The Artist Brigade brings arts and artists to the front lines of the climate movement, and our inaugural 100-artist cohort came together for Greenhouse, and other trainings and weekly engagements. Then, they were invited on one of a series of field trips to sites where they could experience the climate in crisis, or climate solutions.

Co-Creating a Culture of Stewardship: Cloth, Plants and Place was the second field trip that the artists from the Artist Brigade could participate in. The artists joined EartHand Gleaners and Indigenous artists-in-residence to weave nettle rope and learn stories from Coast Salish land. These conversation circles weaved together these questions: How do we learn stories of our own history, what were the plants, fibres and textile practices of your own ancestral journey? How do we connect them to where we are standing now? These questions guided the artists to experience a creative journey.

This field trip took place at Trillium Park, in the City of Vancouver and was facilitated by:

• Sharon Kallis, the Founding Executive Director of EartHand Gleaners Society
• Meagan Innes Squamish woman, an educator and a multidisciplinary artist
• CZarina Lobo Natural Dyer, fibre forager and collector, weaver, creates magic in chaos.

After this field trip, the attending artists were invited to dream up projects in their artistic disciplines, and pitch them to us. This work, as with all of the work with the Artist Brigade, was paid. The Only Animal selected Sunkosi Galay-Tamang’s pitch, Remembering Mothertongue, which can be viewed here.