Happy New Year!
As we step into the second week of a brand new year, we want to extend a warm and heartfelt welcome to our URGE community. We hope that you’ve had a restful break and a smooth transition into 2025.
To warm up for the year ahead, we share some dates of exhibitions and events along with some good podcasts and talks to inspire us.
SOIL: The World at Our Feet, opens on 23 January 2025 in the Embankment Galleries at Somerset House.
SOIL is co-curated by The Land Gardeners, Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy; curator and writer May Rosenthal Sloan and Claire Catterall, Senior Curator at Somerset House.
Inviting the audience to think about soil as much more than just dirt, this exhibition seeks to unlock the secrets of soil, emphasising how it is the priceless foundation of all life on Earth, and celebrating the everyday encounters that most of us don’t typically realise come from the soil.
Bringing together thinkers, filmmakers, global and local artists, scientists and activists, SOIL is presented across three main sections: Life Below Ground, Life Above Ground and Hope. Topics around climate change, waste, land, justice, coupled with beauty and wonder, are all woven into the presented works and installations.
We will be sharing more in our next newsletter about this groundbreaking exhibition, meanwhile to book your tickets see (here).
Join Architects Declare later this month for the next stage in their innovative and popular Regenerative Design Primer.
Back in April 2024 they released the initial version of the Regenerative Design Primer to support AD signatories and others with the transition from 'sustainable' to truly 'regenerative' design for the built environment - including those submitting entries for their inaugural Regenerative Architecture Index with Architecture Today.
In their words: 'It's been a work in progress' as they have brought in experts from other organisations and disciplines to help shape it. Now you can be part of this evolution by joining them on Tuesday, January 21st for their interactive workshop to help create the next iteration of the essential UK Architects Declare resource, (here).
The CAN Bill is back in Parliament this month, and its time to act... the Zero Hour campaign needs your help!
Zero Hour is the campaign for the Climate and Nature Bill - formerly the CE Bill and the CEE Bill – a plan for a new UK law that addresses the full extent of the climate and nature crisis in line with the most up-to-date science. The Bill is the only proposed legislation before the UK Parliament that ensures a comprehensive and joined-up approach to the emergency.
The Climate and Nature Bill’s pivotal second reading in the House of Commons is on the 24th January, when MPs will have an opportunity to do the right thing and vote for the CAN Bill and progress it on its journey into law. Zero Hour have created a webpage that allows you to thank your MP for pledging to stand and be counted at this major milestone for their campaign, (if they’re one of the 108 who have already confirmed they will attend this critical vote) or you can write to your MP if they are not yet registered ...read more (here).
Listen to the latest Design Emergency podcast, by design curator Paola Antonelli and design critic Alice Rawsthorn: Design and Human Rights
how can design help to defend and strengthen our human rights? And the rights of other species with whom we share our planet? At a time when rights and freedoms are under threat all over the world, Design Emergency’s cofounders, Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn, are marking Human Rights Day 2024 with a special episode on practical ways in which design is helping to protect our rights in exceptionally vulnerable places. (here)
You can also follow Alice Rawsthorn on Instagram this week, as she continues to candidly explore key developments in design in 2025. (here)
D! Talks is a series where Design Declares speak to UK based designers who are declaring an emergency to take action on the climate and ecological crisis.
They are seeking designers to talk to them about their practices, the challenges they face and how being a part of the D! Community helps them achieve their goals.
They are open to designers who are just starting out on their journey as well as designers who are experts in their field.
Sign up here to be featured on Design Declares and share your sustainability journey with their community!
You can watch their first interviews with Tony Elkington and Jo Barnard of Morrama, (here).
And finally, The Last Ice Age a film from Emergence Magazine’s Shifting Landscapes Film Series Directed by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee.
As storyteller Andri Snær Magnason puts it, 'climate change is like a black hole: so big it’s larger than language. We understand it not by looking straight at its center, but by looking at its edges.'
On a journey retracing his grandparents’ annual spring pilgrimage to Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier, Andri searches for the stories that lie at the edges of our climate crisis in both scientific data and his family’s memories. Witnessing the inevitable decline of Europe’s largest ice cap with his son Hlynur, Andri pulls on the ties of love that connect past and future generations to grasp what the immense changes he has seen in just one lifetime will mean for the future of the planet. For the full film series see here.