Join our Arts and Climate Gathering
What is the power of storytelling in the climate crisis?
Friday 25 April
2 - 4.30pm
@sohoplace, London
tickets are FREE (limited capacity)
Have you seen Kyoto and are now feeling excited about the arts’ role amidst the climate crisis? Are you an artist, producer, policymaker, activist, scientist or journalist looking to engage in discussion and make connections for future collaborations, and ultimately enable your work to empower the public?
Join Good Chance, the RSC, Rachel Styne and Jessica Foung, the co-producers of the ★★★★★ sell-out hit Kyoto, for this Arts & Climate Gathering, which will bring together people from across the arts and climate spheres, to foster lasting cross-sector connections and inspiring debate around the question, “What is the power of storytelling in the climate crisis?”
The event will feature provocations from key players offering varied perspectives from across these spheres, which will be interspersed with facilitated group discussion and networking opportunities. The full speaker line up is:
Suzanne Dhailwal (artist, writer and cultural strategist who has led campaigns and artistic interventions to challenge fossil fuel investments in the Arctic and Nigeria),
Holly Race Roughan (Artistic Director of Headlong theatre, leading their Green Justice work including their touring experiments like Katie Mitchell’s A Play for the Living In the Time of Extinction),
Indré Rockefeller (climate communicator working with Project Drawdown and founder of The Circularity Project, championing circular design in fashion),
Nicky Hawkins (communications consultant working with Heard on public campaigns to shift the public perception on climate issues),
Zoë Svendsen (theatre director, dramaturg and currently developing the eco-creative practice of ‘climate dramaturgy’),
and Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (Co-Artistic Directors of Good Chance and the Co-Writers of Kyoto).
The event will be moderated by Ankur Bahl (actor, writer and cultural strategist).
Photo by Nicola Young for RSC
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Suzanne Dhaliwal, Speaker
Suzanne Dhaliwal is an artist, writer, and cultural strategist whose work bridges art, ecology, and climate justice discourse. With a background in climate justice and philosophy, Suzanne brings a critical, reflective lens to environmental narratives, using art to challenge dominant paradigms and inspire new cultural responses to ecological crises. Through exhibitions, publications, and public engagement, that explore climate justice through themes such as of biophilia, Suzanne is shaping contemporary discourse on art, environment, and cultural transformation. www.suzannedhaliwal.org/about
Holly Race Roughan, Speaker
Holly Race Roughan, Artistic Director of Headlong and board member of theatre-in-prisons charity Kestrel, has directed works including The New Real (RSC), Metamorphoses (Shakespeare’s Globe), Prurience (Southbank Centre, Guggenheim NY), and Eye of a Needle (Southwark Playhouse). For Headlong: The House Party (Chichester Festival Theatre & UK Tour), A View from the Bridge (Bolton Octagon & UK Tour), Henry V (Shakespeare’s Globe & UK Tour), Corrina Corrina (Liverpool Everyman), Hedda Tesman (Chichester Festival Theatre), People, Places & Things (UK Tour), and Unprecedented (BBC). This Autumn she directs Ralph Fiennes in Small Hotel at Theatre Royal Bath.
Indré Rockefeller, Speaker
Indré Rockefeller is a climate communicator, entrepreneur, and Founder of The Circularity Project, a nonprofit dedicated to championing circular design in fashion with the goal of sparking creative approaches to reducing the industry's environmental footprint. Indré began her fashion career at Vogue and held senior executive positions at e-tailer Moda Operandi and Spanish luxury fashion brand, Delpozo. Indré is a Co-Founder of Paravel, where she oversaw the award-winning sustainable design. Indré graduated from Columbia University’s Climate School, where she earned her Masters degree and launched an educational series on climate change that has amassed over 7 million views. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University.
Nicky Hawkins, Speaker
Nicky Hawkins is a consultant specialising in public perceptions and communications including with campaign communications specialists Heard. She conducts and draws on research into public attitudes, and how they’re shaped. She collaborates widely with experts, broadcasters and storytellers to make sure climate communication has the intended impact. Before working as a freelance consultant she led the work of the FrameWorks Institute in the UK. Prior to that she ran communications teams for a range of NGOs.
Zoë Svendsen, Speaker
Zoë Svendsen (zoë/her) is a UK-based theatre director/dramaturg. Zoë creates participatory performances/installations exploring ecological crisis and capitalism, including: Ness (HighTide/Metal Culture); Wild Dress (Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking), Re-Edocate Me! (Berlin), Love Letters to a Liveable Future (Cambridge Junction) Factory of the Future (Oslo Architecture Triennale); WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican), World Factory,(Young Vic/UK tour). As dramaturg Zoë has reimagined Shakespeare for the contemporary stage with The Globe, the National Theatre, the Young Vic & the RSC, also working with composer and sarod player Soumik Datta to create hybrid concert/theatre performances Mone Rekho and Borderlands (Purcell Rooms/Kings Place/international tour). Author of Bloomsbury’s Theatre & Dramaturgy; lectures on Dramaturgy at the University of Cambridge; Associate Artist with Cambridge Junction & HighTide (and previously Donmar Warehouse) with whom Zoë has been developing the eco-creative practice of ‘climate dramaturgy’, including curating the National Theatre’s 2023 conference for theatre directors, ‘Making Theatre in a Time of Climate Crisis’.
Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Speakers
Joe Murphy grew up in Leeds and Joe Robertson grew up in Hull. In 2015, they established Good Chance in the ‘Jungle’ refugee and migrant camp in Calais, a space of expression where theatre, art, dance and music could be made. They lived there for seven months until the eviction of the southern half of the camp. Their first full-length award-winning play, The Jungle, based on their experience in Calais, opened at the Young Vic in 2017, before transferring to the West End (2018), New York (2019/2023), San Francisco (2019) and Washington DC (2023). In 2021, Good Chance co-created The Walk, an 8,000km moving festival of welcome from Syria to Manchester with Little Amal, a three-metre tall puppet based on a character from The Jungle.
Their most recent play Kyoto, the gripping political thriller set around the historic 1997 COP3 climate summit, premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2024 as a Good Chance, Royal Shakespeare Company, Rachel Styne and Jess Foung co-production, and has since transferred to @sohoplace on London’s West End to rave reviews and two Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Play.
Ankur Bahl, Moderator
Ankur is an actor, writer and culture-sector changemaker.
Ankur's theatre career has spanned performances with DV8, National Theatre, Rifco Arts, RSC, Shakespeare’s Globe, Tara Arts, and Wise Children. His film and TV credits include productions for Apple TV, Disney+, HBO, and Sky. Ankur is also the Associate Director and Writer at VOXED.
Additionally, Ankur advises culture sector clients through Studio Reith and Bloomberg Philanthropies' Digital Accelerator Programme. Previously, Ankur was the Director of Digital Stage & Studio at Sadler’s Wells, and was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.
A graduate of NYU, London Contemporary Dance School, SOAS and Northwestern University, Ankur was also a Fulbright and Marshall Scholar. He proudly serves on the Board of Trustees of Paines Plough and co-hosted the podcast Arts Work.
Photo by Phil Sharp
