November Substack | living through a reckoning
Reflections, events and opportunities for our community
Dear reader,
It’s been a dizzying, devastating month of climate catastrophes. This week Monmouth high street was swept beneath the river Monnow; as I head to Wales to help friends recover things from the floods, I hear on the radio that Iran has begun injecting chemicals into clouds to stimulate rainfall, amidst a historic drought. Across the Atlantic, Jamaican communities are reeling from the wreckage of another tropical cyclone - ‘not a “natural disaster”, but an event engineered by historical design,’ wrote Amahra Spence in a raw, urgent piece on climate colonialism. ‘Colonialism didn’t just drain resources’, she continues, ‘it designed vulnerability: low-lying plantations, monoculture economies, debt dependency, fragile institutions.’
It is hard to not feel the weight of living through a reckoning, an untangling. We need containers for this chaos, collective places to move through pain, to grieve together, to remember and honour what is being lost. Next week our regular community breakfast (now the last Thursday of every month) will explore ‘loss and remembering’, and we’ll hear from several incredible artists, researchers and practitioners - join us on 27 November from 9 - 10.30am.
And of course there’s COP: a messy, disorientating, contradictory, mountain of a thing. Home to the usual spectacle of technocentric solutions, sluggish bureaucracy and corporate lobbying. As many have agonisingly pointed out, one in every 25 participants in Belém is representing the fossil fuel industry. And yet: an enormity of hope, a carnival of grassroots mobilising. Our hearts have been lifted by the creation of new Indigenous territories in Brazil following an enormous blockade by Indigenous protestors last Friday. And brilliantly, culture is finally being recognised as central to driving a just transition - thanks to the restless work of initiatives like We Make Tomorrow - of which we are signatories - United Artists for Climate, and many others.
We’ve gathered some really interested opportunities for artists this month, as well as articles, podcasts and films, listed at the bottom of this letter.
Love, Tesni (CDE UK Communications + Event Coordinator)
Events
Next Community Breakfast | Thursday 27 November, 9am
So many animal and plant kin, people, cultures, languages, and practices are being lost through violent systems of extraction and exploitation. We know this. But we also need to create spaces to collectively feel this. Joanna Macy and many others have taught us the power of sitting with pain. Instead of privatising, repressing, or pathologising our pain for the world, we honour it. We re-frame it as compassion, and this brings us back to life. We are reminded that grief is a container for love.
For this breakfast, sandwiched between Remember Nature day on 4 November and Lost Species Day on 30 November, we will hear from artists who are honouring, archiving and remembering the lost, telling their stories, and creating space for healing and accountability.
Speakers will be:
Youngsook Choi, artist and researcher, founder of the Foreshadowing, Transnational Ecological Grief Council
Hannah Davey, creative practitioner at Greenpeace supporting artists to embed changemaking practices for climate justice, and part of Youngsook’s grief council
Persephone Pearl, artist, theatre producer and co-founder of Lost Species Day, counsellor and trustee at Climate Psychology Alliance
Merlyn Driver, musician and cultural producer working with near-extinct species, Sounds Archive Manager at Earth Sonic
Julia Thomas, artist and Future Wales Fellow collaborating with Welsh communities to give voice to collective post-industrial grief
Our friendly breakfast gatherings are warm, supportive, relatively informal spaces. Everyone is welcome, and there will be an opportunity to bring questions, thoughts, and share your own practice.
Declarer updates
Migration is a solution, not a problem - a call to collaborate from Declarer Beccy McCray
“Hello collaborators, conspirators, and co-creators. I’m reaching out in light of the disturbing asylum reform proposals from Labour – they mirror Reform UK: cruel, racist, and completely out of step with the reality of our interconnected world. They strip away dignity from people already displaced by climate breakdown, war and systemic injustice.
I’m looking to connect with others who want to help shift the story around migration – away from fear and towards empathy, solidarity, instinct and connection. Intuition Maps is a co-created artwork made with Northamptonshire communities and migratory species, exploring how human and more-than-human beings move in response to climate and change. It’s rooted in the belief that migration is a solution, not a problem – and that movement is natural, necessary, and full of wisdom.
If you’re working on this too – in words, art, organising or anything else – feel free to use Intuition Maps as a reference, resource point, or spark. We urgently need new narratives – ones that recognise migration not as a crisis, but as a natural and necessary part of life.”
Opportunities & call outs
Climate & Migration Film Festival 20 - 31 November - free access to five films for individuals or for groups host a community screening. Register here.
Climate Psychology Alliance and Climate Majority Project are hiring an inner adaptation community manager - a pioneering role to begin building a community of practice for people doing inner work to hold our planetary crisis. Apply by 23 November.
Meeting the Moment - a one-day event for mid to senior leaders of cultural organisations about speaking up in troubled times. 26 November, tickets here.
Six paid places to learn documentary filmmaking for a radically abundant future, for marginalised people with a connection to watersheds in mid Wales. Apply by 30 November.
Cairngorms residency - Bothy Project, in partnership with Cairngorms National Park Authority, are seeking an arts practitioner based within the National Park to develop work that responds to Dùthchas, a Gaelic word which encompasses ideas of kinship, heritage and connection between nature, people and place. Apply by 14 December.
Microgrants to host climate cafés within your community, from Force of Nature.
Reading, listening & watching
The Coal Beneath Our Feet, The Wind Above Our Heads - powerful documentary exploring the past of mining in South Wales to inspire a future vision filled with hope, rooted in green energy and community wealth - watch for free
Land We Love, Return Not Relief: Jamaica, Katrina and the Climate Reckoning We Must Face - Amahra Spence on Substack
Regenerative Practices for Place - a thoughtful and practical guide from CDE co-founder Bridget McKenzie, for people who want to help communities learn and thrive in the face of the Earth crisis
‘Our crisis is an aesthetic crisis’ - on art, education and ecology - an interview with Jan Van Boeckel on the Forest of Thought podcast
Weaving back the world - a collection of stories and articles from the Ecoversities Fellows of 2025
That’s all for now folks,
Tesni x