The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), in collaboration with Kolkata-based children’s arts engagement organisation ThinkArts, has been exploring responses to lived experiences of climate change through art, science and digital technology through work with award-winning Scottish theatre makers, Shona Reppe and Andy Manley.
Launching on 1st November is Millipede.shop, a playful, interactive digital art installation disguised as an online shoe shop. Digital art exhibits, relating to shoes and feet, are displayed for visitors to discover as part of a specially created website. The artworks have been created through film, photography, sculpture, spoken word, poetry and song, reflecting personal responses to climate change and the participants’ carbon footprints.
100 shoes for the digital shoe shop have been created by schools and community groups across India and Scotland.
NTS engaged with Scottish groups including Viewpark Gardens Trust, Homestart, Bangladesh Association Glasgow and St Teresa’s Primary School, Glasgow and ThinkArts collaborated with several community groups working with children and young people across Kolkata and Bengaluru.
Each shoe design has also been paired with special analysis from leading scientists at Edinburgh Science, Scotland and Science Gallery Bengaluru, India, examining its materials, its lifecycle and the footprint it will leave on the world. Through this the Millipede creators hope to encourage would-be shoppers to think differently about their own carbon footprints.
Internationally acclaimed, multi award-winning theatre maker, designer and performer Shona Reppe and UK based theatre maker Andy Manley have worked together on several projects in the past, notably with the showsHUFF, White, Black Beauty and Potato Needs a Bath that simply burst at the seams with magic, impishness and imagination. Think what they’ll bring to “The shoe shop that doesn’t cost the earth.”!
Reppe and Manley said “For us Millipede is a ‘first step’ towards reducing carbon footprints – an anti -consumerist fantasy shoe shop to visit from the comfort of your own home. Our aim is to encourage people to stop and think about their carbon footprints without lecturing or chastising. It has been a joy to curate these personal, thoughtful and fantastically creative contributions. Hopefully this will be the first step for many in addressing what we have to do to protect our planet.”
Millipedelive creative pop-ups are at:
The Landing Hub (the largest free fringe event space over the conference)
220 Broomielaw, Glasgow
6th & 7th November 2021, 12pm – 4pm, Free and featuring artists Sarah Rose Graber and Ruxy Cantir
Broomielaw, Clydeside Tradeston Bridge – Clyde Quay
13th & 14th November 2021, 12pm – 4pm, Free
Millipede.shop, thatwas awarded a British Council Creative Commission (BCCC) forms part of the its cultural programme, The Climate Connection in the run up to the United Nations Climate Change COP26 taking place in Glasgow from 1st – 12th November 2021.
The website millipede.shop is in English with Hindi and Bengali language translation of millipede.shop price tags and will be live for 12 months from 1st November.
A Thing of Beauty – Millipedeis one of seventeen projects addressing climate change featured as part of a City of London exhibition.
Dates and venues are:
1st – 11th November: Paternoster Square
12th – 29th November: Aldgate Square
30th November – 7th December: Guildhall Yard
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 