PICTURES: Nairn artist Morag Smith and Inverness vegetarian café and bike workshop Velocity team up with Highland Community Waste Partnership to deliver creative exploration of climate crisis
Exploring the climate crisis through creativity is the theme of workshops now underway at Inverness vegetarian café and bike workshop Velocity.
The climate-conscious social enterprise is teaming up with leading north artist Morag Smith, who lives in Nairn, to deliver the thought-provoking art, writing and conversation sessions.
Part of the work of the Highland Community Waste Partnership, organisers are keen to encourage more people to attend the four remaining sessions on September 10, 17 and 24 and October 1 from 6-8.30pm.
By using creativity to delve into the often complex and emotive issues, individuals can find it easier to absorb information and unlock ideas, examining in greater depth how they feel about the global crisis and efforts to tackle it.
Entitled ‘A Creative Approach to Climate Change’, the remaining workshops can be attended as a block or as individual sessions.
Global, national and local perspectives will be covered, including inequality, biodiversity loss and remedies for it, the climate economy and solutions for the future well-being of humanity and the planet.
Another theme is eco-anxiety, with a variety of mark-making techniques, reflective writing exercises and discussions used to explore ideas and outlooks.
Contemporary abstract artist Morag Smith said: “A creative approach to exploring these difficult issues allows us to physically and emotionally be fully present for the duration of the workshop.
“To not be thinking of the past or the future but of the here and now. Creativity can open our minds to other possibilities and new ways of thinking, and importantly allow us to play and have fun.
“No experience is necessary as it is the creative process and journey that is more important.”
Velocity Café & Bicycle Workshop is one of the founding members of the Highland Community Waste Partnership which aims to build a movement for more sustainable consumption across the Highlands.
The partnership is working to reduce waste and promote climate consciousness and climate action in communities across the Highlands.
Those interested in the remaining sessions, or those with questions, can email: HCWP@velocitylove.co.uk, with information about the workshop series also available at Ticket Tailor.
Clare Sterritt, project officer from Velocity Café & Bicycle Workshop, said: “We are very much enjoying running this series of workshops with Morag and excited about providing a space to support creativity and imagination when it comes to tackling the complex and dynamic issues surrounding the climate crisis.”
Morag Smith is a contemporary visual artist and social art practitioner who explores ideas around landscape, people and places., working in 3D, printmaking and digital formats.
Having studied Fine Art (Hons) at Moray School of Art UHI, graduating in 2018, she was one of three artists commissioned in 2020 by Discover Moray’s Great Places to produce work on historical characters.
She has since been part of an online group exhibition titled Landscape of Place with An Tallas Solais in 2020, exhibited in a group show as part of Circus Artspace Graduate Programme (2022), with Visual Art Scotland North in Inverness (2022) and Visual Art Scotland West in Glasgow (2023).
She was also commissioned as one of three artists to create work for an exhibition at the Suttie Art Space, GHAT in Aberdeen earlier this year.
