In 2001, David Buckland, creator and director of the Cape Farewell Project, read an article that claimed the opportunity for eradicating climate change was fleeting, give or take ten years. He started the project soon after, which he describes as “committed to the notion that artists can engage the public in [the issue of climate change].”
The Cape Farewell project seeks to disseminate current oceanography information to the public through the voices of artists and scientists. By collaborating with the scientific community and inspiring artists to generate climate change-related works, the public will become educated about the direct relationship of ocean currents on global warming. The participants aboard these annual expeditions to Northern regions of the world conduct experiments, create short films, feed live web broadcasts, and write blogs to share their experiences.
There are two kinds of expeditions: an Arts/Science voyage for artists and scientists, and a youth excursion that exposes young people to the ground zero of climate change. During the one to three-week trip, team members are completely exposed to the Northern environment aboard a Noorderlicht cruise ship. Teams experience the icebergs, oceans, and landscapes that climate change will impact.
Since 2003, Cape Farewell has led five expeditions, including two youth voyages. The Art/Science trips have travelled from Tromsø to Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard archipelago, and been locked in ice at Tempelfjorden. In 2007, the Arts/Science expedition faced extreme weather while sailing over 1,800 nautical miles towards the east coast of Greenland. Due to unusual levels of pack ice, the ship travelled south-westerly towards Scoresby Sund—the world’s largest fjord, characterized by a narrow inlet formed from glacial activity. However, increasing levels of ice near Scoresby Sund forced them to sail south to smaller Turner Sund and Knighton fjords. The Noorderlicht then crossed the Denmark straights and arrived in the port of Akureyri, North Iceland.
The first Youth Expedition travelled to the High Arctic in 2007 and was comprised of 12 students from the UK, Germany, and Canada. A second youth excursion was launched in early September 2008 to West Greenland and finished on Baffin Island. It consisted of an international crew of 28 scientists and students, including Luisa L., a Grade 11 student from the University of Toronto Schools. “I think that going to the North was really important because it is impossible to imagine the scale of the landscapes,” Luisa wrote in her Cape Farewell blog. “I’m in [the] geomorphology [group], so we look at the different features of the landscape and probe the soil to take readings of the depth of the permafrost.” Students get the chance to see polar bears, dive into the freezing arctic water, and endure raging storms. “The whole of the Youth Expedition embodies everything Cape Farewell is about. Each participant had to engage with both science and art,” says Suba Subramaniam of Cape Farewell Education. “The art they have been producing has been inspired by the science they learnt.”
The Cape Farewell expeditions have created an immense body of artwork, exhibitions, publications, and educational resources regarding climate change. The project has an art program, which holds international exhibitions, showcasing sculptures, photography, and paintings inspired by the trip. Its major exhibition, The Art of Climate Change, has toured Madrid and Tokyo. “The great thing about Cape Farewell is that it brings together a group of intellectuals working in science and the arts to discuss a common theme,” says Simon Boxall, an oceanography lecturer at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
Crew members on the recent expedition to Disko Bay, Greenland, included Feist, science journalist Quentin Cooper, composer Jonathan Dove as well as comedians, photographers, oceanographers, and poets. The boat voyaged across the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, which is one of Greenland’s largest glaciers. The iceberg is moving faster than ever and losing 20 million tons of ice every day. The crew worked with the British Geological Survey to investigate below the seabed. As the ship sailed west towards Canada, oceanographers measured an ocean tract across the Labrador Current.
The students and artists that have journeyed with Cape Farewell have already made a considerable cultural impact. Each of them has the potential to communicate, educate, and inspire broader audiences and contribute to the new wave of collaboration between arts and sciences to resolve climate change.
