On 25 March 2023, Juliana Capes, a visual artist based in Edinburgh, delivered ‘Talking with the Weather,’ a film workshop at Cove Park for children and young people aged 7 and over. Juliana’s moving image practice is often inspired by the weather and the natural world and asks questions about our relationship with natural phenomena. Over a two hour session, Juliana led the participants in creating short films responding to landscape and weather with emotion, storytelling, colour, word and image.
Using the powerful camera function on the smart phones and tablets that are so readily accessible to us in modern life, Juliana worked with the tech savvy younger generation to encourage them to use the skills they already have and learn new ways of looking at and framing the world around them – adding their own creative voices.
Based around the idea of sitting still and watching the weather, the clouds, or the landscape, the workshop encouraged young people to imagine what the weather would share with us if we asked it questions such as ‘how are you feeling?’ Young people are asked about how they feel about climate change all too often, leading to disconnect and anxiety. In flipping the question and asking them to imagine the emotions of the weather, we approached the issue of climate change from a different creative and playful angle and the conversations about our relationship with the climate can happen anew. The mixed emotions that came out by the end of the workshop gave the chance to acknowledge that it’s OK to feel confused about climate change or not know how to feel and to talk about that.
This workshop was devised and developed by Juliana Capes with support from Cove Park’s Curator of Engagement Emma Henderson and will form part of NAARCA’s pedagogy toolkit that will be published and publicly available from Spring 2024.
Workshop images provided by Emma Henderson and with parental consent.