My response to Culture Declares Emergency’s call to write #LetterstoPower. Everyone is invited to write, share and perform letters to powerful people about the Earth crisis

#LettersToTheEarth #CultureDeclaresEmergency

Dear Boris Johnson, Rt Hon George Eustice and Lord Callanan,

I’m an artist and educator.  I work extremely hard and believe passionately in art and environment, although my net earnings are below the threshold to be eligible for a Self-Employment Grant during the Covid crisis. I have a son, now 21.  You will also have beloved beings in your life for whom you wish the best. 

Brought up in Kenya in the 60’s, I’ve witnessed the dramatic decline in coral reefs on the coast. Tarred clumps of seaweed on beaches, beautiful shells, and magnificent brightly coloured corals are now replaced by tar clumps and the odd manky shell.  The corals are now mostly bleached and dead.   We have degraded our environments, habitats and ecosystems.

We have hunted and slaughtered animals greedily and wastefully, mis-managed land, conquered and built thoughtlessly, violated our oceans and continue to fill up our landfills in gargantuan proportions.  Greedy man needs to stop!

A few years ago, I returned to University to do my MFA.  It was a precious 2 years of hard work and discovery.  I read Planet of Slums by Mike Davis, which reveals horrific realities of our rapidly growing worldwide rich/poor divide.  I was also influenced by a film Our Daily Bread by Nicolaus Gerhalter, concerning factory farming, A Plastic Ocean, which reveals hard-hitting facts: micro plastic is in every single organism in our seas, 80% of plastic from landfills leaks into the ocean and images of albatross chicks dying from bloated stomachs filled with plastic in Midway, near the Pacific gyre.  This was the start of my artivism.

Since then, we’ve experienced traumatic wildfires killing huge populations of wildlife in the Amazon, Australia and now California.  The covid epidemic was caused by disgusting malpractices in wildlife wet markets.  Discarded PPE masks and gloves are now piling up on our beaches. These ongoing events deeply disturb me.  Don’t they disturb you?  I make art related to these pressing issues: human exploitation of nature (of which we are a part) and over-consumption.  Glut, made of reclaimed and discarded materials speaks of loss, death, violence, waste but also vulnerability and renewal.  There is always hope.     

You have the power to effect huge changes in our relationship with nature and ourselves, for the good of all.  ‘All’ meaning from micro to macro.  All includes the tiny diatoms that give us over 30% or our oxygen, now endangered.  All includes our plants, bees, badgers, pigs, pangolins, rhinos, elephants, whales… and humans.  We are all connected.

Please back the Climate & Ecological Emergency bill and place environment at the heart of your policies.

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Campbell