The ClimateKeys Commonwealth concert at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, was another success. This concert was purposefully held to coincide with the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which took place from the 16th to the 20th of April in London.

The piano duo of Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown played sublimely, capturing people with emotional highs and lows. They began with Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor D 940; Julian Jacobson, speaking from the piano, told us how the composer’s original, much louder dynamic markings at the work’s finale are coming back into modern editions, returning a strength to this work well matched to the challenge of climate change. A performance of Debussy’s Petite Suite followed and then Farhana Yamin came on stage and spoke eloquently about the inner workings of climate change negotiations, which can often be fraught with vested interests who resist any positive legislation on climate change mitigation. She had been emotionally moved by the music, and was open about her feelings of despair and hope at the state of climate change talks. She also had some pointers for the audience to take away with them; change your energy provider, divest your money, reduce your meat consumption, wear all your clothes instead of buying new ones (and recycle the ones you don’t wear right away rather than allow them to degrade for years and become unwearable). She also emphasised that we can be initiating more and more litigations, referring to Plan Bas a good example of a small group of people who got together to take the UK government to court to challenge UK’s tardiness in revising UK carbon budget in line with Paris Agreement goals - one part of the bigger climate justice picture.

The theme of climate justice continued with Kye Gbangbola, from Truth About Zane campaign, who had been invited to give a short talk to commence the audience conversation section. He spoke about the invasion of a deadly nerve agent into his family home in Surrey, brought in by floodwaters coming through undeclared landfill site during flooding widely attributed to climate change, causing his son Zane’s death and his own paralysis. This is only one of many consequences of climate change that people are already facing, and, as Kye said “ 'Eighty percent of us in the UK live within 2 km of landfill; the danger to human life from migrating toxins is a ticking time bomb For the whole of the living public, climate change needs integrated approaches, with everyone involved”.

The audience discussion was engaging and varied. One audience member fervently put the case forward for being vegan and its massive environmental impact. The question of how to make healthy food cheaper and more accessible than benefits it presents unhealthy food was raised. Climate change communication was commented upon, with a query about how we can reach people who have very different opinions to ourselves. This prompted another audience member to detail why people approach topics in the way that they do, and that we must reach people through their preferred means - or what is valuable to them. Another audience member had arrived straight from working on his allotment, and he urged everyone to consider growing their own food as a way of combating multinational supermarket chains and this opening up comments about different ways of growing food including indoors, on water and so. We also heard from a designer who spoke about the merits of good environmental design to help people live more Earth-friendly lives. Three strangers sitting together discovered they were all keen cyclists who had travelled to the concert by bicycle and this opened a conversation about the potential for more zero carbon transport in London.

Mariko and Julian returned to the stage to perform the beautiful Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit by Bach/Kurtág before ending on an uplifting note with the jolly Jamaican Rumba by Arthur Benjamin, which is very in-keeping with the ClimateKeys’ mission of creating positive responses to climate change. The audience stayed for a long while after, multiple animated conversations taking place and everyone seemingly wanting to talk more and also get to know Farhana, Kye and the Jacobson-Brown Duo!

(By Julia Marques)