Following 204 applications, we are now delighted to reveal the selected artists for the four £10,000 Common Ground commissions:

• Jennifer Farmer & Zoë Palmer
• Love Ssega
• Hwa Young Jung
• Rosa Cisneros

Common Ground supports four UK-based artists and makers to create collaborative works centered around underrepresented communities in the climate movement through £10,000 grant and a professional development programme.

Meet the artists

Jennifer Farmer & Zoë Palmer – The Dream (ing) Field Lab

Farmer and Palmer will bring together an intergenerational group of people of African heritage and British farmers for 3 days of rest, rituals and collaboration to create a climate justice manifesto and a practical field kit, culminating in the development of a travelling immersive installation that explores relationships with the British countryside and what happens when we rest and dream in the rural landscape.

Farmer and Palmer say: “We use acts of radical self-care and joy to nurture and encourage a time to dream and re-imagine our relationship with land, rural spaces and each other. The Dream(ing) Field Lab will be a meeting place, a sanctuary,  a crucible, and an imaginarium. For Zoë, who has long been an environmentalist, the project will be a way to weave together her art and ecological activism on the subject of climate justice. For Jennifer, it’s also an extension of her work in terms of exploring my relationship with land and growing in relation to being the great-great-granddaughter of enslaved people forced into agricultural labour.”

Love Ssega – Airs of the South Circular

Ssega will draw on the tragic effects of air pollution in the South Circular and London Boroughs of Lewisham and Southwark to create a four-stranded project bringing the neglected stories and voices of the black community into collective consciousness and public debate. The project will be delivered through the mediums of a recorded EP, visual trailer, pamphlet and comic.

Love Ssega says: “My Common Ground commission is focussed specifically on the Black community and climate justice. As a son, cousin, nephew and brother of this community, I feel it’s my duty to get the stories and voices that I have both lived with and grown up amongst, into the collective consciousness and wider public debate. I’m looking forward to working alongside the other selected artists.”

Rosa Cisneros – Roma: Recycle-Reuse-Reimagine

With a focus on filling a visible gap in the knowledge and understanding of the Roma community, this work aims to inspire vulnerable young people and their families through a series of educational activities and art workshops in South Yorkshire on the importance of both Roma history and recycling. The project will culminate in a lasting legacy in the form of a children’s book to be shared with services for awareness of the community.

Hwa Young Jung – Wilding Nature

Bringing the missing voice and viewpoint of young people at risk of entering, and experience within, the criminal justice system to the forefront of environmental discourse, this work by the socially engaged artist Jung will challenge the ideas of a ‘natural state’ for humans and non-humans. Workshops with the young people using socially engaged, heavily discursive methods, will focus on the loss of biodiversity and rewilding as one solution to the climate crisis. The final co-produced artwork will take the form of a game.

What is Common Ground?

Running until April 2021, Season for Change’s Common Ground initiative supports four UK-based artists and makers to create collaborative works centered around underrepresented communities in the climate movement. Applications were welcomed from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (people of colour), refugee, D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, working class and LGBTQI+ creators.

Ahead of the UK hosting the delayed COP26 – the UN’s international summit to discuss the Paris Agreement, the most important international agreement on the climate crisis – the initiative will challenge imbalances in the climate movement, which mirror broader environmental and social inequalities. Such inequalities have been further pronounced by the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on marginalised communities around the world.

Through games co-created with young people at risk of entering the criminal justice system to a travelling project with an intergenerational group of people of African heritage and British farmers, the Common Ground projects will explore the impact that climate change is having on communities often marginalised from the climate conversation. Each artist receives £10,000 towards their project and is supported throughout with a professional development programme.

Want to hear from the artists in person?

Join them at the Season for Ex-Change Launch to find out more about their Common Ground projects.

Book free tickets