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.

During the field trip Sustainable Living, the artists visited the off-grid homestead of The Only Animal’s Colin Cooper at Gambier Island and toured the food, water and energy systems of this 50-acre, boat-access-only homestead. This field trip focused on these questions: What does individual sustainability mean? What does carbon-neutral and self-sufficiency look like from an Indigenous perspective? From Colin Cooper’s perspective as a homesteader on Gambier Island? From a global perspective?

This field trip was facilitated by:

• híwus, Calvin Craigon, hereditary chief of the shíshálh Nation
• Tim Turner, a knowledgeable ecologist and educator
• Colin Cooper from The Only Animal whose part of creating and maintaining off-grid homestead at Gambier Island

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 Instructions for grieving this change/ instructions for changing this grief by Kim Richards.