Please note that this is an on-going project.
Project Description
ALTERED TIDES: CREATIVE COASTAL RECREATION IN A CLIMATE CHANGED FUTRE
In partnership with SWELL Sculpture Festival and GECKO, Griffith University’s Climate Action Beacon is hosts the Altered Tides: Creative coastal recreation in a climate changed future event series. These events bring Indigenous knowledge, climate and coastal sciences, beach cultures and the arts together to support people and their communities in responding to climate changes.
Altered Tides events include public lectures, films, community panels and creatives and creative thinking .
To understand climate changes in our everyday lives, we ask coastal dwellers to reflect on their weekends and holidays spent at the beach and in the ocean and how these have and will be, impacted by changing weather patterns.
What could we do to ready ourselves – and our weekends – for climate changed futures?
Project Personnel and Beneficiaries
In 2023, AEL signed an MOU with SWELL Sculpture Festival to continue to develop this partnership and its mutual opportunities. The project benefits staff and students across the university – either through staff participation during the event, internships and special events. Altered Tides brings the complexity of climate action to a forum where already, many of the sculptures are inspired or commentary of current ecological and climate crises and invites community engagement and reflection on what this means for how we live our everyday lives, as a nation of coastal dwellers. the principal partnership with SWELL and later, the recruitment of GECKO, alongside the changing theme means that while there is a key partnership, each year the event benefits different groups.
Outcomes to Date
Each year, in the processes of producing the event and the event itself, visitors to SWELL and attendees at the event (around 250 over the last three years) are encouraged to think creatively about climate action (SGD#13), life on land and life below water (SDG’s 14 &15), sustainable cities and communities (SDG#11) – all of which take place because of ‘partnerships for the goals’ (SDG#17). The event is led by women, deliberately addressing gender inequality (SDG#5) in responses to climate and ecological crises.
Project Significance
It is well established that meaningful communication on climate and other crises is best geared to the everyday lives of people and communities – so that change, and the motivation to do so makes sense. Altered Tides takes what matters to many Gold Coasters and Australians – our Australian coastal culture – and engages with this as a pathway to return possibilities for action to everyday people. It is fair that many would feel distant and powerless in the face of international forums and diplomacy, big business and government, expert science and debates. Altered Tides is a reminder that we can think global and act local.