A Conversation on Climate Change and Social Innovation with David Buckland & Frances Westley

Hosted by SiG@Waterloo and rare Charitable Research Reserve

David Buckland, UK artist, founder of Cape Farewell and international ambassador to rare, and Frances Westley, J.W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation, shared a conversation with the 28 global youth participants who embarked on the Cape Farewell Voyage on September 7, 2008. Frances and David focused on the topic of the need for social innovation in order to alter established social systems to effect change in areas such as the environment.

Biography

David Buckland is an artist - photographer, designer and filmmaker - whose photos have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. He has spent the past seven years leading expeditions to Cape Farewell on a 100-year-old schooner, the Noorderlicht, in an effort to bring awareness to the public on climate change. The UN has called his website, capefarewell.com the best scientific website in the world.

Since 2001, Cape Farewell has brought together leading artists, writers, scientists, educators and media for a series of expeditions into the wild and challenging High Arctic. Together they have mapped, measured and been inspired by this awesome environment and have endeavoured to bring home stories and artworks that tell how a warming planet is impacting on this wilderness. A stunning book entitled Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change, celebrating the research and artwork that has evolved from the Cape Farewell voyages, was published in 2007.

More information on Cape Farewell - www.capefarewell.com