Culture and climate activism

How did you get involved in the climate movement?

My parliamentary work has included a lot of work around modern slavery and supply chains, and more around environmental sustainability of late – in particular through my work with the fashion industry, for which environmental sustainability is just as big an issue, if not more so in some respects, than modern slavery. I’ve thought for some time ‘what’s happening with people of colour?’ as you don’t see many representations of people of colour in the movement, so that was a concern.

What has changed in the last twelve months in this space?

Extinction Rebellion and David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series have helped raise climate change to the top of the agenda. We’re experiencing increasing levels of urgency and people are saying ‘Look something needs to be done! There is a climate emergency… we really have to get on top of this right now’.

We’re talking about people … who can prompt us to think the unthinkable, think the unthinkable themselves, present us with different ways of thinking and doing, and that’s exactly what we need.

What do you think creatives, artists and the cultural sector can bring to the climate movement?

We’re talking about people who innovate, who are creative, people with imagination, who can prompt us to think the unthinkable, think the unthinkable themselves, present us with different ways of thinking and doing, and that’s exactly what we need.

What are some of the most impactful examples you have seen of the difference the sector can make?

For me, the work of Julie’s Bicycle is paramount. I say this not just because I’m working with them but because what they’ve done is to raise this to a whole new level in a coherent and strategic way – in terms of how the Arts Council thinks about distributing its funding and how arts organisations think about their practice, as well as the content of their work. I think without Julie’s Bicycle other developments would have been slower to come to fruition. ‘What Next?’ Climate Change is another important group, which has been very much inspired by and prompted by their work.

You touched on the lack of diversity in the environmental movement, and the creative and cultural sector – how do you think this can change?

We need to get beyond being defensive and work together so we can engage as many people as possible. If we think about diversity in its true sense: of being a diverse range of people, whether that’s cultural, ethnicity, class, gender… the movement hasn’t really got it, so there’s lots that can be done.

When we recorded The Colour Green podcast, we deliberately set out to find artists and creative people of colour who’d been thinking about this but maybe approaching it differently. It’s important too for the mainstream environmental movement, in thinking through their strategies and how they go about their campaigns. For example, when Extinction Rebellion talk about going somewhere to get arrested that’s highly problematic for black people as we can’t stop getting arrested!

Where do you think the sector should put its focus going forward?

Just as we’ve had that struggle for diversity within the creative and cultural sector – a struggle which is by no means over – the struggle for equality and ending discrimination is linked to the struggle for sustainability, so I think people need to recognise how those different things interact with each other.

 

Baroness Lola Young is an independent Crossbench peer in the House of Lords; she was previously Head of Culture for the Greater London Authority and has sat on the boards of many cultural organisations, including the National Theatre and Southbank Centre.