British Council arranges webinar series ‘Everything Change’

The British Council has collaborated with Dhaka Lit Fest to organise a webinar series named 'Everything Change', which will take place from 10 June to 19 June 19. 

The webinar will be produced by Taliesin Arts Centre and Professor Owen Sheers in Creativity from Swansea University, reads a press release.

'Everything Change' is a series of discussions and events that will explore how the roles of creativity, adaptive thinking, and storytelling can play in overcoming the challenges of the climate crisis.

Featuring an international array of contributors from across the arts and creative industries, as well as the sciences, law, business, public policy, activism and education, Everything Change is a forum for generating debate and new ideas, driven by some of the most urgent questions of current times. 

It is one of the projects supported by the British Council's Creative Commissions, which is being developed as part of The Climate Connection – a global programme uniting people worldwide to meet the climate challenge in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.

The programme will begin on Thursday with an opening event with the novelist, poet, inventor and two-time Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood. She will discuss the questions at the heart of Everything Change concerning her work and remarkable career in conversation with Sadaf Saaz, Director of the Dhaka Lit Fest. People can join Margaret as she explores how writers and artists could contribute to a revolution of the communal imagination and how it is vital to discover new forms of storytelling to meet an individual's moment of crisis.

Eight events will follow, the first one taking place online from Friday to Saturday and focusing on seven key areas of change – Money, Food, Water, Energy, Justice, Story, and Change itself. Each of these events will feature a diverse mix of international experts and thought leaders in their fields as well as an artist provocation. Tickets and more information about each event can be found on the Taliesin Arts Centre website; www.taliesinartscentre.co.uk.

Speakers from Bangladesh include internationally acclaimed Dr Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD); Dr Faustina Pereira, Lawyer, Gender and Sustainable Development Specialist, Human Rights Activist, Scholar; Khushi Kabir, Social Activist, Feminist, Environmentalist; Samia Zaman, Media Personality, Journalist; Samiya Selim, Marine Social Scientist, Sustainability Science, Social-ecological Systems Specialist; Shameran Abed, Senior Director, BRAC Bangladesh; and Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Attorney, Environmentalist.

Also part of the programme is the 'Everything Change Writers' Lab', which has been generously supported as one of the British Council's 'Creative Commissions for the Climate'. Produced in partnership with Dhaka Lit Fest and activated by the Everything Change events programme, the lab will provide an engine for six incredible writing talents from Wales and Bangladesh to create new narratives in response to the climate crisis. The writers' commissioned works across poetry, fiction and drama will be showcased at Dhaka Lit Fest in January 2022.

On this occasion, Owen Sheers, Professor, Swansea University, said, "The history of our inaction on climate change is the story of a failure of narrative on the level of a species. We urgently need to recalibrate how we talk about, imagine, and tell stories about our relationships with nature, future generations, and how we live now. I'm incredibly excited by the minds and voices we're bringing together for Everything Change and by how these events might contribute to our imagining and making happen a better, brighter future for all."

Sadaf Saaz, Director, Dhaka Lit Fest, added, "The devastating effects of this impending crisis are already apparent, and nothing short of a paradigm shift in thinking is called for. We are very excited about the rich interdisciplinary nature of the panels, which will explore how we can tackle the enormous challenges ahead. Creative artists and writers will be at the intersection of these conversations, exploring and envisaging alternate ways of how we see the world and our place in it."