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Talk & Screening: Climate change and the three Poles: using art to communicate crisis and opportunity

  • Royal Geographical Society (map)

The world's polar regions are in crisis, warming faster than any area on Earth. The Antarctic and Arctic are seeing ocean and air temperature rise twice as fast as elsewhere. Meanwhile, the neglected Third Pole, the Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain range and Tibetan Plateau, called the Water Tower of Asia and sustaining two billion people in the region, is experiencing 80% glacier retreat.

How does art respond to catastrophe? At London Climate Action Week, join us for a conversation with three leading female artists using a variety of media for insights from their recent projects in the Antarctic and Arctic respectively.

Polly Townsend, was recently Artist-in-Residence in Antarctica with the Royal Navy and has produced spellbinding oil and charcoal tableaux of the landscape. Alice Boyd, composer, sound designer and Artist-in-Residence at the Eden Project, has recently collaborated with filmmaker, Michelle Sanders, on the Arctic Ice film project. Moderating the conversation will be broadcaster and journalist, Isabel Hilton, who has long explored these themes as founder and former editor-in-chief of China Dialogue and The Third Pole.