On 7.May 2009, the Yorkshire Post awarded the "Rivers Project" an Environmental Award in the category "Climate Change". The award trophy was handed out by Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, during the dinner celebration which was moderated by TV presenter Julia Bradbury.
The Rivers Project has been initiated and led by publisher, artist, and writer Brian Lewis (Pontefract Press). The goal of this project is to create awareness of climate change, through means of art and poetry. The project focusses on two regional areas in two different parts of the world, which have felt the effects of the changing climate in different ways: Yorkshire (UK) and Gujarat (India). The intended outcome of this project is a collection of paintings, poems, and other writings and artworks which are drawing on the individual and collective experience of the effects of climate change. A special focus has been on rivers: the river Aire (Yorkshire) and the rivers Sabarmati and Narmada have significant meaning to surrounding communities, which depend strongly on them. Flooding and drought have in recent years created headlines. This project intends to build a virtual link between these rivers, showing similarities and differences of those climatic effects.
Reinhold Behringer (Leeds Metropolitan University) has been involved in this project to provide technology components in capturing experiences and disseminating them through digital media: one aspect has been to track geographical locations for geo-centric interfaces and to integrate the art works with online multimedia distribution. He has participated in a travel to India, to the rural community of Vallabh Vidyanagar, where a set of workshops had been organised by the local academic and cultural partners of this project.
In June 2009, our project partners from India will visit Yorkshire, to learn about the issues and problems here in our region: a workshop is planned to be hosted at the Northern College Barnsley, and several site visits are being scheduled.
The project seeks currently further funding for those activities and for reaching the envisioned goals.
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