conscient podcast

I think there's a lot of roles for art generally, and one of my favorite ones is kind of imagining that art helps you imagine, even if it has nothing to do with it. It helps. You can be a springboard to help you dream and stuff like that. The project that we're going to talk about today has a lot more to do with the kind of solace or companionship or remembering melancholy, maybe. Although I think...

How do we restore our connection with nature? Because I think that part of the crisis that we're in, especially with the climate, stems from the fact that we've been disconnected from our relationship to nature. And so how do we restore that? How do we get back in touch with non-human beings? You know, with these trees in front of us here we're standing in High Park, and with the trees and with th...

People maybe are used to being bombarded at this point with the news of what's happening. And that's the reality. And we need to face that. I think alongside that, we need to make moments of grounding, of rootedness and remembering our real belonging to this earth. Because without that, we don't quite have the energy. I think we're really zapped of that based from stress or from what we're hearing...

What is art? What is art anyway? It's a new term, really. I think we need to go a little bit beyond that. I think of myself as a sound practitioner, so what can I offer? If someone has a visual acuity, if someone has acuity with body and movement and voice, you know, what is it that we can do in our communities to help people to listen, to be in their bodies, to breathe? My conversation withcompos...

Radical engagement with the system doesn't mean participating in that system, distractedly resigned, knowing it all hierarchically at arm's length, with arms crossed, superficially, impatiently. Saying take it or leave means taking part in it alertly, with hope and curiosity, horizontally, leaning forward, hands on, digging deep, persisting, and above all, reciprocally and relationally. So that's...

Hey there faithful, brave and patient conscient podcast listeners,  Welcome to the 3rd conscient roundtable. Live radio style again. First take, only take, kind of thing so please bear with me. This is an exciting and unique episode coming up, with an international scope.  It was recorded on Thursday, March 20, 2025 on Zoom with participants Kashee in India, Shaun and Marcela in Ireland (though Ma...

What can I do to support the grieving? There's so much to grieve. Whether we think about the crisis of climate, whether we think about the political crises, the issue of displacement, which is around the world. Forced displacement, such a huge crisis. How do we manifest the kinds of spaces that people need to be able to individually and collectively get in touch with how they're feeling and do it...

Hey there faithful and brave conscient listeners,  Welcome to the second conscient roundtable conversation. This one was recorded on Sunday, March 16, 2025 in Vancouver. In a minute you’ll hear an acknowledgement about the original stewards of these lands followed by a minute of silent contemplation. Normally, conscient roundtables feature a group of artists and cultural workers talking about thei...

I would say that while there's absolutely no question that we're in a crisis, there's no question about multi crisis. I'm not sure we're in the state of collapse. And I think that methodology, that vision, that understanding of the world can lead to... You were talking about it a few minutes ago, doom scrolling and just doom. I find that that can create a lot of inertia in people, a lot of hopeles...

I think, as has already been mentioned by a number of you, that w e need to slow down, not speed up. This is a moment for really slow thinking and to be listening and to be doing deep listening. I like this concept that we use, again in Primary Colours. Instead of thinking of outreach and trying to convince people and tell them about how great the arts are, we need to do in-reach, we need to go in...

The arts have that capacity to be powerful broadcasters, conveyors of messages, invitations to celebration, reflection, storytelling, narrative building and so on. There's a vital role here for the arts. But like the rest of society, frankly, whether it's the banking system or government we're simply not doing it well enough that we could say we're satisfied with how much is happening and everythi...

There's been a real lack of positive action and response from the arts community to these existential questions that confront us. And I really wonder whether that's not because they're simply bewildered by what's been going on. They're terrified, most of them. A lot of the conversation that goes on that I'm aware of has to do with the precariousness of existence for the artist. There is no there's...

I think there is a responsibility we have as artists to relate to our artistry responsibly. And that has to do with sensing into our artistic sensibility as a medicine or a gift that we were given to come into this embodiment, to become the people that we are and share this medicine with the people in our community around us. And I think it's about asking the question, what is a medicine that I ca...

Hey there Welcome to the first conscient roundtable conversation recorded on Saturday March 1, 2025 in Tiohtià:ke (also known as Montreal).  This episode features local artists, activists and cultural workers  Alyssa Scott ,  Devon Hardy ,  Jimmy Ung ,  Katrine Claassens , Sophie Weider ,  Sébastian Méric de Bellefon and myself (I’m actually from Ottawa) talking about our passions, fears and dream...

I think that the first thing artists have to do is to start telling the truth. You know, just like climate change five or six years ago, you just didn't really want to talk about it. You got shunned in polite company if you talked about it. Now we have the c word, right? We've got collapse. But the conversation hasn't started yet. And I think just broadly speaking, the artistic community… The best...

What triggered my climate denial bubble to burst? I feel compelled to share this personal experience, in the hope that it might help others who are also struggling with the current sustainability crisis and searching for a path forward… This is an ENCORE episode of the conscient podcast from season 1, episode 1, first published on April 30, 2020. Kaboom ! You’ll understand what this Kaboom is abou...

What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post-carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to be a different world, not long from now. If we do this, and we must do this, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss and sacrifice and challenge, not just with what's happening externally from a climate point of view, b...

My interest in science is quite poetic. The things that I find the most interesting about science are when it can be woven into a story that makes sense and I think that's kind of artistic in a way: you take the scientific knowledge and make it into a more abstract kind of poetic thing. Note: I'll be back during the winter of 2025 with season 6 on the theme of 'art and culture in times of crisis a...

The planet's not dying. Our place and our version of it may be dying. So how do we deal with that? How do we accept and live with the knowledge that our version of it is dying. It's not something to panic about in the sense that the whole thing's going away, hopefully. We don't know, but I think that notion of living with grace, living without fear, trying to live without anxiety, because those ar...

​​I think if we can reimagine what matters to us and pursue that, then perhaps there's a chance that we can stop this truly self-destructive pursuit of infinite more, and in material terms, become happy with enough, without giving up the idea of personal growth and evolution, because I do think that is core to what it is to be human and even just alive. Life is about growth. The history of life on...

In the face of destruction, we should create. In the face of hurt, we should heal. In the face of hate, we should love. That's my feeling and figuring out how to do that is everybody's job. I’ve known Sheila James for 25 years as an arts funder colleague, artist, filmmaker, writer, but also her work as an equity expert, social activist and as a family friend.  Our conversation began with an overvi...

I'd like to use art more as a tool to get people thinking, get people involved, especially young people, and hopefully, help them process the emotions of climate change and move towards a space of action and hope. At least for me, as a young person, art felt like the way to have my voice be heard, and I hope to help other people experience that as well. I first heard about Sophie Weider from an em...

All artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art (and that's going to piss some people off - Claude Schryer). I think it will. Climate infuses all our responses to everything, to relationships, to our culture, to our history. You can't ignore the climate that it's happening in, and that's why it has to be somehow in the art that you are involved with. Leslie Reid , an Ottawa...

We're going through a crash, the sixth extinction, climate collapse, geopolitical collapse, economic collapse, all types of overlapping, interlaced cycles of destruction. And like on planes, what you can do, at best, is to get ready for a glide as opposed to a hard landing, because that means some will survive, and those that survive aren't necessarily the lucky ones. So while we're on the plane,...

I believe that we are all connected by these invisible threads, the shared sinew amongst all living things, that includes humans, plants, animals, what have you, and that what art is, is the lighting up, making those invisible threads visible. … It doesn't really explain in that analogy what art is, but it certainly speaks to the way it functions and why it should matter to society : why arts shou...