Solarpunk: Better than a new utopia?

 

Timo Peach shares a special episode of his playful research cast that may be unlocking a subject the whole creative curriculum has been working towards.

 

A music artist may be supposed to make music but sometimes a side track can reshape a whole output. When Momo:tempo’s project The Shape of Things To Hum began to take its own shape it lead to a spot of light human planet exploration by Timo Peach that became the foundation for a new personal worldview. And now, after 30 episodes, Unsee The Future is back with an introduction to an idea the whole series may have been waiting for.

“I’ve been sitting on the subject of Solarpunk for two years,” he says. “I wanted to get it right. I could sense it was an idea that my instincts had been leading me to this whole time without realising, and I wanted to feel ready to put it out there officially and go on the subsequent journey.

“Then, this spring, I just suddenly felt to get it finished and released. Not sure why. But it opens the way for me to go meet a lot of solarpunk creatives and begin spreading the word.”

 

 

Listen to or read the brand new episode of Unsee The Future EP31: Solarpunk >

 

A viable alternative vision of tomorrow?

So what is Solarpunk? Or a solarpunk? As Timo found, it’s an evocative word that comparatively few people have heard of, which surprised him. But it represents a different way of imagining the global future.

“The name seems to have the same effect on most people as it did me – just a wow, I immediately sort of get it. But… tell me more” he says. “It’s an idea that has grown into a naturally decentralised creative movement. Expressed in fiction, concept art, music, architecture – lots of articulations around the world, but all based on the positive instinct to reconfigure tech we already have today with a rebalanced view of the natural world and its systems. “The political wing of permaculture” as early steward of the scene Jay Springett said to me.”

Following in the wake of popular cosplay and fiction style steampunk, which precipitated a lot of other _punks, Solarpunk is the only one to represent a political intention. As EP31 of Unsee explains.

“I quoted a few people in the episode I am now just beginning to speak to,” says Mr Peach. “Jay Springett is a founder of solarpunks.net and a fascinating bloke, as I found out after chatting with him after he’d already listened to the Unsee episode. He’s so quoteable! I’d urge anyone to explore his output – his founding talk on the subject is a must read immediately after you”ve introduced yourself to Solarpunk via my episode!”

Solarpunk fuses many aspects of sustainable technology and thinking with a fundamental-seeming need for new narratives for the future. And this is a conclusion Unsee The Future lead its writer to believe also.

“My whole practical mission now is to help people think like an artist and change the world,” Timo explains, “and this came out of my research with the podcast, beginning with trying to make sense of a frame work for problem solving like the Global Goals. What’s driving our global bad habits is an arcane economic story – a way of seeing the world with values attached that aren’t serving us healthily at all. But a story that itself has eroded collective belief in any other way of seeing things.

“Solarpunk may be the first realistic alternative to the inevitable seeming destructive human futures. And better than a new utopia because it’s not about trying to get people to conform and fall in – almost the opposite.”

It’s an idea so inspiring the bloke from Momo he is planning a new Unsee The Future interview series: UTF: Hopey-Chatty Bits.

“I’ve been sitting on that for a while too,” he says sheepishly, “but at the start of the summer I’m going to begin a regular show meeting solarpunk artists and other thinkers using art practices and solarpunk narratives to demonstrate new stories of us. And I just know their testimonies will help inspire the more hopeful human tomorrow.”

 

Read an introduction to the Solarpunk episode over on Momo’s social impact storytelling site Momo:zo >

The Global Goals Music Roadshow

Music artist and voice of Unsee The Future Timo Peach co-hosts “the people’s show for changing the world” with fellow music artist AY Young, US Young Leader to the UN and creator of the remarkable Battery Tour.

 

How you do become a changemaker? Isn’t it a role for motivated superstar activists? It’s the question driving the new weekly online show from writer, performer, producer and environmental champion AY Young, and which tempted in the bloke from Momo to help. The Global Goals Music Roadshow meets ordinary people finding their voices about the human future, sharing their stories of projects and initiatives well under way or of their questions for how to even begin – in a lively format that reflects two natural entertainers that have clearly found each other.

“I was introduced to AY by a mutual friend, who herself kind of found me, through my consultancy work with Momo:zo” says Mr Peach himself. “Eller Everett of digital social impact team Both Of Us is such a knowledgable enthusiast for planet and permaculture and she simply said to me: “I only know of one other person who talks like you do about music and environment – I will introduce you.

“That was fateful” he adds soberly.

 

 

With four and a half thousand miles and twenty years between them, to say nothing of core music styles, the two artists found a kindred approach to both planet and performing.

“AY is a natural music maker. Rather like me, he can just make music all life long and inhabit it. He’s also creatively broad in it, with a beautiful versatile voice and ear” Momo enthuses. “But really, he’s an entertainer – I feel like we can trust each other on stage and take cues. And we’ve only met through screens.

“He wants to make the GG Show Saturday Night Live: The Environmental Musical. How the hell could I not be all in?”

“He’s also simply bringing star quality with authenticity about his mission. This combination is, I suspect, rare in both showbiz and music, and it infects everyone he meets, including me. He’s brilliant with people.”

 

Outlets for change.

That mission is one that Timo is happy to get behind. To help ordinary people plug their passions into changemaking, right where they are – and help viewers get energised about the possibilities of global transformation. Just when we so rapidly need it.

As guests share how they are becoming outlets for change, including some remarkable classrooms with AY’s Outlet Teachers, we also learn about AY’s upcoming sustainability projects following his impressive and singular Battery Tour, demonstrating how to run music shows on 100% solar and battery power.

“Yeah, he toured hundreds of shows, all over the US and some other nations, powered by solar and battery tech, and helped to raise money to leave some of that tech in less advantaged communities. It brought him to the attention of the UN and now he is the only Young Leader from the US representing the organisation” Timo explains.

The show refers to the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda and the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (17 SDGs) as a framework for supporting changemakers’ thinking in lots of different sectors, and as such covers a world of interconnected issues.

“Yes,” Timo concludes, “we explore lots of different topics to connect with in this planetary time of crisis, to help you feel like you can take part in building a better future no matter what things may look like on usual channels. Being around AY and just getting stuck in to developing this format, learning out loud together, has helped this hypocritical old utopian hitch up his socks more regularly. And being invited into all the development he’s done of this project, hearing the moving stories from people’s different experiences every week… it’s changed the way I think about my own work and approach.

“Plus, the between the two of us, the show is gently nuts” he adds flatly.

 

Every Thursday 13:00CET / 19:00BST
on AYYOUNG.COM supporting the Battery Tour

AY is developing his Global Goals album, 17, with the help of some big name artists and grassroots changemakers alike – 17 songs to represent 17 goals to give ordinary all of us voice about the shape of the human planet future.

“Support the tour, do one thing. Together, WE are the battery powering change.”

The Global Goals Music Roadshow is the beginnings of a media platform for sharing stories of people and organisations all trying out initiatives across the spectrum of the SDGs challenges, and it promotes the Battery Tour project AY and the team are developing. This includes:

1. ALBUM: collaborating with the biggest artists in the world to do a 17 song album. 1 song for each Sustainable Development Goal. Produced sustainably and powered by renewable energy.

2. TOUR: 17 dates around the USA in 2022 all powered 100% by renewable energy.

3. WORKSHOP & INDUSTRY GUIDEBOOK WITH THE UNITED NATIONS: Hosting a virtual workshop that will result in a guidebook that provides a roadmap for the entertainment industry on how to tour and record an album sustainably as well as to encourage an uptick in artists using their platform for good and instill in them the willingness to act and engage more frequently on social causes.

Become an outlet for change and follow #BatteryTour on Twitter, Insta, and Facebook >

 

 

 

Why science is a bit like art: An Unsee The Future Science Caketalk

Momo brings a special presentation to the online science festival on Sunday October 04 2020, comparing two human disciplines that are in the business of changing worlds.

 

The bloke from Momo:tempo, Timo Peach, is a music maker and creative with a big interest in how the human planet fits together – and how fellow artists are also trying to make sense of it. But in his edited lecture for Science Cake, he explores three hypotheses aligning the experience of exploring the world through art with that of science. Around introductions to his own reasoning, developed through his research cast Unsee The Future,  he tests his thinking by talking to two people along the way with some insights into those experiences.

Denise Poote is an artist and lecturer who’s work instinctively looks for movement, exploring spaces as “traces of activity”. Across marks, sculpture, digital and performance,  her developmental process follows a strong sense of data and evidence gathering to express something dynamic with contraints. Interrogating parameters and describing her pieces more like “outputs as snapshots of ongoing process” she says the frameworks of analysis her work creates can only ever be temporary against the “fluid practiced space of shared experience.”

Brian Kraemer-Banks is a science educator, creative and activist and Pearson’s FE Lecturer of the year 2019. Teaching biology and anthropology across 25 years, his innovation and passion in the classroom have always been based he says on one clear aim: “To unleash a love of learning in every learner so they will go forward into the world and be successful, fulfilled, and considerate members of society.” And he says he has learned: “Science and the humanities are not different disciplines – all knowledge is about searching for understanding of life’s mysteries before the clock runs out.”

“It’s a fun format, to make a little online lecture show, and I’ve drawn much comfort from the sense of progress and practical problem solving that science represents since childhood,” says Timo. “It’s linked tightly to my love of science fiction, of course. But if art thinking has become central to my view of how to transform a world in crisis, how does it compare with science thinking, which practically built the modern world? Are they in fact very similar disciplines in some practical ways, and both all the healthier and richer for being mixed?”

WATCH THE COMPLETE SCIENCE CAKETALK HERE:

A DIT TO BLUEDOT

Founder Lee Rawlings wanted Science Cake to be a way to cope with missing another festival he and Momo and a host of creative friends have fallen in love with, Bluedot Festival.

“It’s just so beautiful” he says, “that natural mixture of music, art and science lectures! We miss it terribly as a gang, so I thought I’d create a way to celebrate and explore a similar principle online. And I’m wowed at the mix of people who’ve said yes to me just asking them to join in.”

Covering a creative mix of space weather, marine ecology, model making and music, Science Cake 2020 also includes a special retrospective of a particular film project Momo contributed to.

“Andy Robinson’s Seasons Of War is an absolutely beautiful scifi short and some years on he and I were interviewed by creative director Simon Brett about the process of making it. A real creative treat to learn how to do something so good on a budget of pistachio shells” says Mr Peach.

 

 

Unsee The Future: Why science is a bit like art is streaming at 19:00 Sunday October 04.

Seasons of war: making a successful Doctor Who short film is streaming at 14:00 Sunday October 04.

 

Programme for Sunday’s Science Cake from – 11.30pm

Coming soon a day of talks, chat, fun and science. Online on the Science Cake Facebook page
On the hour every hour experience something slightly different. Just like the many layers of a very tasty cake. A science Cake.
11.30 We go live – Lee says hello!
12 Noon – Stuart Maudling (Marine Biologist) – Trash talk and turtles
1pm – Brian Banks (Award winning Teacher) – Some handprints to discarded gloves – How a smart ass ape has bitten off more than he can chew!
2pm – Seasons of War panel – Making a successful Doctor Who short film
3pm – Siddhant Deshmukh and Ayesha Tandon(Met)- Space weather
4pm – Making a Warrior as easy as ABC – Cosplaydocucomedyinterview With Martin De Denning
5pm – Space Exe – Model rockets and XRTC radio telescope
6pm – Music Hour from Finn Talisker and others
7pm -Timo of Momo:tempo – Unsee the Future: Why science is a bit like art.
8pm – Lee Rawlings an Trevor Bruce/ Videogames we loved to play -interactive
9pm – Dartmoor Skies – Live Mars hunt
10pm DJ Simon Brett – Music mix (link)
11pm Jez Winship from the Lost Chord – Science Cake Neutrino Batter Mix

Talking Distance, for Arts By The Sea Festival

Momo is commissioned by the Bournemouth Christchurch & Poole creative event to help celebrate its tenth year – by meeting eight creatives from the local scene, each sharing a walk of art with the Southbourne music maker. Safely, of course.

 

Covid 19 may have changed everything, but for many performing creatives and indie artists it has been devastating. If art can be a place of refuge or defiance, processing or simply play, how might ordinary creatives make sense of this chapter of crisis? It’s a question at the heart of Arts By The Sea’s new podcast series with Timo Peach, Talking Distance.

As the bloke from Momo:tempo, a music maker and creative himself and voice of the futursim research cast Unsee The Future, Timo is interested in art’s place in ordinary life and how it helps us shape the world around us. So he jumped at the chance to spend some personal time with people from across the creative sector to hear something of their experiences dealing with crisis, work and inspiration.

“Getting outside has been one of the lifelines of lockdown,” he says, “and everyone in this part of the world knows it is a privilege point. Art too is often a lifeline, so I was keen to hear different experiences of artists hustling for health and wellbeing as much as rent right now.”

 

The podcast takes presenter and listener on a forty minute “walk of art”, exploring somewhere locally that’s been significant to each Talking Distance guest on their creative journeys – the theme of this year’s festival.

“It’s been a just lovely experience” says Mr Peach.”Our guests are ordinary people dealing with an enormously weird period in history, like anyone. But their art has given them different ways of dealing with and testifying to the difficulties – and we all managed to find fun together amid the fears.”

DISCOVER ALL THE TALKING DISTANCE EPISODES TO DATE RIGHT HERE, AT ARTSBYTHESEA.CO.UK >

 

BRANDING A RAMBLING CHAT

After he’d had the invitation to jump into the project from Andrea Francis, festival director of Arts By The Sea, Momo had to devise a whole format for this listen, which was right up Timo’s street, of course.

“I am contracturally obliged to point out wherever I go that the lovely first lady of Momo actually came up with the name,” he says. “I may bite my knuckle at not having thought of it, but she pulled a blinder there, we all love it. And I got to play about with visual and sonic branding to bring it alive.”

This included a slightly odd musical identity.

“Y’know, I just decided not to question it as it came out of me,” he says, “I wanted something playful and eclectic and it turned out sort of wonky Art Of Noise. It’s not like Timey Blimey, the signiature tune to Unsee The Future, which I took enormous delight in turning into a live piece for the band, but it’s sort of joyfully distinctive. And I’ve still woken up with it as my morning earworm a few times.”

“I couldn’t be hoping more that we find a way to do many more of these episodes,” Timo concludes. “Art helps people move between deep and silly easily in conversation, everyone has been so positive but open to share. And there are just so many figures I can think of and so many I want to meet making real creative sense of life in this part of the world.”

  

Talking Distance will be sharing a new episode every morning of festival week from Monday September 28 2020.

 

 

Back around the city

For the Great Get Together in June, in partnership with the Jo Cox foundation, Momo was commissioned to return to a favourite score celebrating everything we’ve been missing about events and community – Steve Hollingshead’s photography expo Around The City In 80 Festivals. And it felt like some pandemic relief.

 

This summer, Momo:tempo’s composer and creative protagonist Timo Peach was invited to revisit his music written for a unique flow of very human images of London’s outdoor event life. A poigniant piece of work, two months into the UK’s Covid19 lockdown. A project originally commissioned  by Picture: Potters Fields, an outdoor arts event commissioned by the Mayor’s Office as part of the Cultural Olympiad in London, complimenting screenings of action from the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2012, in Potters Field Park by Tower Bridge – Around The City In 80 Festivals.

Revised and substantially updated for The Great Get Together 2020, it presents a year in the life of a city committed to human cultural complexity, as seen through the lens of photographer Steve Hollingshead. And the effect is heartwarming, amusing and charming.

As Steve says on behalf of all the partners bringing back the work: “It’s a reminder of just how important communities – in all their variety – are to a nation’s wellbeing. And how extraordinary a city London is.”

 

Mr Peach agrees, and says he felt it was a piece of work arriving at just the right time.

“From that weird bubble of love in the summer of 2012, in the summer of 2020 these images are a beautiful reminder of how people can be when they get together. Ridiculous and wonderful. It’s a tonic for the heart in the more soberly weird times we’re in at the moment.”

It’s a piece that gave rise to one of Momo’s favourite pieces of music, an edit of the whole original score and an “accidental Christmas tune” as Mr Peach puts it, 80 Bells.

“Quirky and homemade as it is, it’s still a contender for Play At My Funeral,” he says, “and this new score is a sort of 45 minute mix of it across a few movements. You could put it on as a playful ambience at home any time of day, to top up your happy.”

 

 

 

Part of Hollingshead’s new London In Common project, the latest evolution of his years of work walking the UK capital’s streets and open spaces capturing daftness and beauty and community, the point he says is the ways in which London’s calendar reflects natural cultural mixes, not cardboard cut-out diversity.

“The point isn’t really “global” events, or single-issue specialist gatherings – it’s the bloke who happens to be Hindu and taking part in the Sumo Run or the Naked Bike Ride or whatever – all those natural moments of collision that we all are, they are the points of interest to me. And London just is that.”

Tackling such a broad canvas of culture was always going to be a tricky ask for a composer, of course.

“It was a joy to revisit the playful score for this, about a city bursting the Venn diagrams of us lot. A testimony to how celebrations help to make place. But how to do the sort of travel show job of placing the audience with some obvious musical references and where to juxtapose with deliberately different? It’s not easy to get respectfully and effectively right. Especially on a project studio budget. But I’m not sure it’s the point at all.

“I’ve always wanted to bring together an 80-piece festival orchestra of cazoos, sitars, penny whistles, violins, taiko drummers and the whole darned lot live. Here, I had to be a bit honestly cartoon about the sound, partly because that’s Momo’s sound but also because it’s most crucially the spirit of the expo. It’s joyous and unpretentious and accidental seeming and home made and friendly. With just a hint of something modernist and city about the middle movement. And all an honour to be part of, despite being unable to do this justice. I’m joining in with the play. And the sort of quirky triumph of it all.”

 

 

Finally, Momo says: “I’d suggest you give yourself a full screen, headphones and a celebratory glass of something and remind yourself of life beyond the current party we’re all stuck in. That humans are a lot more interesting than just scared and rude.”

 

Enjoy Around The City In 80 Festivals 2020 right here:

 

Connect with Steve Hollingshead at 1001 Days in London on Twitter >

And at: hollingshead.london >

 

Momo meets Steve Hollingshead at the launch party of previous expo, 1001 Days in London, and suggests cities can bring down walls and dispell zombies: