Project Overview
Inside TENT Gallery at the University of Edinburgh, we built a giant work-in-progress storyboard for “Final Straw,” our film about natural farming. Then we invited leaders from diverse fields of study to come together and talk about what exactly art, food, and sustainability have to do with each other.
The panel discussion featured three of Scotland’s leading doers and thinkers in three specific areas of environment and sustainability. They each responded to the notion of a holistic view of nature and humanity, one which asks for a closer relationship between people and environment. Can such an idea fit within our current socio-economic system? In the end, how can individuals and institutions be compelled to alter their habits to live and act sustainably?
Like the late Japanese farmer/philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka, we believe that in order for the ecological crisis to have any viable solution, these kinds of gatherings need to become, not the exception, not the crazy on-the-edge outlying events, but the rule of how we as a society, choose to proceed into a viable future.
Panel
Chris Fremantle, Panel Chair
Independent producer and researcher working in ecology and the arts, Fremantle runs EcoArtScotland, and serves on several boards and academic positions in the UK
Dr. Emily Brady
Professor of Environment and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and author of The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics and Nature (Cambridge University Press)
Mike Small
Founder of Fife Diet, Europe’s largest local food project, and author of Scotland’s Local Food Revolution (Argyll Books)
Ben Twist
Director of Creative Carbon Scotland, an organization which brings together arts and environmental sectors in an effort to help create a sustainable Scotland
Project Team and Partners
Conceived and produced by Patrick Lydon and Suhee Kang, Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness.
With support from Ross McLean, Donald Urquhart, and the Art, Space & Nature Master’s Programme at the University of Edinburgh. With thanks to EcoArtScotland, Fife Diet, and TENT Gallery.