Environment & Energy

Photo by Melisa Cardona, courtesy of Clear Creek Creative

The exodus of coal companies has caused widespread economic and social devastation in Appalachia. The rapid and near total loss of its primary employer, albeit one that caused significant health and environmental damage, has left the region facing the challenge of how to move forward and create a viable future. What to do next is not obvious or easy, especially in a community that has been so defined by its relationship with coal, and starkly divided between industry supporters and opponents.

Artists and organizers Bob Martin and Carrie Brunk moved full-time back home to Kentucky in 2011 in the midst of this transition. They took over producing the Clear Creek Festival, a community gathering around art, music, food, and storytelling in the foothills of Rockcastle County, KY. The festival was small in the beginning, but each year they attracted a wider range of people to come together around culture. By starting with something that everyone shared, regardless of political or ideological perspective, they hoped that people might be able to engage with one another and heal some of the long-standing divisions.

In 2014, they made this aspiration even more intentional. They began reaching out to local farmers, foragers, artists, builders, and others to collect stories about what the region means to its people. They turned these into a theater piece called “Land, Water, Food, Story,” performed by and for the community at that year’s festival, which also included a barn raising and a dinner with local cuisine. Brunk says that this “opened up an explicit and aspirational conversation within our community about our relationship to the land, about the preciousness of our good water, about our food and farms as a source of abundance, about the kind of community we live in and the future we are building.” [1]

In the winter of that year, “land men” showed up in the region, hoping to buy land cheaply and sell it to energy companies for natural gas exploration, a well-worn strategy in poor regions. Brunk says, “Whether they were drawing on the history of this region’s largely compliant relationship to extractive industries or whether they were just counting on people who mostly don’t have a lot of money being willing to do anything to get some, they figured it was a safe bet that many would just sign.”[2] But many in the community had just spent the last year talking about their relationship to the land and what they wanted for their future, and they knew that a new extractive industry was not what they wanted. Moreover, the trust and social networks that had been built allowed information about what was going on to spread quickly. The community created a plan of action and a network, Frack Free Foothills, to stay informed and organized.

Martin says, “The cultural and organizing work we and others had been doing prepared the ground for us to be able to respond to this threat.” He notes that the community is becoming ever more “resilient. It is a network that is able to respond to fracking, climate change, homophobia or whatever else might come our way.”

Clear Creek has also worked with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KTFC) and other groups from around the region on a community driven plan for a just transition away from coal. They are using culture as a way to bring people to the table to plan for the future. Martin says this provides “a way to look at the possibilities for our region from a perspective of abundance rather than of scarcity” and create an atmosphere that is “enlivened, engaged, hopeful.”

Photo by Elsewhere, courtesy of Water Bar & Public Studio

Minnesota is the location of the headwaters of the Mississippi River watershed, which drains into 31 states. This means that the need for smart and fair water management is key for the state’s own communities, in addition to many others. There are long-standing tensions among different stakeholders in the state—like urban drinking water districts and rural agricultural producers —which are intensified by climate change, population growth and ideological differences. State government and environmental groups are struggling to increase public awareness of and commitment to responsible water stewardship, let alone bridge these deeper divides.

Water Bar was started by artists Colin Kloecker and Shanai Matteson as a way to engage people with water issues across geographical, social, and political divides. Matteson lives in Minneapolis but grew up in a small, conservative town at the headwaters, and knows first hand that trying to “educate” people about environmental issues using data and admonitions (the common languages of science, policy, and advocacy) does not work. Matteson says, “especially in this politically contentious time, you have to meet people where they are, around what matters most to them.”

Instead, Water Bar is a free bar that invites people in with a sign out that says “water is all we have.” “Water Tenders,” made up of a rotating cast of public officials, ecologists, activists, artists, and community members, serve water from various sites around the state. The casual, playful atmosphere attracts a range of people, from the curious passer-by to the committed activist, and engenders conversations between people that would not normally interact. Topics range depending on who is in the room -- from water pollution to usage rights to climate-change related issues—but the artistic construct and welcoming space creates a context for truly human connections, regardless of sector, geography, or views. Matteson says, “as artists we can be ambiguous in a way that is fundamentally different from a government agency or an environmental group that has a specific agenda. It isn’t that we don’t have views, but we are not telling people what to think. It is ok if you have questions, or don’t know where you stand on something, or don’t agree.” In addition, because it is “play,” water tenders and patrons can break out of their official roles, often leading to new ideas or collaborations.

Cognitive scientists now confirm Matteson’s intuition that getting people to connect with issues and each other on a personal and emotional level is how opinions and behavior are really shaped and changed. Water Bar, like many art experiences, meets people on the level of identity, values, vulnerabilities and emotions.

Water Bar is now a sought after resource and creative partner for civic and governmental organizations including the State Governor’s office, the City of Minneapolis Office of Sustainability, environmental organizations, watershed districts, and others statewide as they look to raise public awareness and solve complex water challenges by working across sectors. Water Bar has also become a community hub for artists and community activists looking to form collaborations, and to develop new opportunities to work within broader water systems.

Image courtesy of: Sweet Water Foundation

The South Side of Chicago is a predominantly African-American community that has suffered from decades of disinvestment and neglect, leading to high levels of poverty, unemployment, and crime. The neighborhood is populated by abandoned buildings and lots, which often remain vacant for years because developers can’t see a “return on investment.” The neighborhood has myriad environmental health challenges that correlate with poverty—lack access to healthy food, burdensome energy costs for low-income residents, un-remediated toxins in buildings and soil, and so on.

In 2014, artist and designer Emmanuel Pratt looked at his neighborhood and instead of a tangle of liabilities saw opportunity and underutilized assets. He began working with the community to build Perry Avenue Commons, a series of aquaponic farms, community gardens and art spaces utilizing the vacant lots and buildings and putting people to work.

Over the past three years, Perry Avenue Commons has grown to include more lots and houses, and is achieving a range of environmental, social, and economic benefits. The farm helps feed neighborhood residents and supplies Chicago’s locavore restaurants, which have an insatiable demand for its produce. Its aquaponic systems are drought-resilient (enabling them to go up to three days without water), reduce summer heat effects in the neighborhood, prevent flooding, and generate renewable energy, which the farm sells back to the grid. With the revenue it generates it provides paying jobs to neighborhood residents who build and work on the farm and arts integrated, hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education to neighborhood youth, many of whom are high school dropouts or face other barriers to employment. And now the property value of the site, which was deemed to have no return on investment (ROI) by developers, has increased exponentially. The project has reinvigorated a sense of community pride and agency, spurring a number of other improvement projects.

Perry Avenue’s has serious environmental goals, but Pratt credits its artistic elements—murals, landscape design, traditional woodworking, festivals and performances, and culinary arts—as the keys to its success. Art creates a welcoming symbol of regeneration and care that draws residents to the site, changes how they relate to each other, and activates a sense of possibility and ownership. The beauty of the site also attracts public and private investments. Pratt says, “The second we activated the garden site through art and culture, not only did vandalism completely disappear, we became an international tourist destination point.” It has been part of museum exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago and internationally, and its art world validation has made the City of Chicago more supportive. This positive attention to a neglected part of the city helps convince officials to allow activities that are not covered by existing zoning regulations.

The project is also demonstrating the potential of a new model for urban agriculture and community energy generation that can be replicated in other communities. The farm is providing data on its water and energy use to interested engineers worldwide. It is also working with Harvard Graduate School of Design and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop new economic models for delivering on triple bottom line ROIs (“people, planet and profit”). Pratt is emphatic about the importance of art to the sustainability outcomes: “Art is key in helping shift perception and open people’s minds to the possibilities of this change. And the artistic perspective is what helped us see that we could create something out of what was perceived to be ‘nothing.’”