THE CHRYSALIS PROJECT
Transforming Together
The Story
Year completed: 2020
Medium: Virtual workshops, hundreds of drawings and letters to local politicians envisioning a just climate future, video.
Commissioning Agency: Thurston Climate Action Team
Collaborators: Thurston Climate Action Team, youth climate activists, Nisqually River Education Project, South Sound Green, City of Olympia Stream Team, Olympia and North Thurston schools, over 200 community members, Jenna Mason Media.
The Following video was created by Jenna Mason Media | https://www.jennamasonmedia.com/, written and narrated by Carrie Ziegler, Earth Art.
When the pandemic hit, Thurston Climate Action Team had to completely reimagine how we do our work. One of the first projects that came out of this was the virtual Art in Action Project, The Chrysalis Project: Transforming Together.
We quickly pivoted from in person work to an online program exploring the power of art, the critical moment we were in as individuals and a society, what we might experience with the climate crisis, and the transformation of butterflies, ourselves, and our society.
In 2020, we held 10 Chrysalis Project workshops via Zoom with over 200 participants. In these workshops, we examined ourselves in the midst of three crises; a pandemic, a racial reckoning, and the climate crisis. We used the metaphor of what happens as a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly inside of a chrysalis, imagining that each of us, and our society is currently inside of its own chrysalis, that we have the chance to emerge on the other side into a world where we not only survive, but thrive.
In The Chrysalis Project: Transforming Together, participants used tools they had in their own homes, their creativity, and the power of our voices raised together to call for climate justice. We wrote poems of climate action, painted gardens, bicycles, healthy ecosystems, and wind energy, all inside of a butterfly motif. We explored through art what our world will look like if we take collective action, and what it will look like if we don’t. We wrote heartfelt letters committing to our own climate actions and asking our leaders to lead us in this work. We mailed our artwork and letters to local elected officials asking for strong climate action, to pass and implement a strong climate mitigation plan. The artwork and letters made a strong visual statement and were received by elected officials with gratitude and in many cases, a commitment to climate action. We displayed their work on our website, on social media, and created a short video celebrating the project.
In the winter of 202, in part due to The Chrysalis Project, Thurston County, Olympia, Tumwater, and Lacey passed a resolution to adopt the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan. This very ambitious plan aims to reduce emissions by 45% below 2015 levels by the year 2030 and 85% below 2015 levels by 2050.
Gallery
