Brightening up the end of January, I discovered my artivism work of the Anthropocene was commended in the Climate Creatives Challenge.
What is it?
"The CLIMATE CREATIVES CHALLENGE is a series of design competitions, the aim of which is to help support new and novel approaches for communicating the impacts of climate change and the benefits of mitigation, adaptation and resilience."
Seeing as this creative call-out was right up my street I had to enter. The deadline was approaching, I wondered if any of my already-finished pieces would be suitable for entry. The theme of this challenge was 'Ecological Change', so it seemed fitting for my artwork of the Anthropocene, highlighting the biggest change occurring on our planet globally.
Our entire known history of the planet has been divided into periods of time where a new geological rock record has been deposited, these can span several millions of years. Officially we are in an epoch of time known as the 'Holocene'. This spans the past 12,000 years of the Earth's history, the time since the last major geological time scale, the end of the Ice Age.
During these periods, the makeup of our planet, flora, and fauna has changed and evolved to what we see today. The difference between that change, and past extinction events witnessed is the rate at which that change is now occurring. This is where the idea of the 'Anthropocene' was founded, this has been a term used since the 1980s and popularised in 2000 by Paul J Crutzen and diatom researcher Eugene F Stoermer.
There is still debate amongst scientists about whether the term Anthropocene should be officially adopted. In the past time periods have been classified as geological change, as this has been the main driving force of transforming the planet. What is clear in this new time era is that humans have now become the driving force for sculpting the future of our planet, and we are altering it at an unprecedented rate.
With this in mind, the Anthropocene seemed like the perfect fit for this brief. I was so happy to hear that the judges thought so too. This competition was not limited to art, but also poetry, photography and anyone who has a creative idea to demonstrate the theme.
After two prizes there were 20 commendations awarded, I was so thrilled to be one of them. My artwork is now being displayed in the online compendium amongst the other commended and winning entries. The judges commented:
"Beautiful intricate use of illustration within this piece reflecting that time is indeed running out. Love the optimism that we can turn things around and the flight of the blue spix macaw inspires hope that we haven't lost the last of these creatures from the wild."The next challenge open on July 1st - I look forward to taking on the next prompt!
