Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline
Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London · 2020-2022
What does a just transition look like? How might the arts participate in repairing the relationships between people, institutions and the living world?
Sunlight Doesn't Need a Pipeline is a collaborative artistic research and climate justice project initiated and curated by Dani Admiss during her Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University.
Beginning during the Covid-19 pandemic, the project brought together a coalition of art workers, artists, researchers, activists, growers, caregivers and communities to collectively imagine what a socially and ecologically just transition for the arts might involve.
Rather than approaching decarbonisation as a technical exercise in measuring and reducing emissions, Sunlight began with the relationships that make cultural life possible. Through artistic commissions, collective study, workshops and conversations, participants explored questions of access, land, labour, energy, redistribution and repair.
The resulting Co-Created Decarbonisation Plan brought together ten commissioned projects and an experimental Open Curriculum, offering artistic propositions, practical resources and new ways of thinking about the responsibilities of cultural institutions. Conceived as a gift to art workers, the plan proposed that a low-carbon future must also be a more equitable and generous one.
In October 2022, the project culminated in a community festival and teach-in at Stanley Picker Gallery, with performances, films, conversations and collective learning. At the end of the day, participants voted on which proposals should inform the Gallery's environmental priorities. The Gallery subsequently established a Community Forum and developed further commitments to collaborative learning and climate justice.
For three weeks following the festival, the Gallery made its spaces and resources available to local community organisations for workshops, gatherings and activities, extending the project's commitment to giving back more than it took.
Sunlight Doesn't Need a Pipeline asks how artistic practice might move beyond representing environmental crisis to create the relationships, knowledge and collective capacity needed to live differently.
Format: Stanley Picker Fellowship, collaborative artistic research, exhibition and publication
People & Partners
Initiated and curated by: Dani Admiss
Commissioned by: Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University
Supported by: Stanley Picker Trust and Arts Council England
Design, visual identity and website: Studio Hyte
Commissioned contributors and collaborators: Chanelle Adams, Amazoner Arawak, Ellie Harrison, Susannah Haslam, Samuel Onalo, Sean Roy Parker, Anne Pasek, Luiza Prado, Tatjana Söding, Cecilia Wee, Araceli Camargo, Megha Ralapati, Apex Zero, Charles Pryor, Lou-Atessa Marcellin, Maxwell Ayamba, Sarah Mady and Lauren Doughty.
Festival and public programme: Including contributions from Taey Iohe, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Oliver Ressler, Shridhar Sudhir, Sophie Hope, Hazel Falck, Harry Bix, Elena Agudio and Kingston's Stylophone Orchestra.
Community and organisational partners: The Community Brain, The Grange, Hogsmill Community Garden, The NewBridge Project, Platform London, Save the World Club, Writers' Kingston, The Networked Condition, Creative Youth, Kingston HIVE and Ariadne's Thread, among others.
Explore the Project
Sunlight Doesn't Need a Pipeline — project website
