Inside the Green HouseThis new climate change related site has the potential to be a break-through communications tool. The objectives for this project are:
1. To generate multimodal compositions on the subject of climate change 2. To engage with various dimensions and issues associated with sustainability 3. To produce and distribute the 'Inside the Greenhouse' program
We work to deepen our understanding of how issues associated with climate change are/can be communicated, by creating artifacts through interactive theatre, film, fine art, performance art, television programming, and appraising as well as extracting effective methods for multimodal climate communication. The centerpiece of this project is the Inside the Greenhouse (ITG) television program, featuring a high-profile figure engaged in climate and environment issues (stay tuned for our upcoming schedule). As part of the programming, we also feature work produced in the associated 'Inside the Greenhouse' course at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
The interdisciplinary approach taken up in this ITG collective seeks to capture, value and interrogate the complexity of multi-scale and contemporary climate science, policy and politics as well as the challenges of performance and communication of these issues. Our motivations here spring from an expansive view of climate science and policy in society, where more formal scientific and policy work is part of, rather than separate from, public uptake. Representational practices of various sorts play key roles in interpretation, framing climate change for policy, politics and the public, and drawing attention to how to make sense of the changing world. Mediated portrayals - from television news to live performance - are critical links between people's everyday realities and experiences, and the ways in which these are discussed at a distance between science, policy and public actors.
The chosen title of the project - Inside the Greenhouse - acknowledges that, to varying degrees, we are all implicated in, part of, and responsible for greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. So in these collective endeavors we treat this 'greenhouse' as a living laboratory, an intentional place for growing new ideas and evaluating possibilities to confront climate change through a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
