Seven CO2RE Artists have been hand-picked to create a diverse range of works designed to engage the public in the potential of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), with funding provided by the UKRI backed-initiative.
Our hopes for CO2RE Arts expand beyond the projects we’ve funded, as CO2RE believes science and engineering, including their conceptualisation, design and delivery, as well as innovations that follow, are cultural practices. Meaning that artists, creative practitioners and the arts and humanities have a key role to play in their delivery. This initiative will help bring those contributions together to move forward our understanding and use of GGR.
Natasha Martirosian, Research Associate, CO2RE
The chosen artists are set to develop skilfully curated, diverse projects in a variety of media, including: a residential film school, animation, VR interactive landscapes, a sci-fi podcast series, biochar sculptures and a land art piece, as well as a bio-luminescent algae installation and a performance piece in the peatlands.
Natasha Martirosian, Research Associate at CO2RE, said: ‘When we began planning the initiative, we were hoping for a few applicants to fulfil the call. We had no idea the scale, depth and breadth of the project proposals we would encounter, and that this initiative would sweep across the arts world with much needed messages of hope.
‘Our hopes for CO2RE Arts expand beyond the projects we’ve funded, as CO2RE believes science and engineering, including their conceptualisation, design and delivery, as well as innovations that follow, are cultural practices. Meaning that artists, creative practitioners and the arts and humanities have a key role to play in their delivery. This initiative will help bring those contributions together to move forward our understanding and use of GGR.
‘Ultimately, we hope that this work serves as a replicable template for future partnership developments, and make the case of future funding opportunities to weave the Arts into research and widen dissemination of knowledge to our communities.’
The seven artists, based across the UK, will use their different approaches and creative disciplines to bring a broader arts and humanities perspective to GGR.
Alongside working closely with environmental scientists to share the potential GGR methods have for a net-zero future, many of the artists will being working closely with the wider public. The series will culminate with an exhibition in 2026, as well as public engagement events.
The selected CO2RE Arts projects include:
Studio Blue Green– Algal installation
Phycologica, a bioluminescent algae installation activated by visitors’ breath, will illustrate algae’s potential to remove, and store, carbon from the atmosphere. The interactive installation will help conceptualise the process, showcasing the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen, through sight, scent, touch and sound.
Studio Blue Green’s project hopes to spark participants’ imagination and to share the potential of algae as a GGR solution, alongside workshops and creation of a ‘designing with Algae’ tool kit to encourage creatives to draw from it as a medium.
Ben Weaver-Hincks – Sci-fi podcast series
Pathways: A Possible Futures Podcast, is a sci-fi audio series that will feature five alternative futures exploring GGRl. The podcast will delve into the ethical dilemmas, power-dynamics and societal inequalities that shape the use of GGR and the potential futures.
Each episode will include characters engaged on the front line of climate action, including GGR through novel technologies, soil carbon sequestration and ecosystem restoration.
Billie Ireland – Sculpting Biochar for Creative Greenhouse Gas Removal
Billie Ireland’s project seeks to increase understanding of GGR and shift perceptions of carbon from being a pollutant to an essential element in our efforts to address climate change.
She is set to create a series of large-scale biochar sculptures alongside land art incorporating ritual and reverence, to widen public engagement with and understanding of biochar and GGR, the soil and climate.
James Price – Residential documentary film-school
James Price’s project, Ffilm School, will give access to documentary filmmaking to people who couldn’t usually take part, working together to create The Land to Come, a film looking at how GGR could impact the land and its communities.
A residential film school hosted in woodland local to biochar and Enhanced Rock Weathering projects in Wales, Ffilm School will work against the assumptions that have led to climate change and biodiversity loss -namely, the assumption that you can take without reciprocal obligations.
The documentary-making experiment will itself be filmed by other filmmakers, with the resulting films shared and screened for local communities and more widely.
Miranda Whall – Peatland Performance Piece
For When Peat Speaks, Miranda Whall will use datasets from instrumentation installed across 32 plots on degraded peatland to create drawings, sculptures, film and solo and collaborative performances, including experimental improvised music and Butoh dance.
The performance pieces will be staged on the peat bog deep within the Cambrian Mountains, and will feature an ensemble of international experimental musicians and a Butoh dancer, immersing a live audience in the landscape.
Selina Wagner – Animated Folktale Working with schools
‘The Day we Cleaned the Sky’ imagines looking back from the future 500 years from now, celebrating the day we successfully removed greenhouse gases from our atmosphere.
Selina Wagner will create an animated folktale that instead of telling a story from the past, starts a dialogue about something that happens in the future – celebrating the day the world achieved a net-zero emissions economy. Inspired by creation myths from around the world, the folktale will be developed with school children in Stirlingshire, where she’ll uncover what GGR means to young people and families.
Yambe Tam – A Virtual reality purification ritual
The Rite of the Ten Winds is an interactive VR experience featuring a series of purification rituals with each ritual occurring at sunset over the course of a month in cities relevant to GGR, weaving together natural rhythms with the digital world.
Yambe Tam’s VR landscapes and rituals will examine the roles of key players in GGR on microscopic to planetary scales, such as algae, sphagnum moss, humans and machines. Visitors will be able to explore each ritual online.
Learn more about CO2RE Arts Projects here.
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