Spectacular environmentalisms: Celebrity and the mediation of environmental change

Duration: June 2010 - October 2011

Principal Investigator: Dr Michael Goodman

Higher Education Institution: Department of Geography, King's College London

Contact information: michael.k.goodman@kcl.ac.uk

Project website: http://spectacularenvironmentalisms.co.uk/ and http://studyinggreen.wordpress.com/

Project outline

The aim of this network was to explore and develop intellectual synergies among scholars, researchers and practitioners from different perspectives on the relationship between celebrity, the media and environment. The mediation of environmentalism, the spectacular power of celebrity and the effects of both on politics and practice are issues which demand to be understood from a number of perspectives.

Network members have questionned the scale and form of power increasingly being granted to and claimed by celebrities in shaping environmental discourse and have developed critical dialogue and resulted in joint outputs between environmental media practitioners and academics.

The objectives were:

To enable international participants to develop short- and longer-term joint and individual research and intellectual synergies in order to make a substantial contribution to the workings of the relationships between celebrity, media and the environment;
To involve representatives from the media industries and NGOs in the research and writing process and disseminate our research outwards, using and building on these existing connections;
To produce interdisciplinary and joint analysis and research which will be published through scholarly outlets including one commissioned journal issue and one edited book in addition to publications through more popular forms and formats such as a website designed to solicit wider public interaction and feedback
To produce the outlines of a major research funding bid for submission in late 2011

Events

Workshop 1

Location: King's College, London

Date: 6th Sept 2010

A series of network members gave short 10 minute presentations which were followed by a much longer breakout set of discussions in the afternoon of that day. There were about 10 different people involved in the workshop through Skype/web presentations.

Network Meeting

Location: Wildscreen Festival, Bristol

Date: 9th-17th October 2010

Members of the network attended the Wildscreen Festival, internationally acknowledged as the most influential and prestigious event of its kind in the world. Its aim is to celebrate, applaud and encourage excellence, and responsibility, in wildlife and environmental filmmaking - films which increase the global viewing public's understanding of the natural world, and the need to conserve it.

Conference Session

Location: Nature Inc Conference, The Hague

Date: 30th June-2nd July 2011

'Capitalism, Environmentalism, Spectacle and the work of Natural
History Film' - This panel reported some of the findings of an event
ethnography conducted at the ‘Wildscreen’ festival of natural history
film, a bi-annual event in Bristol, where the BBC operates the largest
Natural History Production Unit in the world. The session explored the
technologies, discursive registers and vocabularies, and some of the
histories and alliances within and around the 2010 festival. In our
exploration of the role of different kinds of spectacle, and
strategies for audience involvement in such films, and their politics,
we focused on the short prizewinning film ‘Green’ about the Indonesian rainforest, as yet undistributed through mainstream media but greeted with acclaim in numerous settings.

Workshop 2

Location: King's College, London

Date: 7th-8th of July 2011

Members of the network gave short presentations on the themes of: 'star power', 'spectacular visualisations/representations', and 'spectacular communication forms/politics', considering the role of celebrity (in human and animal forms) and spectacle in environmental campaigning. The final part of the workshop was spent discussing future plans and outputs.

Achievements

Work is underway on a special issue of the journal Celebrity Studies, and on web-resources for the network. The members of the network hope to continue the work completed by the project through future funding.

Harrison Ford speaks at the launch of the Tiger Conversation Initiative at the National Zoo in Washington June 9, 2008. Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

An interactive map of the celebrity recolonization of Africa by Dave Gilson (motherjones.com).

Landscape and Environment Programme

School of Geography
University Park
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 84 66071
email: landscape@nottingham.ac.uk