18th November 2021
Picturing our perfect community
Blog by Helen Willmott, Programme Director at Made With Many.
With COP26 this month, lots of us have been thinking more about the negative impact the way we live has on our environment. I’m writing this in the café of a theatre in Doncaster, where yesterday I spent the day with programmes from across the country that are, like Made With Many, discussing climate change and the role that the arts can have in reducing our carbon footprint and taking better care of our world.
We all know that there’s lots of small changes we can make every day as individuals, households and organisations that help to reduce climate change, such as limiting single-use plastics, increasing recycling and using public transport. However, sometimes these actions seem small in relation to the magnitude of the issues worldwide and the challenges we face.
Yesterday we discussed the potential role of creativity, specifically imagination, to help us think through how our world could be a better, healthy and more equitable place. How picturing what our perfect community and place would look like in 50 or 100 years’ time could lead to change in the next couple of years. Would we choose to have more car-free areas, better access to green space or more efficient homes? Or would we go beyond the environment and think about community networks, reducing crime and improving education? In my opinion, creating a healthy, happy and sustainable place needs all of these improvements, alongside many other changes that we probably haven’t even imagined yet.
So, I’d like to encourage us all to pause for even just a minute and think about what the long term future of our area looks like and the changes we would really like to see happen. And as an arts programme, we’re going to look at ways that we can do this collectively whether through conversations or creative activities.
For further details of our projects, including opportunities this month to talk to us about our green future, please visit our Get Inspired and What’s On pages.
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