The Artist Brigade brings arts and artists to the front lines of the climate movement, and our inaugural 100-artist cohort came together for Greenhouse, and other trainings and weekly engagements. Then, they were invited on one of a series of field trips to sites where they could experience the climate in crisis, or climate solutions.

One of our field trips, The Artist Part, was curated in response to others in society who tell the climate story –  journalists, activists, government and sustainability experts – and their enthusiasm to collaborate with artists. This was the third field trip that the artists from the Artist Brigade could participate in. This field trip took place at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens and was facilitated by:

• Katia Tynan, from the Resilience Office of City of Vancouver, speaking on heat domes and the human infrastructure that keep people safe in extreme heat events. 

• Sean Holman, a journalist and creator of Climate Disaster Project, a consent-based interview process for co-creating first person stories about climate reality.

• Lucero González Ruiz, a Biodiversity Campaigner for the Georgia Strait Alliance, working on issues around the Southern Resident Orca Pod in the Salish Sea.

After this field trip, the attending artists were invited to dream up projects in their artistic disciplines, and pitch them to us. This work, as with all of the work with the Artist Brigade, was paid. The Only Animal selected 來跟我在林里做夢 or Come dream with me in the forest by Wen Wen Lu, which can be viewed here.