Cape Farewell is internationally recognised for pioneering a cultural response to the climate challenge. Through an innovative programme of exploration, research and public engagement, Cape Farewell harnesses the affective power of the creative sector, inspiring artists across all media to participate in the most profound issue of our times. The science is already there; we now need narratives and metaphors powerful enough to communicate the compexities of the climate challenge on a human scale. David Buckland will expand on how the Cape Farewell project started, illuminate some of its successes and address the urgency of de-carbonising our societies and for us all to engage in what could be an exciting and much more environmentally sound society. This engagement will require our most brilliant creative minds to vision and build what could be possible.

Buckland is a renowned artist, filmmaker and designer who has exhibited worldwide and whose artworks/photographs feature in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, amongst many others. In 2001 Buckland created and now directs the Cape Farewell Project. The project engages scientists and artists to establish climate change as a cultural responsibility. Buckland has led seven expeditions on board the schooner Noorderlicht to the High Arctic, taking leading artists, scientists and educators to the front line of climate change. The works generated by these endeavours have led to a range of outcomes, including a major exhibition held at the Natural History Museum – now touring worldwide, the publication of the book ‘Burning Ice: Art&Climate Change’ and the exhibition and book U-N-F-O-L-D curated in partnership with prof. Chris Wainwright. He has produced two films, a BBC broadcast of the film ‘Art from the Arctic’ and ‘Burning Ice’ for Sundance TV in the USA. Buckland continues to make and exhibit artworks and has recently completed the ‘Ice Text’ series, the ‘Black Ice’ works and the video work ‘Pregnant Woman’ projected onto a glacier. In 2007 he projected onto the Gehry stage, Millennium Park Chicago, an hour-long video work ‘Arctic’ made in collaboration with the sound artist Max Eastley. In 2010 he made two new series of works created for U-N-F-O-L-D, ‘Ice Texts’ and ‘Arctic Portraits’. Buckland curated the exhibition eARTh for the Royal Academy in London December 2009 and is currently curating the exhibitions CARBON 12 for the edf Foundation Gallery in Paris, CARBON 13 for the Ballroom, Marfa, Texas 2012/13 and there is a scheduled exhibition CARBON 14 for the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in 2014.

The lecture will conclude with the screening of the film “Burning Ice”.