I’m Hannah van den Brul, a postgraduate Music In Development student at SOAS, specialising in music and climate change. Tonight we are here to celebrate the launch of ClimateKeys: ‘keyboard conversations across the world’. ClimateKeys was founded by composer-pianist Lola Perrin. I am here to welcome you on Lola’s behalf and to give an introduction to the ideas behind the concert series. So welcome! To you who are here in London with us tonight, and also to the many who are watching from further afield. Some sections of tonight’s event are being live-streamed and a filmed version of the entire gala will be available in a few days time at climatekeys.com. We are honoured to have with us guest speaker Sir Jonathan Porrit. We also warmly welcome our special guest Nicole Lawler who will tell us about what happened to her family, and the truth about her son, Zane.
So, how does ClimateKeys work? Each event involves a music recital and a speech by a climate expert who then facilitates audience dialogue. ClimateKeys is a pioneering initiative teaming music with science, aimed to invigorate conversation around ‘what to do about climate change’. What’s brilliant about the ClimateKeys initiative is that it is such a simple formula: a single musician pairs with a climate change expert to stimulate conversation about climate change. This is a model that can be exported globally, where local pianists and local climate experts perform to local audiences, worldwide. Tonight is the launch of this global ClimateKeys initiative, timed to draw attention to COP23, this year’s UN climate talks, which will begin in two weeks time.
There have never been more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases trap heat radiating from the earth, triggering increasingly noticeable climate hazards: global temperature rise; sea level rise; ocean acidification and extreme weather events: droughts; hurricanes; monsoons; flooding… We are already experiencing the life threatening impacts of human-induced climate change: you need only look to recent events in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean, not to mention the many other affected parts of the world, to see its devastating human cost. People are losing their homes, their livelihoods, and millions worldwide - impacted by resource scarcity and without international help - are being forced to migrate.
And yet most people never talk about climate change. Or what to do about it.
This is where the idea for ClimateKeys began. Lola Perrin, whose initiative this is and who joins the performers tonight, understood that action on climate change doesn’t happen without conversation, face-to-face, and that conversation therefore needs to be brought to the centre of everything that we do, to the centre of every activity, even to the heart of our concerts.
Conversation is key to helping us understand our role in climate change: to understanding how our individual and collective actions matter. Speaking to each other we give climate change a face, making it more human. We tell personal and powerful stories. We realise that so much of what we think about quietly, others do too. We share our values and our concerns, and together, in conversation, we come up with better ideas about how we should live to create the future we want.
Conversation - talking about what to do about climate change - turns into action, and it needs to happen everywhere, especially in the high - carbon - world, where detrimental behaviours most need to be curbed.
I may be biased, as a music lover, but I believe music is particularly well placed to help stimulate positive conversations around climate change. 1) Climate change is complex and often intangible to people who aren’t experiencing its life-threatening impacts first hand. Music too is complex and intangible: the medium fits the message. 2) Climate change, when confronted, can induce grief: music is known for its therapeutic or ‘healing’ properties, which can level our emotions, readying us for more balanced conversation. 3) Climate change requires collective efforts: music forms community.
Talking of community, it is great to welcome members of the science community alongside musicians to this concert tonight! ClimateKeys brings musicians and climate experts into collaboration, providing climate speakers with a platform to communicate to new and diverse audiences. I understand from Lola that the climate experts involved - who range from NASA scientists to Professors of Climatology, from poets and radio show hosts to sustainability and policy experts - are jumping at the chance to speak at ClimateKeys concerts, willing to experiment in the way that they share their knowledge.
ClimateKeys is an exciting movement to be a part of: and the concert - climate talk - conversation framework is being introduced to local communities all over the world, without anyone getting on a plane! In this room tonight are pianists and speakers bringing ClimateKeys to Holborn, Gospel Oak, West Hampstead, Cardiff, Reading, Jordan’s Village and Brighton. To date over 100 concert musicians and guest speakers in twenty countries have joined ClimateKeys. 30 of these concerts are happening in 9 countries between now and the end of November, more are being planned through 20 18. This “glocal” - local and global - musical effort is a credible means to promote wide scale creative dialogue around climate change.
I’d like to leave you with the big question that ClimateKeys inspires: how can each of us, here tonight, bring conversation about climate change to the centre of what we do?
Enjoy the evening!
