Presented as a key part of their diverse 2024 programme, Manchester Lit & Phil hosts a series of lectures which explore and unpick our shifting environment, from making our cities greener and the urgent threat of marine plastic pollution to ‘urban meadows’ as a beacon of optimism amidst architectural overdevelopment and natural decline.
Check out Manchester Lit & Phil’s full programme here.
For over thirteen years, international award-winning photographic artist Mandy Barker has sought to capture the devastating consequences of marine plastic pollution through a uniquely engaging lens for new audiences, as the deepening crisis of large-scale aquatic contamination grows increasingly urgent with over 700 species – and global human health – facing existential jeopardy.
In this informative online talk, Barker discusses her use of captions which detail the ‘ingredients’ of the plastic objects in her photographs, as well as the locations in which they were recovered and the multinational brands responsible, in an attempt to lay bare the true material constitution of our oceans under threat and raise awareness through a combination of arresting art and compelling scientific research.
On Thu 21 Mar, Professor Emeritus James Hitchmough presents an exploration of his research into how meadows, once seen as an unremarkable bygone agri-environmental landscape with little to offer, have become an aesthetic and material asset in restoring urban ecosystems and collective psychological wellbeing in modern cities.
Through an examination of the foundational issues Hitchmough has encountered across a fifty-year career, his profoundly insightful talk contemplates the ways in which designers can continue to improve the appeal of urban meadows, and explores how a greater understanding of their endemic vegetation might exhort councils to accommodate and foster nature in urban areas as a whole.
Manchester Lit & Phil, Jactin house, COLONY, 24 Hood St, Ancoats, Manchester M4 6WX, Tel: 07312 090503
www.manlitphil.ac.uk
- Words:
- Wolf McFarlane
- Published on:
- Wed 20 Dec 2023
Led by Dr Leon Barron, a Reader in Analytical and Environmental Sciences at Imperial College London, this timely and revealing online talk explores how chemicals move in urban water cycles – from wastewater to river pollution and contaminated drinking water, as well as the growing concerns about our exposure to harm, and the evolving analytical technologies designed to tackle what is ‘arguably the third greatest planetary crisis behind climate change and biodiversity loss’.