Resources Article

An Overlay Of Art, Science And Policy

Co-Head of the UK’s Policy Lab and Clore Fellow Stephen Bennett talks about the climate crisis and the connection to his work, in the hope to provide an original creative contribution to a global challenge.

Stephen Bennett’s Layers of Bangladesh (2021), viewed by a participant at Glass House. A woman with cropped grey hair examining an exhibit made up of layers of maps on a plinth.

I was recently asked at a panel for the Creative Coalition festival “What are the biggest challenges we are facing on climate change?” My response: the dislocation between science and action. This is a space I have tried to show leadership in my own creative practice and highlight a role for the broader cultural sector.

The scientific evidence is clear: continue with our current emissions pathways and glaciers will melt, habits will be lost, and humans will be harmed. The world over, this does not always translate into the appropriate actions and decisions, including at the individual, community, national and international levels.

I use art and design to bridge this gap. I do this as the Co-Head of the UK’s Policy Lab, where I’m part of a collective comprising designers, artists, video ethnographers, policymakers, visual anthropologists, curators, systems mappers and more. Policy Lab leads work with government departments including projects which visualise systemic challenges to decarbonisation, speculate how autonomy will affect the sustainability of the sea, and co-create films with diverse groups of people across the UK about inequality in access to nature.

I also do this as a visual artist. The support of Clore Leadership, and it’s partners such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, has allowed me to push my practice forward and feed ideas back into policymaking. As part of this, in Autumn 2021 I created Glass House, an interactive physical space where individuals were immersed in layers of climate data before expressing their views on policy.

Lots of the science is contained in thick reports and online databases. It is complex, hard to access, and sometimes quite dry. I gather such information, including evidence from research organisations, the UN, universities, and render it in analogue, tangible and interactive formats. In Glass House, the data is engraved or printed on recycled greenhouse panes from allotments. The information is warped, it bleeds and is eviscerated by drips of ink. Some of the data is engraved on glass plates that are broken or have deep residues of earth and dirt, making it harder to read, but perhaps also more intriguing. I use three-dimensional layers so people are enticed to physically move around, use their body, their hands, to understand the information.

One perhaps counterintuitive tactic is to denude the information of a narrative. People rarely like the feeling of being lectured or being told to do what it says in a report or an information campaign. I show a number of small, discrete elements of evidence and place them around a space. Participants look over this information and then create their own stories of what it means. By flipping the engagement model I hope that the science has a more lasting impact, ultimately creating the conditions for change and action. Dialogue is gently encouraged by four chairs facing each other – rather than the art – towards the end of the experience. This space allows an interplay between individual perspectives and shared understanding, mediated by evocative artefacts.

The Clore Leadership team has asked me about my biggest leadership learning through this process. It is a tough question, as the last few years have provided a kaleidoscope of hard lessons, epiphanies, missed opportunities and transformations. Perhaps my one piece of advice would be: go to the place you want to go. Even if that place feels silly or unconventional. It took me a long time to reconcile the fact that I could do artwork relating to policy topics, I always thought these belonged to different parts of my life. With Clore Leadership’s support, I now realise how I can help provide an original creative contribution to a global challenge.

You can read more about Glass House here or via the Creative Industries Partnerships here. You can read more about Policy Lab here.

Themes Climate Leadership