A community built by its members

The deep sense of injustice. A darkness, a dread. Lost. Mad and alone.'

This thesis considers the potential of grief and mourning to foster meaningful engagement with global ecological crises. I explore this potential through my own studio practice, positioning artworks and creative processes as vehicles for articulating collective experiences of loss, anxiety, and bereavement. To create these artworks, I draw from scientific knowledge, regional folkways, geologic history, and intergenerational experience with an emphasis on local culture.

A climate cafe is a hospitable and empathic space where anxiety about the current crisis can be safely expressed and people can engage with difficult truths while staying connected and grounded. With emotionally containing structures in place, climate cafes allow participants to explore anger, helplessness, sadness, grief and depression without dissociating, numbing or going into blind panic, offering relief and a powerful sense of connection.

With the effects of the climate emergency increasingly shaping our daily lives, feelings of ecological distress – particularly ecogrief and anxiety – have become palpable. In this article, we focus on these affective responses and examine how creative practice collaborations are curating possibilities for hope and resilience. We argue for the importance of such creative engagement, as ecological distress can lead to paralysis, nihilism, or despair, making it imperative to explore how creative practices open pathways for collective healing and actionable hope in the face of crisis.

We are at such a pivotal moment in human existence that you cannot separate the holistic context of climate breakdown and the loss of human habitat from the psychotherapeutic treatment of anyone remotely aware of the climate emergency. What it means to be human and our relationship with other life is changing.

In a recent article on climate change and recognition of the need for adaptation, Dannevig and Hovelsrud (Clim Chang 135:261–275, 2016) conclude that climate change is not salient in fisheries on the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway. This commentary scrutinizes this conclusion. Empirical findings rather indicate that the Lofoten fishers do indeed frame climate change as a problem and acknowledge the need for adaptive response; however, mental barriers are likely to mask existing climate change salience. Based on the authors’ line of argument and insights from psychology, this contribution aims to extend their debate and stimulate discussion by drawing attention to the impacts of mental barriers. A particular focus is thereby laid on the role of cognitive dissonance and hard-wired emotions.