It’s easy to become despondent, angry and numbed into inaction by the climate crisis and so many other unfolding disasters that surround us and are brought into our daily lives by the all-pervasiveness of social and conventional media. But there are positive steps we can take to combat not only climate change but also to lift ourselves and our friends and family up.
A good place to start is getting out in nature, which Katharine Hayhoe writes “is good for your physical and mental health, plus it also fosters pro-environmental attitudes”. For a more organized group approach you could see whether your town, city or region offers something like the Earth Dreams: A Summer Party for Grief & Love that will take place from the evening of July 8th to the early morning hours of July 9th at The Bentway in Toronto, Canada. This event is billed as “a free festival centring joy and sorrow, dancing and meditation allowing us to confront the climate crisis and our shared commitment to planetary health”.
Lest you think that the Bentway is some kind of pristine nature reserve where this party will take place it is actually the area beneath the Gardiner Expressway, an elevated highway that runs across the southern edge of the ctiy. Some 200,000 people live with it as a defining feature of their home landscape. In partnership with the City of Toronto and public and private sponsors, The Bentway Conservancy imagines how the infrastructure formed by and in between the concrete pillars known as “bents,” which hold up the roadway, can connect us, support us to step outside our cars and inspire us to see our world differently.” Organizer Alex Rand says “Public art and collective participatory experience turn spaces that at first appear to be barren and hostile into opportunities for collective effervescence and the celebration of public imagination for the common good.”
Is there ‘big infrastructure’ in your city that would lend itself to something like Earth Dreams? Read more about the festival.