I Love…Amelia’s Anthology Of Illustration!

About four years ago (gosh) my London friend pointed out a magazine I just had to buy, because it was Amelia’s Magazine and that’s me! Thus began an enduring love affair with the bi-annual doorstop packed full of interesting things to make and do; ethical fashion, unknown bands, beautiful illustration and always with a twist – a scratch and sniff cover, a cardboard merry-go-round to pull out and create, adventures in India! Some of my most favourite bands came out of those pages.

Sadly, the print version is no more. Happily, you can still read informative, inspirational and environmental articles over at Amelia’s Magazine.com, where they now have a dedicated Earth section which mostly seems to focus on Amelia’s adventures in eco-activism…EVEN MORE HAPPILY, Amelia recently released Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration.

Amy Rhian for Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration.

When I first read about it, I assumed it would be a general round up of up and coming illustrators and, obviously, be gorgeous and covetable but ultimately an expense I couldn’t justify. How wrong I was. Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration features ‘renewable technologies to prevent catastrophic climate change’. That’s right, Amelia rounded up a herd of creative, fluffly types and made them do science. Each illustrator chose from one of many, many ideas to glean power from the world around us, with as little damage to the environment as possible and what has been produced is gorgeous, covetable, inspirational and endlessly informative.

My absolute favourite page, because I am a child.

Click through for larger + an explication of Poo Power!

Amelia was kind enough to answer a few questions for me about her growing interest in environmental issues, how art can change the world and plans for future publications as delicious as this…

Amelia Wells: The print version of Amelia’s Magazine focused on sustainability, particularly in fashion, but didn’t have a dedicated Earth section whereas the website is a lot more environmentally-inclined. Does this reflect your increasing interest in climate change and the surrounding issue?

Amelia Gregory: Yes! Although I have always been interested in environmental issues I didn’t really feel it was appropriate to the print version of Amelia’s Magazine to include more in depth articles – while as I can be a lot more flexible with content on the website because the writing is so much more important. I decided to create a whole dedicated Earth section (I have a pet hatred for the word eco and I wanted the name to evoke a lot more than simple ideas about recycling) because I spend lots of time dealing with climate change issues through my work with Climate Camp (and formerly with Climate Rush) and wanted a portal through which to talk about climate change and what it means for humanity and the way we live. However, I try to imbue the articles with the same spirit as the magazine, so they focus on the creative side of environmental activism, both personal and on a wider political scale. The Earth section also gives me an excellent opportunity to commission up and coming illustrators to produce work to accompany articles.

AW:In the introduction to the Anthology you say that you ‘detested science at school’; what inspired you to focus on the technological side of resolving climate change?

AG:I don’t detest science anymore! I think when you’re at school you get force fed facts in science classes and as an artistic type I hated that. I want to be free to think about what I am interested in, and I now find elements of science fascinating (and I don’t mean formulas…) I read a lot of popular science books and regularly catch up with New Scientist, so I know my climate change facts as well as needs be to have a good argument with someone (though I would probably still fall down on the figures side of things). I find science fascinating, and I wanted to imbue that sense of fascination into the book. The best scientists are incredibly imaginative – my parents were both scientists (and are both very artistic, as have been a couple of scientist boyfriends) and I’ve realised that art and science are incredibly closely linked.

AW:What part do you believe illustration, and perhaps the creative arts in general, has to play in politics?

AG:Well, politicians rely heavily on imagery to sell their ideas. We’re a visual culture, you can’t avoid it. Just look at the furore surrounding David Cameron’s recent billboard campaign! So of course the arts play a huge part in influencing people, especially if the subject of that art engages with an idea well. I think that where illustration can be particularly important is in appealing to a wider audience than perhaps conceptual or abstract art can, because illustration tends to be far more understandable – good illustration should tell a story in an engaging way. For this reason it should never be underestimated as a discipline. Illustration is all about visualising our dreams.

AW: How did you hope to inspire people through reading the Anthology?

AG:I suppose on a couple of levels. I’d like illustrators to come away from the book thinking – wow, I could get involved with work like this! In a best case scenario they’d go and seek out people who need illustration to visualise their ideas and dreams for the wider good and then offer their talents! I don’t know if this will happen but I’d love to know if it does. I also hope that readers of the book, whomever they are, feel inspired to get involved with combatting climate change, in whatever way they feel is most accessible and useful for them. And I’d like everyone to come away feeling more positive and excited about what could be, if only we’d try and make it so. Humans can be idiots at times, but we’re also amazing creatures!

AW:Do you have any more plans for gorgeous books like this? (Please say yes…) If it’s not too secret, could you let us in on what they might be?

AG:I’d love to produce more books but the sad fact is that it always comes down to finances. I have no idea whether I’ll be able to sell all 3000 copies that I’ve printed of Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration, but I need to in order to cover my printing costs! Because I insist on doing things incredibly ethically (using high quality FSC approved paper and printing in the UK) the Anthology is a really expensive production compared with the way in which most commercial publishers manufacture books. And I’m footing all the costs myself. I also want to concentrate on making the website work really smoothly this year, and I need to find other lecturing and consultancy work to pay the bills for a bit. But having said that I would love to write another book – and I’ve got loads of ideas already. Ideas are never my problem! Time and money are my problems: there are never enough hours in the day, it drives me mad! Because I run the business on my own I am often bogged down in boring admin stuff like packing up books and chasing invoices when all I want to be doing is writing and designing.
Some of my ideas include: a book looking at the way that illustrators work with me as an art director, tracing the way an image comes to life; a book looking at how successful sustainable communities work; further anthologies of photography and ethical fashion designers, and possibly a collection of the best bits featured so far on the Amelia’s Magazine website. I’d also like to do an illustrated cookery book, a children’s book (a long term dream of mine), a notebook range and another Anthology of Illustration on a different theme… I could go on and on really.

My fingers are firmly crossed…Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration is available from all good art book shops (I found mine at the Arnolfini, in Bristol) and from the shop, alongside back issues of the Magazine, artwork and threads, featuring some of the coolest trees in the world.

Amelia is also looking for interns at the moment, a position I would love to apply for!, but it’s pretty much only for Londoners. Apply, make me jealous.

Amelia.

Climate Camp South Coast Regional Meeting Take Two

Sunday morning I awoke and foraged for breakfast, discovering the most delicious vegan dark chocolate spread which tasted EXACTLY like the insides of pain au chocolat. I noshed on that and had some quite time reading my book before the morning over-view of Saturday’s events.

Aside from yet-more-talking, Marina was organising some direct action training that morning, so I decided to go out and get muddy down by the river. We did do radio training; learning to use radios during actions. It’s not just about turning on and having a listen, you know. We split into two teams and played Capture the Flag where each team has a flag (surprise) and the aim of the game is to, okay, there’s a clue in the name. We hid ours under a bridge, planning to use it as a bottleneck for the other team, a plan which was a little foiled when they approached from the other side of the river. Three of us, ‘White-Home’ stayed to protect the flag, and I was among the three who ventured towards the other camp, ‘White-Outreach’.

As we understood the rules at first, the opposing team could be tagged and would then be unable to move – a rule which worked in our favour when Martha (Red-Home) received a message calling for back-up while guarding my stationary self, so I was able to shout to Charlie for her to warn White-Home of their intentions. However, all three of us did end up stuck until Marina clarified that only the person holding the flag could be tagged. We wandered through their camp after that, Charlie eventually discovered the flag tucked into a tree stump and Elise from White-Home joining us. After some trial and error, another rule mix-up and me getting cracked in the head by somebody else’s, we formed a sort of relay group, throwing the flag as we were tagged. The rules were then clarified once again; when the flag carrier was tagged, the flag was to be returned to base.

Upon the return of the flag, Charlie and Maia decided it would be a good technique to switch-up with the boys, leaving Elise and I to watch one of the Red team rush with our white flag up to the Heart of Reeds – with Dan in swift pursuit! – but ultimately winning.

We had a debriefing session, then headed back to Pop-Up for lunch. (I may expand on the radio learnings in another post). More delicious food was on offer, this time potato soup and phat slices of crusty bread. Can I live at Climate Camp please? According to Alice though, sometimes the food can be dire.

I ended up at ‘Reception’ after lunch, in case of doorbell and new arrivals. Elise kept me company briefly and we discussed whether anything would be decided that afternoon as so much was going on aside from the meetings – quite a few people were out learning bushcraft in the afternoon or filming with Tom and his masks, and that morning most of the people who would have wanted to talk about direct action were out learning about doing it!

However, I feel that a lot did get covered in the end. Joining in the Outreach and Community group back in the meeting there were exciting actions on course to be implemented such as a South Coast Website, an environmental book group with talks and discussion, getting trained up to give talks and workshops at schools and community centres, creating press resource and teaching resource packs and running a blog to name, well, most of them.

We came together at the end to voice proposals, create working groups for particular actions and gauge consensus. Tom presented on the idea of Climate Carnival (!!) – a mass of masks, costumes and wheels tobe carted around the country on actions, providing an eye-catching creative space and generally being awesome. Very exciting. No specifics are in place yet, but there was a further meeting after I left. Direct Action put forward some targets and eventually created an ‘as and when’ working group for when people are involved in particular actions, the specifics of which need not be made public even within Climate Camp – although anyone can ask for the information.

To wind up the weekend there were some temperature checks on where people want to focus their energy, National or Regional and on having National or North + South or South Coast camp(s). I went for National and North/South (respectively), although since Kent is hugely under-represented despite having ‘hosted’ a Climate Camp at Kingsnorth I think I probably will try to focus my energies regionally and try to drum up some interest down around here.

And that was my weekend at Climate Camp South Coast Regional Gathering. Hopefully I’ll be getting involved with some community outreach tings and and and actually going out and doing actions instead of just sitting around being vegan and going on about that. Not that I’m going to stop going on about being vegan. But hey, you can be vegan AND rush power stations! So here’s to wanting something done and DOING IT YOURSELF instead of waiting for the government to step in and take over. COP15 proved pretty conclusively that they’re just going to fanny around waiting for somebody else to acquiesce to having less ‘power’ first, so fuck ’em, don’t do what they tell you and DO IT FOR YOURSELF.

Amelia.

Climate Camp South Coast Regional Meeting

Climate Camp is

a fast growing grassroots movement of diverse people taking action of climate change

which began in August 2006 when 600 people gathered at Drax, a coal-fired power station in West Yorkshire for a ten day camp or learning and sustainable living, culminating in a day of mass action against the station. This is the first year that there have been regional gatherings and so last weekend, the 23rd and 24th of January, I popped down to Lewes, near Brighton, hoping to meet some like-minded people, learn things and get involved in doing something about this environmental mess we find ourselves in.

As well as being the first South Coast gathering, it was also my first involvement in anything Climate Camp-y, and so I headed down Lewes High Street towards Pop Up studios, housed in the old fire station, with some apprehension. As I rounded the corner of the studios a mock protest was being carried out, with people shouting as they were faux-arrested. I slid inside and arrived at the reception – a table on the stairs with a sign up sheet and a donation bucket. A couple of very amicable women met me and showed me where to dump my stuff and grab a bite to eat. Alone, I explored, discovering the balcony where I sat for a while and contemplated the view. A few others had popped out for to do the smoking, and I got chatting to them about the morning’s events (which I had missed due to extended circumstances leading to me arriving from East London, not Brighton).

Saturday morning had involved discussions of the positives and negatives of Climate Camp then coming up with different areas which needed attention. In the afternoon we went through these, splitting into six or seven groups to further discuss the aims and values, community, outreach, direct action and the national/regional/international links. Each facilitator came around the groups with their A3 piece of paper from the morning’s groups. And so! We discussed.

At anarchist meetings there is lots and lots of talking, and sometimes it does seem as if the talking will never end. Every point needs to be discussed, worked into a proposal and considered by whoever is present. This is one of the things which makes anarchy such a wonderful system (anti-system?) as only those who agree with an action need take it forward and everybody has their say, if they want it, with nobody able to grasp after or hog power, since if people don’t agree with your proposal, they simply won’t do it.

We spent most time talking about the Values of Climate Camp, deciding that anti-capitalism is pro-cooperative and then chatted for a while about whether a member of the BNP would be welcome, considering one of the values was ‘inclusive’. I think yes, so long as they were there for the reasons Climate Camp exists.
Outreach also yielded interesting ideas, a lot of which linked in with the later Community discussion. Suggestions made were mostly to do with raising awareness and educating people, getting more people involved with Climate Camp and other environmental actions, and, maybe most importantly, providing practical solutions to the issues we are educating people about. As a few pointed out, information about the environment can often be overwhelming and people are unaware about further action they can take other than turning taps off and recycling. More regional gatherings and community events were suggested, with a very exciting idea coming out of that…
I mostly listened during these discussions to gauge the kind of ideas being propagated and the enthusiasm of the participants. I did chime in on the BNP topic though, as how people treat and think about that party is a choice rant of mine.
At the same time as these discussions there was a seminar happening on the uses of social media, mostly twitter, for planning and during direction action, as well as awareness raising tools. There was an AWFUL LOT happening over the weekend, often at the same time, so people were frequently popping in and out of the discussions.

Dinner that evening was a delicious vegan squash and potato curry which was so good and very filling. All the food served at Climate Camp events is vegan, and I believe most of the attendees were vegetarian, although I didn’t go out of my way to discuss people’s eating habits (for once!).

That evening we watched a couple of films; Composting Capitalism and Dr Seuss’ The Lorax. Composting Capitalism was filmed in Copenhagen during COP15, and has an overview of the event, interviews with local people – including one of the founder’s of Cristiania – and sections from the People’s Forum. It is well worth and watch and can be found here on YouTube. The creator’s website is here.
I had never heard of The Lorax before. It’s a rhymed cartoon about capitalism and deforestation and such. Very sad! The lorax loses his habitat and all his friends when the Once-ler decides to use the Truffula trees to make thneeds and thus, destroys the local environment. It really made me need a thneed…

I headed out onto the balcony again to collect my thoughts and managed to get locked out! Upon re-entry, I sat with Alice and Elise who were discussing Alice’s squat (in the old museum of childhood in London!) and all the actions they’d been on and WWOOFing they’d done. Alice was delighted to learn that Elise and I were newer to Climate Camp than she, Elise having gone to a meeting for the first time the Tuesday previous and that weekend being my first contact. Apparently most people go to national camp or take part in an action. Alice went to the Blackheath camp in August as her first thing, then went down to VESTAS, before hitting up Trafalgar Square for Cop Out, Camp Out, after which she went to Copenhagen and then she slept for the best part of a month. After listening, agape, we went and got some popcorn, donned endangered-animal masks so Tom could film us dancing (I’m not entirely sure what he does with the footage, but I got to be a panda!), and chatted into the night. Tom’s masks are absolutely beautiful papier-mache creations which he makes to take on actions, all except the penguin which he claims somebody else made and is, actually, scary.

And that was Saturday! Tune in on Thursday for Sunday’s events.

Amelia

I don’t give a fuck about Climate Change

What with COP15 and rising water levels, there’s an awful lot of talk about Climate Change at the moment. People are arguing all over the blogosphere, and in real life too!, about whether it exists or not and if it does, whether it is due to anthropogenic forcing – that is, us, the pitiful human. These arguments tend to be circular in nature, with the deniers denying and the believers arguing ever harder. Here’s a list of arguments from The New Scientist contradicting the article published in The Daily Express about ‘Why Climate Change is natural.’ For some, it’s like arguing for the existence of God; there’s evidence on both sides and a rational argument isn’t going to convince either.

Now, I don’t give a fuck about Climate Change. I am not a climatologist, and am not nearly expert enough to deduce for myself whether humans are capable of heating up our tiny little planet. Arguing about whether it exists or not is pointless.

What is evident, what we do know as FACT, is that the Earth has finite resources. We know that it takes many, many years for oil to be created by great pressures within the earth. We know that it takes many years for trees to grow to the size they are within the Amazon basin. We know that breathing in car exhaust is a popular way to commit suicide and we know that the lifestyles we are currently thriving on will not last forever.

There are many, many people out there who argue against the existence of Climate Change as a reason not to Change their personal Climate, that is, their lifestyle. They just want to go to work, raise their kids, volunteer at a charity shop, pop to the Canaries and go ‘aww’ over the baby seals on Life without some eco-avenger getting in their face about carbon footprints and emissions taxes.

Bollocks to that. It doesn’t matter if Climate Change is due to us and our cars, teevees, heating or the agricultural industry or not. The temperature has always risen and fallen on earth – once England had hyenas living in caves, once England was covered in a glacier.

However, there is a lot which is is obviously, provably and evidently caused by our quest for oil, our quest for more meat, our quest for more in general. Cattle ranches in Brazil are deforesting on a massive scale so that we can have beef for dinner. Ecuador has been devastated by the oil industry; a combination of deforestation and contamination causing scenes likes this.
(That’s an oil pit, by the way.)

Invisible gas floating up to the sky to form an invisible barrier through which sunlight cannot escape back into space which then causes the earth to heat up a degree…versus the sight of the Amazon, you know the place – the lungs of the planet? – covered in cattle and sludge. I know which issue is going to put me off my dinner and make me think twice about calling a taxi after the pub.

I don’t give a fuck about climate change, but I am all too aware that the lifestyle we have chosen to live is not sustainable and is already, and has been for a long time now, fucking up the planet we could so easily have kept beautiful.

Amelia