lyndakelly



Public Lecture: Restructuring climate policy for a partisan era
2011.05.04 06:31:39

Professor Mike Hulme, Restructuring climate policy for a partisan era

Thursday 5th May

Turner Hall, TAFE, Maryann Street, Ultimo

5.30pm Drinks, 6pm Lecture

 

I suggest that our ultimate goal is not to ‘stop climate change’. We have mistaken the means for the end. Our goal is surely to ensure that the basic human needs of the world’s growing population are adequately met; that we move towards a development paradigm where we are living within our techno-ecological means and not beyond them; and that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from a changing climate - distinguishing whether those risks and dangers are natural or not is hardly the point. It is not more certain scientific predictions that we need; nor a charismatic leader to arise from ‘the east’; nor grand dreams of creating a global thermostat in the sky above. It is what Sheila Jasanoff has referred to as the ‘technologies of humility’ – ‘disciplined methods to accommodate the partiality of scientific knowledge and to act under irredeemable uncertainty’ - that will offer us the best prospects for taming the risks of climate change.



Tags: #hotscience | climate change | Mike Hulme | hot science global citizens

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Affect as a modality for change
2011.05.04 06:05:00

Scott East, Centre for Cultural Research, UWS: Affect as a modality for change

 

It is common to acknowledge that audiences connect with museums in various ways, but what does this mean for a museum seeking to be socially relevant? Museums often see their role as delivering quality information and education. Drawing on research around contemporary museum exhibitions, the paper explores the multi-sensory experiential spaces of these exhibitions where quality information and logic are only a few of the things at work. Engaging with the risky and fickle-world of responses requires active experimentation and responsiveness rather than a check-list approach of good practice. Provocatively the paper will suggest the space of museums already contains the directions needed for change.



Tags: #hotscience | climate change | hot science global citizens

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Museums and the Global Governance of Climate Change
2011.05.03 21:24:34

Associate Professor Brett Neilson, Centre for Cultural Research, UWS: Changing Institutional Climates: Museums and the Global Governance of Climate Change

 

In the build-up to the United Nations climate conference held in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, Connie Hedegaard, the chairperson of the event and current European Commissioner for Climate Action, declared that any failure to reach a political agreement at this meeting would be ‘not just about climate’. Such an outcome, she said, would show ‘the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century’. This paper interrogates the relevance of this statement for the global governance of climate change in the light of the outcomes of the Copenhagen conference.

 

If the institutions that comprise the ‘global democratic system’ are inadequate to meet the challenge of climate change, what are the new institutional forms that must emerge to face this task? Focusing on the role of museums and their relations with publics, social movements and electronic networks, the paper suggests that the emergence of such new institutional forms requires mutual interactions between existing social institutions and decentralized networks committed to practices of social collaboration and political experimentation.



Tags: #hotscience | climate change | hot science global citizens

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Why we disagree about climate change
2011.05.03 21:21:25

Our Symposium Keynote speaker, Professor Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia

Climate change is not “a problem” waiting for “a solution”. Complex, or “wicked”, issues such as climate change do not get solved by doing better science or by finding technological fixes. Rather, climate change becomes an idea and as it travels through our various social worlds it engages with the full parade of human endeavours, conflicts and imaginative creations. Based on some of the ideas contained in my recent book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, this lecture dissects this idea of climate change – where it came from, how we study it, what it means to different people in different places and why we disagree about it. We disagree about the significance of the risks it poses. We disagree about who is responsible for causing these risks. And we disagree about what should be done about climate change – and by whom.

 

There is no single voice that speaks for climate. The lecture also develops a different way of approaching the idea of climate change and of working with it. Rather than seeing “stopping climate change” as the universal project around which the world must be mobilised at all costs, the idea of climate change gives us new resources – new insights, new vocabularies, new myths – which can be used creatively in our bewildering diversity of human projects. We must use the idea of climate change to open up new spaces for dissent, innovation and change, rather than seek to align the world in search of one unattainable utopia.



Tags: #hotscience | climate change | Mike Hulme | hot science global citizens

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What is an unconference?
2011.02.17 05:10:05

Wikipedia says that an unconference is “... a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by one or more organisers in advance of the event.” From what I’ve been given (thanks to tweets from @russmaxdesign, @NancyProctor and @Timh01) they appear to happen at webby-type events within  a set structure. Dave Briggs’ presentation about how to run a unconference, says that: "Unconferences are what conferences are like when you view then through the filter of the web. They’re open, social and collaborative. The best bits of traditional conferences are always the coffee breaks. Unconferences make the whole event a coffee break. Unconferences are usually

free

without an agenda

participatory

organised by someone who’s enthusiastic ...”

 

I’m planning to run the second day of the Symposium as a modified version of an unconference. My initial thoughts are:

 

  • Build discussion leading up to the event (via this blog and Twitter)
  • Offer participants a two minute opportunity to present any thoughts, ideas, experiences around climate change and museum programming (they sign up for this)
  • Presentations
  • Choose some themes that capture our imagination and that arise from the discussions and Day 1
  • Have series of roundtables where these themes are discussed (plus any others from the presentations)
  • Each table has a leader who takes notes and keeps discussion moving
  • Report back
  • Do it all again!

 

 

By the end of the session we could have a series of projects that we could move ahead with – some may be collaborative, others become funding proposals, etc etc.

We do need to keep in mind that the day is experimental, not directed and not stress about that.

Be keen to hear your thoughts…



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