I attended a team conference last week during which we had an inspiring presentation from Cape Farewell - a charity that encourages cultural responses to climate change by inspiring creative people to communicate the urgency of the problem.

The charity has been running expeditions to areas that are directly affected by the impact of climate change and has been using these expeditions to not only scientifically assess the extent of the problem, but also to essentially brief artists, musicians, writers, film-makers, photographers and other communicators to produce stories and works of art that explore the theme of climate science.

See the Cape Farewell website for the full image collection.

The idea is to help make the issue more visible to the public and in turn inspire individuals to think about how they might do something to minimise the negative effect they are having on the environment.

One expedition we were told about was to ‘Disko Bay’ in Greenland in 2008, which brought together scientists and artists such as Jarvis Cocker, Vanessa Carlton, Feist, KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Marcus Brigstocke and the beatboxer Shlomo. There’s a good blog on the Cape Farewell website with contributions from all the creatives talking about their experiences during the 10 day trip. As creative briefings go, it’s probably the best you could get!

Some of the creative output of previous trips can be found in this spectacular book:

The personal highlight of our conference last week was a guest appearance from Shlomo himself, who gave us an account of his experience on the boat before performing a couple of his hits – and as a drumming enthusiast myself, it was by far the most impressive thing I’ve seen this year (at least in terms of live music performances).

This is a performance with Vanessa Carlton, recorded during the Disko Bay expedition:

You can see some more of Shlomo’s videos on his personal site.