Artists take last stand in the Climate Battle in Clack Creek
PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2020
Resent: January 29, 2020
A theatre director, a sculptor, a graphic artist and an event planner joined forces this summer to turn a threatened forest into a classroom to teach integrated art/nature curriculum to adults and kids. Now, with logging trucks ready to arrive this week, they are putting their artistic twist on old-school protest to save Clack Creek Forest.
“If you are active on climate then you love something, a place you hike, the ocean, the wildlife, your children. It’s a movement of love. Those old tropes of protest: yelling and chanting, that doesn’t speak to us. We have a different way in as artists.” said Kendra Fanconi, Artistic Director of The Only Animal, a theatre company that creates work for a solutionary impact on the climate emergency.
The Only Animal created 1000 Pop-Up Hearts, a kind of analog emoji art action for the October rally in Vancouver where a dozen Canadian kids launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government demanding that they align their policy with the science and protect their future.
“Originally the David Suzuki Foundation came to us and asked that we do something to support those kids, who were nervous about facing the big crowds of 10,000. By giving the crowd a way to raise their hearts when they heard something they loved, we were able to show that support, but also, importantly to focus the event and the speakers around positive action.”
Fanconi’s ‘Pop-Up Hearts’ were inspired by her friends in her town of the Sunshine Coast and the Forest of 1000 Hearts, Clack Creek Forest. Also in October, local forest watch group, Elphinstone Logging Focus, created a community art piece where locals attached more than 1000 felt hearts to the trees of Clack Creek Forest.
The forest is adjacent to both the 2nd and 3rd small ‘islands’ that are protected as Mt Elphinstone Provincial Park. As graphic artist, Kevin Broome put it, “Cutting Clack Creek Forest removes the wildlife corridor between the parts of the park and destroys the ecosystem of the rare, low-elevation coastal rainforest creating ‘islands of extinction’. And it is being done to make plywood. It’s madness.”
“The forest is the heart of our community” says sculptor, Robert Studer, “Clack Creek Forest is nearly the size of Stanley Park but located in our community on the Sunshine Coast. Imagine that many trees being clear cut in your community.” No local contractors bid on the cutblock. There was a single bid, by Black Mount Logging of Squamish, who is currently positioned to start logging when a court injunction is granted on Tuesday.
Broome, Studer and Fanconi, joined by event management CEO Sarah Lowis, have created other heartful gatherings in support of Clack Creek. On Friday they rallied a crowd of 200 who were cast as the key species of Clack Creek Forest, everything from the Flying Squirrel, to the Cauliflower Mushroom, to the Roosevelt Elk. Fanconi says, “It started out like any casting I do as a director. Finding the right person for each part. I remember asking the local blacksmith if he wanted to be the Cutthroat Trout or the Vagrant Shrew. When he chose the humble shrew, I understood how much we could enjoy this act of standing up for another. It just snowballed from there.” They created new Pop-Up Hearts for the event. “There is something beautiful in a 250-pound man holding up a heart that says, ‘I stand with the Vagrant Shrew’ in and among a throng of others each in solidarity with frogs, and moss, and birds, and voles. These are hearts in action, and that is our movement, a call for our times.”
“In this time of climate change, the culture of consumerism is no longer viable. We must create a culture of stewardship. That requires us to have a heart. We believe that the NDP is a party with a heart, and are asking its ministers, Doug Donaldson and George Heyman to act in alignment with the science, for carbon sequestering, for ecosystem protection, to stand up and right this misdirected action, and stand with Clack Creek.”
The group is supersizing the hearts for events planned this week. As Lowis puts it, “If the NDP really wants to be seen as a heartless bunch, to grind up this forest for plywood, we will give them the visuals that tell that story of heartlessness and we will tell the world. But that’s not the outcome we desire. We want a peaceful resolution and an intact ecosystem, an expansion of our park, and the trees in Clack Creek Forest left standing.”
For our community. For the climate. For the Vagrant Shrew….
The Clack Creek Forest is situated on unceded shishalh First Nation lands and is currently planned as a BC Timber Sales Cutblock A93884.
Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) lost the Judicial Review in July 2019 challenging how the Blk A93884 would destroy an at-risk forest ecosystem (and many other values) and yesterday (January 28, 2020) lost an effort to quash the Injunction. Logging is expected to be slated to begin today or tomorrow.
For further information contact:
Kendra Fanconi
kendra@theonlyanimal.com
604.803.0101
Sarah Lowis
sarah@seatoskymeetings.com
604.671.2400
Living Forest Institute
Heart Gathering, January 24, 2020 photographs
Media stories
Elphinstone Logging Focus
The Only Animal