A new local Arts Council-funded project is offering a space for people to talk about their climate anxiety in Jubilee Library.
The centrepiece to the ‘Shine a Light’ project is a chandelier created from bottle tops collected in the Jubilee Library and along the Brighton & Hove seafront.
Volunteers have spent the last few days threading over 4,200 bottle tops to add to the chandelier, which will hang in the library until the end of January 2020.
Residents are invited to come along to see the chandelier and join the Shine a Light ceremony at Jubilee Library at 12 noon on Sunday 17 November 2019.
Beneath the chandelier, we’re creating a space where people can gather to have informal conversations, learn and reflect on how we can find courage and make changes to support each other and our natural world.
We’re also planning a series of facilitated talks in January – keep an eye on the 'A Drop in the Ocean' website for details.
The project has been initiated by Irene Solar, a graphic designer and director of The Appreciation Society, a not-for-profit Community Interest Company based in Brighton & Hove.
Shine a Light follows on from ‘A Drop in the Ocean’. This original plastic-collecting, awareness-raising project resulted in a colourful 50-metre wave of plastic bottle tops on the seafront.
The idea of ‘Shine a Light’ is to use the power of community to illuminate possibilities. It’s about sharing our fears, our grief and our stories so that we can rediscover hope and how differently we could live if we put our minds to it.
In the two years since A Drop in the Ocean, the conversation around the climate crisis has shifted dramatically. Compared to just 24 months ago, far more people know just how much we need to change the way we live.
Awareness of the problem was no longer needed, now the focus needed to be on the vision, and helping people overcome the apathy that can come from feeling powerless in the face of a global crisis.
The result is Shine a Light. The hope is that in some small way it will help to strengthen our community and our resolve to imagine and build a radically different society.
You can find out more about Shine a Light and A Drop in the Ocean at www.adropintheocean.org.uk.
