Created by Alexander, Cormac, Esmé, Ieuan, Lewis and Sebastian
with
Nicholas Barton-Wines (Director/Facilitator)
Patricia Panther (Sound Designer/Facilitator)
Sofia Nakou (Assistant Director/Facilitator)
for Scottish Youth Theatre and Borders Youth Theatre
Supported by British Council

Listen to the project here.
Experience the recording in the interactive exhibition at Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Art

We Know We Don’t Know – a collaboration between Borders Youth Theatre and Scottish Youth Theatre – is the result of creative exploration around climate change in the Scottish Borders, analysing power, privilege, complacency and community.

The umbrella project, Phone Call to the World is one of 17 global projects commissioned by the British Council that explores climate change and environmental crises through art, science and digital technology. Groups of young people from three continents are engaging with climate change issues that impact them at a local level, coming together  to consider the wider global climate challenge. Using the simple holding framework of Phone Call to the World , young people from Scotland, South Africa, Palestine,  England  and India are creating digital performance work that will inform, question, confront and make demands of its different audiences to make a difference to one of the most pressing issues of our time.  

taking place in Hawick in the Scottish Borders across six days, I facilitated a group of participants through a creative process for the Scottish contribution to the project. Together we created a 25-minute audio production called We Know We Don’t Know, based on how climate change impacts their lives in the Scottish Borders. Through storytelling, poetry, music and scene-work, the participants explored how inaction due tot perceived safety of the local area, alongside the role of corporations resistance to take action in their eyes is exacerbating the problem.

This project was a break from how the group had normally created performance; I offered a very free structure which offered them the space to create the work that interested them, including the form the final audio production took. My role in this project saw me leading creative exercises, supporting their creative choices, co-writing with them, and championing their ideas to build their confidence as newer artists.

The participants led a sharing of their work to an invited audience, facilitated discussions around its content, guided by my preparatory work with them. The recording will be exhibited at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Art for Cop 26, and will be sent to both the Scottish and UK Governments.