What to do next

What to do to respond to the emergency

Emergency action is called for

In a time of emergency, we need to be emergent as resilient practitioners and organisations, ready to adapt to external changes and to ‘be the change’. ‘Emergent’ in ecology means to stand above the rest, to be visible or prominent, so this is a chance to announce your stance on the planetary crisis and its many implications for justice.

We are in the preparatory months - even days - to change minds to create some stability and to save some lives. We are all at risk, and that risk will not disappear even if these demands are met.

Co-creating a regenerative culture - one that is inclusive, healthy, life-supporting, resilient and adaptable - requires rebuilding just and ethical relationships between ourselves, and with other species and the landscape. This takes time.

Regenerative culture includes:

Teaching and implementing the changes we want to see in society
Challenging power and privilege
Supporting each other in tending to grief as we face the truth about this emergency
Building a culture of care into our daily lives – care for ourselves, each other and the Earth
Changing the paradigms by which we design, grow, make and trade so that the living planet can be regenerated.

Suggestions of preparatory work you can do now

Being a platform or helper

If you're a practitioner, respond to calls for your skills from Extinction Rebellion, school strikers or local Transition groups.
If as an organisation you have space, can you give a discount for meetings or rehearsals, invite activists to speak, or programme relevant events?
Make an announcement or invite speakers before your programmed events (‘Please turn off your phones, and take a moment to hear….’) or alongside welcome panels. Tell your audience why you have Declared an Emergency.
Invite other arts and culture practitioners or your partner organisations to register to declare.

Hold space for public discussion

Host an event (or a display, or surgery session etc.) to explore the emergency and what this means in practice.
Plan this so that there is a follow-up action, to implement a practical response.
You could run it as an arts-based workshop to better enable expression of feelings or imagination of solutions.
Create supportive frameworks where people can come together to listen to speak openly and share their fears, concerns and grief about the emergency.
Work with your audience to get ideas to respond to the emergency in your organisation. Start with your Pledges and invite ideas on how to enact them.

Consider your own/team wellbeing in face of Emergency

Ensure that you find ways to support each other with the psychological impacts of Declaring Emergency.
Hold a supportive and regenerative active listening session for staff and volunteers/freelancers.
See guidance on wellbeing and on Regenerative Culture and Non-Violent Direct Action from Extinction Rebellion.

Make an Emergency action plan

Set some targets for your programming and operations that marry with the pledges you have taken in Declaring Emergency.
Set up an Emergency Group - a kind of Citizen’s Assembly - with organisational staff, venue users and volunteers.
Hold weekly or monthly team/group lunches or breakfast meet-ups to keep up the momentum and mutual support.
Network locally: Find what other environmental groups are already out there in your location, if you don't already know them. Be part of a supportive place-based response.

Agree limits on direct action

Agree what are the limits for you in terms of activism. Declaring emergency does not mean taking part in civil disobedience or disruptive action, but it might be perceived as such. Your funding and public role might require neutrality, which means that you need to carefully discuss how to communicate your stance.
You might decide that creative Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) is appropriate, and if so, you will need to consider your safe limits on this, and potentially to consult a lawyer and seek training. This may be more appropriate if you are declaring as an individual.
In this toolkit we offer a range of ways that you can support your communities in the context of emergency. These do not include suggestions for disruptive actions, or Non Violent Direct Action (NVDA), as part of a declaration response. However, the template declaration text is supportive of demands being made globally for truth, action and justice, and by implication acknowledges the validity of the many forms of NVDA being used to make the demands, particularly where democratic routes are insufficient.
Of the many types of NVDA, only a small number are potentially 'arrestable'. Supporting or participating in direct action events does not mean you have to carry out disruptive actions, and the risk of arrest for those that do is very small. See the Legal Briefing from Extinction Rebellion.

Sustaining change longer term

Use the resources and frameworks here to further your knowledge and build capabilities to respond as the emergency deepens:

Julie’s Bicycle provides guidance and frameworks to green the cultural sector, and in UK, to meet sustainability requirements of Arts Council England.
Make a pledge to be Oil Sponsorship Free: The pledge says: “We do not take any oil, coal, or gas corporate sponsorship for our cultural work. We call on our peers and institutional partners to refuse fossil fuel funding too.” If you have ideas for actions that tackle fossil fuel relationships with cultural organisations, please first contact the Art Not Oil coalition on info@artnotoil.org.uk to discover what is already planned that you could support.
Possible Culture: Tools for cultural/arts workers for facing and sustaining our future world. ‘Possible Culture’ means: Continuing to exist despite the emergency by being relevant to communities; looking honestly at what is happening in the world, and imagining the future; proactively working with communities to shift towards more regenerative and circular economies; exploring ethical and participatory forms of entrepreneurship in order to sustain themselves when public funding dries up; providing safe, inclusive spaces for envisaging possible futures, for learning from past and indigenous cultures and from the capacities of nature, and for helping communities take action for eco-social justice.
Work with partners to help implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Choose a goal as a focus that suits what you have to offer. Our suggestion is that without tackling the climate and ecology goals, the goals for human wellbeing and thriving will not be achieved.

Do use existing tools and frameworks so you don’t reinvent the wheel. But also, this emergency needs radical and diverse ideas to change our organisations:

Where can you hand power to people who have been denied it?
If children and young people are your priority, consider their needs for the future. Can you create a role to advocate for future generations, not yet born?
Can you run a truth commission?
Could you write a 100 year plan?
Can you influence international law, to advance the rights of future generations, or to implement an Ecocide Law?
Apply the Precautionary Principle: If you can't be sure your project causes harm, don't do it. Ask, how does this project positively regenerate the environment?
Are all the people in your organisation cared for and treated equally and do they have a voice?

See below more inspirational examples, networks and resources to help you.

What to do to respond to the emergency

Emergency action is called for

Suggestions of preparatory work you can do now

Sustaining change longer term

More resources and links

Inspiring cultural organisations

Inspiring environmental organisations

Deeper reading: Publications, toolkits and ideas

Resources on Declarations of Emergency