It all began with one man’s passion, a few friends and a boat. There was no grand plan to speak of. ‘When I started I was just going to go with a small group of artists,’ David Buckland enthuses about his Cape Farewell project. ‘Organising a boat of 20 people up to the Arctic was insane. Every time I went to anybody and said, “I need some funding,” they would say, “You want to do what?”’ The first expedition to the Arctic was a success. ‘I thought that was probably it. But people were very excited.’ A second expedition followed, then a third, and today Buckland is in the seventh year of Cape Farewell. ‘It’s just unbelievable … I find myself in situations and think, “What am I doing here?”’ Since August 2007 Cape Farewell has held a three-year residency at the Southbank Centre, operating as a cultural eco-hub for the Centre’s creative climate-change initiatives.
The project’s motto is The Cultural Response to Climate Change. A group of artists and scientists travel to the Arctic on a boat, and all of them return with material to work on. Sounds easy, and that is just how Buckland paints it. His enthusiasm and belief in the project turns mountains into molehills. ‘If it’s how we live that is causing the problem, then in a way that’s a cultural responsibility. When big things happen culturally, you will always find artists working. They are not picking up on an issue, they’re actually carrying on the normal practice of being an artist. When things are in turmoil is when artists are most excited,’ he explains.
A keen sailor – he was getting ready to go on a two-week sailing holiday at the time of our interview – Buckland read somewhere that the North Atlantic Ocean had been mathematically modelled, which he thought was simply impossible. But it ignited his curiosity, and the seeds of Cape Farewell were planted. ‘I started it up as a way to create a new language that the public could engage with because they don’t read science,’ he explains. While the project’s scientists collect important information for research to try to predict the future health of planet earth, the artists use the inspiration of the experience for their creations. The artists have been on two or three journeys because ‘it’s so shocking and immense the first time round’.
The expeditions are not for just anybody. The gruelling nature of an expedition requires that team members are picked very carefully. Artists and scientists man the ship side by side with its professional crew. ‘At four in the morning, you are the one who gets up, you’re the one who holds the big wheel, you’re the one that changes the sails for three hours. Then your shift finishes and another starts. We have a professional captain, but each shift is five of us with one professional, and they rotate. For eight days you’re sailing a boat through those waters. Hardly any of the project people have sailed before. It is quite phenomenal,’ Buckland explains. ‘We’re all dependent on each other, a happy band that feeds off each other and off the experience itself.’
There is no contract with the artists to say that they must create an artwork out of the experience. ‘All I ask them to do is engage with the place, with the subject matter, and see if they’re inspired to make something,’ Buckland says. ‘It’s an open invitation.’ The majority of artists have gone on to make work after arriving home. Film, music, art, even a comedy routine have arisen out of these journeys. The director David Hinton’s film Art from the Arctic was first broadcast on BBC4 in February 2006 as part of the Climate Chaos season, and has since been shown all over the world.
The issue of climate change has gained huge momentum over the last few years. Cape Farewell has taken it to festivals such as Glastonbury, Hay and Latitude this year alone. At Latitude there was a straight two hours of delivering the climate-change message, kicking off with a screening by Buckland in the film tent followed by Marcus Brigstocke and his comedy routine, then Jarvis Cocker with his new song ‘Slush’ and beatbox artist Shlomo. ‘Every time we finished a bit of our film, we had a standing ovation. For two hours it was fantastic,’ recalls Buckland. So is the message finally getting through? ‘Two years ago it would’ve been all uphill … Some would have got it, but most people would have gone, “What can you do?” But the Latitude audience, I’m sure, were already on our side. They were already wanting to engage.’
In his seven years with Cape Farewell, Buckland recognises there’s been a big social shift. More people understand and care about what’s going on in the world they inhabit, and they want to be involved. There will be a Shift Festival for a week in January 2010 at the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall. Prior to that a show co-curated by Buckland at the Royal Academy, will draw 25% of works from Cape Farewell. ‘We started going round the world and seeing who’s doing what. It’s extraordinary how many artists have actually done climate change,’ Buckland says. ‘If we can remake the image of climate change from this whole “gloom and doom, the whole world is going to shut down” to “Wait a minute, let’s change culture and have a fantastic time,” where’s the problem with that?’
Buckland is so busy organising expeditions – the next one in 2010 is going to the Russian Arctic – that he is left with little time to make art. He has collected a huge amount of material to work on, and can’t wait to dive in. It can be frustrating for an artist to be sitting on a treasure trove of inspiration, unable to get down to business. But he recounts what a friend so rightly told him, ‘Cape Farewell is one big art project.’
