From 9-20 October 2023, I was in residence at the Melbourne studio of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as one of their Top 5 Arts recipients for early career researchers. Here’s how it rolled:
This has been one of the best residency experiences of my life, thanks to the generosity of the ABC RN producers and presenters and my fellow Top Fivers whose work and advocacies are incredibly inspiring. I am looking forward to working with you all in the next stages of my practice!
Hello friends! I have a couple of contributions to the public showcase by the Climate Community of Practice of the Obama Leadership Network for Climate Week NYC from September 18-22 in the beautiful historic #403 building in Governor’s Island, including an exhibit of The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store, an olfactory artwork featuring perfumes of scents that are endangered from the climate crisis. This work is nine years old and I am both happy and sad that it remains relevant in these times.
Below is the official invitation via Climate Week NYC by the Obama Foundation, including the public showcase and the invite-only event on September 20:
On September 20 alumni from Obama Foundation leadership programs working on climate issues around the world will come together in a hybrid (in-person and virtual) event during 2023 NYC Climate Week to share their perspectives and experiences on leadership, advocacy, and organizing. Organized by the Obama Leadership Network’s Climate Community of Practice, this event will feature remarks from Obama Foundation leadership, followed by a showcase of diverse climate leaders’ work, then an interactive fishbowl discussion with diverse participants from the public, academia, civil society, the private sector, and philanthropy. Together, participants will learn from each other about how to connect individual and collective efforts to minimize the harms of climate change, including on the most marginalized groups, and work together towards a brighter, more climate-resilient future. Lunch will be provided.
Before and after this event, a physical Obama Climate Leaders Showcase Exhibition will remain free and open to all members of the general public to visit throughout Climate Week (September 18-22) at historic building #403 on the unique and climate solutions-focused Governor’s Island anytime between 7am-6pm.
In-person event time: 1 – 4 pm ET
Virtual event time: 1:30 – 3 pm ET
Register here.
Image by the Obama Foundation
Hong Hoang, a climate activist from Vietnam and an Obama Foundation scholar, is currently facing unjust detention in Vietnam. You can read more about her case here: https://www.protectclimateactivists.com/freehong/
A movement, #FreeHong, is currently under way, as is the broader movement #FreeHongFreeThemAll, in support of all the other climate activists in unjust detention.
In these times, standing up for climate action carries risk—you and me included. After lots of discussion with Liangyi Chang, my fellow Obama Leader and Asia Managing Director of 350.org who is a friend of Hong’s, I am honoured to design the logo for the movement. Below is an image of a Fire Sunflower (sunflowers being Hong’s favourite flower), showing ‘fire’ petals around an Earth centre.
Here is a black and white version:
After much back and forth with Liang, we resisted the tight, more symmetric design on the left and decided for the final design on the right. A looser, shabbier ‘sunflower’ is a better fit for a design for activists, who work to subvert the rigid, oppressive systems we have today. Note that the fire ‘petals’ don’t actually touch the planet—symbolic of how climate activists worldwide are fighting for climate action to prevent more destructive wildfires and other climate impacts.
Please feel free to download and use for your own activism!
Hey Singapore! I’m speaking about my PhD research at the Southeast Asian Arts Forum at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts this August 4th! The theme is “Sustainability 2.0: Coding the World that will Remake Itself”, the forum features creatives and collectives from across Southeast Asia and focusses on the concept of sustainable consumption and production to promote the spirit of collaboration and discovery. Register now at https://seaartforum.nafa.edu.sg
Update: Thank you, Singapore!
I am happy to be invited by the Education Community of Practice of the Obama Foundation to give a talk for their Expert Workshop series to Obama Foundation alumni on Wednesday, July 12th. I’ll be speaking about how the arts can be a catalyst for various causes, elaborating on creative strategies, fundraising, and human psychology. I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to my fellow leaders’ amazing work.
About the talk:
How can the arts contribute to systems change? In this talk and workshop, we delve into creative strategies for organisations to utilise the arts to benefit their causes, from sensory projects to highlight climate issues to workshops to promote education, from activities to scale audience engagement to games that drive expert conversations. How can investing in our imagination become a catalyst for societal transformation? A collective workshop on using these strategies will follow the talk.
While I am in my final PhD months, I am honoured and excited to have been selected for ABC’s Top 5 Arts Media Residency for early career researchers. Five successful applicants in Arts, Science and Humanities will spend two weeks “in residence” at ABC Radio National in Melbourne, working with some of Australia’s best journalists and broadcasters. The ABC TOP 5 is a unique opportunity for talented young researchers to go behind-the-scenes with the ABC’s expert communicators. This is such a great way to cap my PhD journey, and I’m looking forward to communicating about my research to the wider public. Thank you to the jury for a lovely conversation. Congratulations to my fellow Top 5 and see you in a few months!
ABC Top 5 Arts is presented in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Below is a pdf of the full media release courtesy of the ABC. Also here: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/top5/abc-rn-is-welcoming-australias-best-and-brightest-young-minds/102553870
The munich creative business week (mcbw) is Germany’s largest design event and also international platform for the Bavarian creative and design industries. The mcbw is organized by bayern design, the competence center for knowledge transfer and collaborations around design in Bavaria. It connects topics, disciplines, industries and perspectives. The annual theme of the this year’s mcbw is “Why disruption unleashes creativity” and will take place from May 06-14, 2023. Find out about their events at www.mcbw.de.
Stoked to have been interviewed by the awesome Oliver Herwig for their magazine. You can find the physical version in the events in Munich. Dankeschön!
Citation: Young, Catherine. Interview. By Oliver Herwig. munich creative business week magazine. 2023, 54-57.
The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store (2014) is featured on One Earth, Cell Press’ flagship sustainability journal.
Rising temperatures, sea level rise, superstorms, biodiversity loss, and many other climate impacts endanger the wellbeing of the Earth, which will result in unprecedented damages and losses including many scents and the memories we have of them—the smells of oceans, forests, food, just to name a few. The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store (T.E.M.P.S., or “time” in French) is an artist-created perfume line of scents that are threatened due to the climate crisis. These perfumes are created by the artist, Catherine Sarah Young, using chemical distillation and standard perfumery techniques. During exhibitions, visitors are allowed to smell the perfumes. As smell and memory are closely related, viewers are invited to reflect on how potentially losing these scents could affect their lives and hopefully be inspired to preserve them and take action on the climate crisis.
One Earth provides a home for high-quality research and perspectives that significantly advance our ability to better understand and address today’s sustainability challenges.
Hurray for artwork having a DOI. Cite away: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.03.009
Download the pdf here.
Here are some photos from the !Do Something group exhibition with The Weighing of the Heart, courtesy of the UNSW Library. Thanks so much!
The Weighing of the Heart casts the ashes of the catastrophic Australian bushfires of 2019-2020 into human heart sculptures.
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Exhibition text:
Climate Change is the dominant wicked problem of our time: there is no single solution; the boundaries are difficult to define; and it is influenced by complex, interdependent and rapidly changing factors.
Canadian designer Bruce Mau’s influential book MC24: 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work declares that “new wicked problems demand new wicked teams”. In response, the Wicked Collective was established in 2021 by a committed group of academics from the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA), including Dr Teresa Crea, Dr Rebecca Green, Prof Stephen Loo, Emma Mills and Emma Peters. Wicked Collective believe that artists, designers, academics, and students need to work together across disciplinary boundaries to effectively respond to the wicked problems confronting us.
!Do Something is the first project of Wicked Collective. This exhibition presents creative responses and interventions to the wicked problem of Climate Change by showcasing work that relate to one or more of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
!Do Something was shown at UNSW Main Library as part of the ADA Now Festival 2022 from 12 September to 18 November 2022.
Catherine Sarah Young 