Franke spoke out about government censorship in her visual essay/video, "Banned on the Hill"
Franke James, Canadian climate activist and visual artist recently spoke to us about fighting climate change, riling the Canadian government and climbing trees. Her website, www.frankejames.com, contains her creative visual essays on environmental activism.
Thanks for asking me! Delighted to be here today. Well, first off, I'm an artist and storyteller so visual essays are a natural -- and fun way -- to express my ideas.
But getting to your activist point -- art and political activism are the absolute perfect marriage. There's a long history of art being used to help further social causes -- women winning the right to vote, anti-war demonstrations, Earth Day -- I fit right into that groove, which is neat.
It's also fun to realize what sets artists apart from scientists and journalists. We can weave symbols, facts, opinions, thoughts, emotion and color all together to raise awareness and inspire action. Sometimes I think that artists are like ad agencies for the planet.
But the really, really exciting and transformational thing is this...
It's not just that I am creating visual stories for a paper book, or to hang on the walls of a gallery. No, the really powerful tool we have today is that the stories are posted on the web and can be shared with just the click of a button. Zoom!
To give you an example... For my new illustrated quiz "How many climate deniers can you fight off?", we created a map showing who has played it. It's only been up for a few weeks and already it's been taken 3,200 times and spread to every continent (except Antarctica). That is very cool. It's more proof that there are lots of people willing to stand up and fight climate denialism.
In the age of the cell phone, social media and the internet, activist art is a very powerful tool for social change. That's why some governments want to suppress activist art.
I also want to give a hat tip to ForestEthics. You are masters at using words and pictures to inspire change -- your Victoria's Secret campaign stands as one of the best examples of strategic activist communication ever. I've talked with people working in forestry and they tell me that that ForestEthics campaign changed the forest industry for all time. Wow! Great job!
Thanks! Totally changed our life and all for the better. It's fantastic -- and certainly my family and friends view me differently now that they can see the concrete actions I've taken in my lifestyle, and how it's benefited our family.
But there is some dark humor to it. When we decided to sell our car to reduce our carbon emissions, one of my brother-in-laws called us "granola crunching, tree-hugging, whack jobs". He was only partly joking. You have to be prepared to get some negative push-back because by changing your lifestyle you're actually challenging other people to reassess theirs.
This is an important point -- after all these changes, I view myself differently too. We made changes in our lifestyle that initially looked really tough -- but then ended up improving our sense of well-being so much that we'd never go back!
So what have we done? Well, we sold our only car so we get a lot more exercise now. We got rid of our driveway -- and after fighting a bureaucratic City official -- we won the right to build a green driveway, so now we have a front yard full of trees and plants. We also eat differently now: we're weekday vegetarians and we buy organic as much as possible. But getting greener is a process—it didn’t happen for us overnight.
Initially, I was shocked to hear that the Canadian Government was interfering behind-the-scenes and warning people not to show my art because it was "against government policy". It's a bully-tactic that is so outrageous that it belongs in a George Orwell book (and will be in my new book!).
So what did I do to handle the blacklisting? When you're hit with something like this you need to step back and strategize how to defend yourself. Some of what I did may be helpful to other activists...