The Regen Art Lab returns for 2024 – an interdisciplinary collaboration between Regen’s clean energy experts and UK-based, early career artists. In this introductory blog, Polly Meyrick, this year's artist in residence, shares her thoughts on what she’s discovered so far and how she plans to respond to the residency theme: celebrating changemakers.
Hello, I’m Polly — an artist, musician and farm worker. I love collaborating with community members, organisations, experts and scientists (as many people as possible, really!) to make work that’s research-led, accessible and centred in the community. I combine drawn portraits, recorded conversations and participatory activities to celebrate human stories, focusing mainly on themes of climate change, food security and connecting people with each other and the world around them.
I’m really interested in the narratives around climate issues, exploring how we engage (or struggle to engage) with overwhelming topics and what makes people feel motivated and empowered. I believe in art’s power to spark nuanced conversations, and I’m passionate about celebrating empathy — finding ways to bridge divides and break out of echo chambers to make these topics more inclusive, empowering and uplifting.
A lot of my recent focus has been on food systems. I’ve worked at multiple veg farms in the South West and am passionate about local, sustainably produced food and food justice. One of my recent projects combined recorded conversations with portraits of young people involved in food and farming, talking about how and why they do what they do and their hopes for the future.
It’s been super exciting to start this residency at Regen, and I’m looking forward to learning more about energy transition. I’m really enjoying the first phase of this, and it’s been great to learn about Regen’s work and networks, trying to delve head-first into the vast world of energy systems and look for common threads, human stories and things that move us.
So far, I’ve been particularly interested in learning about community energy and solar farms. It’s been really interesting to see the parallels with the farming world and the agroecology movement. The decentralisation of energy systems and creation of community energy projects is similar to the growing movement of small-scale local food producers and the rise of Community Supported Agriculture schemes. Both sectors are also very involved in debates around land use and understand the impact that land use decisions have on enriching or depriving communities.
It’s been great to learn some of the stories of local community energy projects —what these projects have accomplished, the people involved, and how the benefits trickle out into the wider community through community benefit funds and support to addressing fuel poverty.
I’ll be drawing portraits of people involved in all aspects of the energy transition and recording conversations with them to gather and share their stories. There are so many amazing people involved, so it will be very hard working out who to create portraits of. I wish I had magic hands and could draw everyone I encounter!
Regen is a mission-driven, not-for-profit centre of energy expertise. By examining the radical steps needed to deliver transformative change across the energy system, we work to drive the path to a net zero energy future.
This transition represents a profound societal transformation – one that brims with captivating narratives, emotions and complexities that are open for artistic exploration. However, the clean energy sector comprises an array of technical, commercial and legal specialisms, and has a tough time communicating outside of its bubble.
By giving artists access to our expert energy sector knowledge, the Art Lab aims to explore and increase the awareness of pivotal energy transition issues through interdisciplinary collaborations. A central ethos is that the final works should not serve as a mouthpiece for Regen’s views, nor the artists’, but provide a balanced view of a complex topic, holding a mirror to society and inviting the viewer to form their own opinions.
Previous residences have produced poetry, graphic design, illustration, animation, sculpture, theatre and sound design.
Through storytelling of the adversities and successes of the energy transition so far, the Celebrating Changemakers portrait series will aim to increase awareness of the important work that is happening by putting the spotlight on some of the unsung heroes of the energy transition.
We work with a variety of groups who drive change across the energy industry, whose stories we would like to share with a wider audience. These include:
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