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Catalyst: Climate & Ecological Action, Now

A graphic with watery green cucumber-like slices
  • Written byInternal Communications
  • Published date 27 February 2023
A graphic with watery green cucumber-like slices
Visual Identity: Paolina Stefani, Weronika Szklarek and Yasmin Avdji

Catalyst is a series of gatherings, workshops, conversations and interventions that embed our Climate Action Plan in the practices of our College and Institute communities. Led by the UAL Climate Emergency Network, Catalyst examines and seeks to energise the frameworks for systemic change we have committed to as an institution.  

In the run up to Earth Day (22 April 2023) we invite our whole community of students, academics, technicians, and professional staff to understand how we can enact climate justice, and therefore biodiversity, planetary, social, racial and global justice. Catalyst recognises that none of our ambitions or actions will be realised without a whole community approach.

Please explore the full programme below and book on directly using the links provided. If you have any further questions, please contact climatenetwork@arts.ac.uk

Join us on an Urban Climate Walk through London

The London Urban Climate Walk (LUCW) takes participants through a series of streets & public spaces that create distinct microclimates. We use the exposure to these microclimates to explore urban climate effects that arise due to a combination of urban forms and functions.

Discuss, investigate and challenge our plans and policies over a lunch in each College

Although our plans have been drawn, how certain are we that we will be able to create the necessary change needed to enact our ambitions? And, importantly, how certain are we of our plans in the first place? This session, Uncertainty Planning, invites students and staff into a conversation around our plans and policies. Over lunch, we will provide a safe, open and reflective space to raise questions and voice their uncertainty around our roadmaps to the future.

Knowledge mapping for Climate, Social and Racial Justice

In 2022, the Teaching and Learning Exchange introduced a set of principles for further embedding principles of climate, racial and social justice every course at UAL. In this session, we will use these principles as launching pad and a tool for a collaborative, reflective drawing session. We'll each map out our individual responsibilities and practices, and in the process, ask one another how we can move with urgency to mobilise creative action.

Facing Climate Fears

In this 90-minute cross-community workshop, we equip staff and students with strategies to better support others and themselves when facing climate-situated anxiety and depression. Crucially, the workshop centres voices and testimonials from our own community, asking participants to recognise what action they might take to support other's mental health across UAL in the context of crisis.

Vapor Trails: A UAL Workshop

In this workshop, we’ll understand how to calculate the carbon footprint of our flights. Together, we’ll attempt to plot out our universities emissions related to travel, situate this in a global context, and think together about solutions of how we might reduce our institutional footprint.

Learning from more-than-human teachers and reimagining education

Educating for and about a world that is not only “for us” but one that elevates animals, plants, and the wider eco-systems on which we rely is a vital shift in times of ecological destruction.

Breakfast with the Climate Emergency Network

Bring your earth-centered ideas, questions, and research around climate and ecological justice as we nourish ourselves over vegan breakfast.