A Listening Project Connected to a Photo Exhibit
Last month I (Stan) wrote [on this e-mail discussion list] about my photography exhibit, “Fighting for Our Planet.” It looks at the relationship between landscape photography and climate activism. I enjoyed people’s positive responses, both inside and outside of RC, and my family and I decided to use the exhibit to reach more people by doing a listening project.
Two of us each held a sign with a question to spark conversations. On one of the foam boards we wrote, “What do you think about the climate crisis? We want to listen,” and on the other we wrote, “This exhibit is ‘FIGHTING FOR OUR PLANET.’ How should we do that?” To help draw people’s attention, we also wrote with chalk on the sidewalk in front of the exhibit that we wanted to hear their thoughts.
We planned to do it for an hour. First we tried to get people’s attention by saying, “Hi,” but that wasn’t working. We got a better response when we said, “Hello, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the climate crisis.”
The first person we engaged with was a woman in her fifties. She said that when she was younger, she’d been very involved in working on the environment but that she’d been derided and not taken seriously. She seemed to feel that such activism was in her past, and although she still cared about the issues, we sensed that she had become discouraged. As we listened, she seemed to regain some energy and talked about the importance of making practices such as recycling easier and second nature [customary] to people.
The second person was a young adult. Her initial comment was about how sad and scared she felt about the climate crisis, how it was such a large challenge, and how only a fundamental reorganization of society would actually address the problem. She said that the priority had to be people rather than profits. By the end of the conversation, she seemed more interested in thinking about the crisis and working to address it.
A third person said that he was strongly in favor of jailing the polluters, especially those who’ve historically hidden the facts about the destruction of our environment. He thought that doing this would quickly change behavior for the better.
A fourth person, a young woman, said in response to our opening question, “Don’t get me started.” We replied, “No, we want to get you started.” The young woman showed us a large tattoo of the earth on her shoulder, a sign of how deeply she cared about the planet. She had majored in environmental science in undergraduate and graduate school with the hope of going to work at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Sadly, when she’d been ready to use her educational training, Donald Trump was dismantling the agency and she hadn’t been able to work in that area. She cried when we expressed how hard that must be and that there must be many others in similar circumstances.
We felt this project was an interesting and successful use of art to precipitate discussions about the climate crisis. People often seemed to hesitate or resist talking about it, seeming to feel that it was too big or too sad. But once they felt we were honestly interested in their thoughts, they seemed pleased to have an opportunity to have two people listen to them.
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in the care of the environment
(Present Time 202, January 2021)