with the world we have been separated from.

What struck me most about the talk was not just the intellectual strength in the room - Monbiot is an internationally acclaimed theorist, Stephensen is developing clean energy campaigns in India, and Martineau organises the Tree Conference - but the passion of the audience members. Encouraged to interact, ask questions, applaud and boo, the room was filled with an energy I have felt very much isolated from. An energy of urgency, of indignation, of a collective charge to actually make a change. It demonstrated to me the ongoing necessity of people coming together in dialogue, to unite in a space and exchange ideas across a variety of mediums, and the way in which this is, in itself, an act of rebellion.

It was, furthermore, undeniable and unashamedly Bristol. I can't think of anything that speaks more of the city than when Suzi Martineau announced that she was a "tree empath", communicating and holding spiritual connections to trees, after which the room was filled with lots of completely unironic nods of understanding. Maybe everyone in Bristol's a bit of a tree empath - it has to be said that our city has a deep and rich culture of community cohesion, proud to be green and proud to mobilise. But something else Suzi said has sent me on a due direction to my approach to art and humanity studies.

With regard to what we do in our environmental crisis, and how so many of us fill immobilised by guilt, Martineau responded "it is not only guilt we feel when our environment dies. It is grief. And managing that grief is going to paramount to how we deal with our future." Often the arts can sit high in an ivory tower. It can engage with social issues, it can challenge social constructions and stereotypes, but how can it directly intervene with a deteriorating environment? How can it step out of the academy and into the field, how can it be used to support us in a new world?

Martineau's tree conference and her movement towards a spiritual, cultural and intellectual unification with the environment represents what I think a new public role of the humanities will be: nurturing and reconstructing a collective consciousness that has been torn down along with the world around it. In a further bid for interdisciplinary approaches, Monbiot himself proposed an undeniable link between the global mental health crisis and environmental decay. These idea's are complex, abstract, interdisciplinary, and profoundly important. I feel therefore privileged I got to hear people talk about them - I walked away from it feeling encouraged, empowered, and for the first time in a long time, no longer immobilised by a sense of defeat, but rather ready to explore some positive change.