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Interview with Guided by Nature
Share At the end of May 2025, the doors will open to Guided by Nature’s experience-based exhibition, which is part of the project “Shaped Climate Futures” that we support. We had the opportunity to interview Guided by Nature to learn more about the work they are doing.
– We hope that the experience of the exhibition, together with meetings and conversations with researchers and guides, will create an increased awareness of the future through multisensory and emotional experiences.
You Have Received Support for your Project “Shaped Climate Futures.” Can You Tell Us more about it?
It is fantastic that we have received support from the Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation for this experience-based exhibition and communication project about our shared climate futures. The exhibition is inspired by the UN’s Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and presents not just one, but several possible futures. Each future describes societal development based on different parameters such as carbon emissions, energy use, economic development, education, population growth, and technological methods for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We want to challenge the idea that climate change is beyond our control and that the “greenhouse gas genie” is out of the bottle – we must actively co-create our climate futures.
The exhibition consists of various artistic interpretations in the form of greenhouses that visitors can walk through, placed to gather the fragments and create an alternative crystal ball for the future.
For example:
• Visitors can walk through beaded curtains in the form of data models over the Arctic, where warming is happening three times faster than globally.
• Visitors can experience a broken landscape, a future where social and climate inequality has increased.
Vi kommer även att arrangera vetenskapsfestivaler där allmänheten bjuds in till dialog med personer från olika discipliner. Det kommer erbjudas interaktiva skolbesök, en konstskola för de yngsta deltagarna och möjlighet för alla att skriva brev och meddelanden till sina framtida jag.
With this project, we hope to engage a wide range of people in discussions about the future and instill hope and concern – but above all, spark curiosity and engagement. We are convinced that the future is a sketch, and that we all have the opportunity to influence its shape and color.
In this Project, Artists and Researchers from Several Swedish Universities Collaborate. How Can Research and Art Work Together to Engage People in Addressing Climate Change and Sustainability Issues?
We all have long experience working against climate change in our respective networks and contexts, but to reach a broader audience – including those who do not actively seek out our arenas – we believe that co-creation and dialogue can open new avenues of contact.
We all have extensive experience working against climate change in our respective networks and contexts, but to reach a broader audience – including those who do not usually engage with these issues – we are challenging ourselves and the audience to meet in a space that is different from the traditional art world and academic lecture halls. These encounters are meant to “spark discussions and reflections” on topics such as alternatives like degrowth and climate justice.
Can You Tell Us more about your Upcoming Project?
The exhibition Broken Greenhouse / Shaped Climate Futures opens to the public on May 24 in the Botanical Garden in Lund with a whole weekend of dialogue walks and public activities. Visitors will be able to go on a sound walk, eat their packed picnic on specially designed blankets, post messages on a “bulletin board from the future,” and be lulled to rest in a group of “weather hammocks,” among other things. The five different greenhouse sculptures are placed in the garden, and it takes about an hour to travel around the entire exhibition where one can experience everything from a spinning circular dwelling to a dystopian greenhouse in the shape of a brown bunker.
We Hope that the Experience of the Exhibition, Together with Meetings and Conversations with Researchers and Guides, Will Create an Increased Awareness of the Future through Multisensory and Emotional Experiences.
We hope that the experience of the exhibition, together with meetings and conversations with researchers and guides, will create an increased understanding of the importance and possibilities of engaging in the work for a better future – through multisensory and emotional experiences.
The main goal is to spread awareness about the future and to instill both hope and concern, but above all to spark curiosity and engagement. We are convinced that the experience will create a lasting memory to return to.
This can happen on different levels – from small changes in everyday habits (such as how one eats or uses energy) to greater engagement in organizations working against climate change. And we hope that many take the chance to post a letter to their future selves – these will be collected in a seed/time capsule. The letters will be saved and reactivated in 2050 and 2100, to strengthen intergenerational responsibility and long-term reflection.
Photographer: Jean Baptiste Beranger
– The greenhouse tells a long story about manipulating and mimicking the climate for one’s own gain. That the greenhouses of the future might become the last habitable places protected from extreme weather may therefore seem like the irony of fate. (…) But the botanical garden and greenhouse are also a place for budding seeds of thought, and our hope is that the exhibition Broken Greenhouse/Shaped Climate Futures will serve as an inspiring platform for discussions on how we can collectively influence our shared future, says Bigert Bergström .
– Climate change is not globally a driving factor for reduced biodiversity, but a consequence of how we use the planet. A prerequisite for managing biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability issues is therefore to reflect on how we live on our planet. We do not have unlimited time to address these problems, as future climate effects will accumulate and threaten biodiversity, limiting our options in the future. Humans have always been good at adapting to changes, even very rapid changes. We have an innate adaptability and a knack for storytelling. It is we who decide what future climate we create, says Keith Larson, Ph.D., ecologist and director of the Arctic Center at Umeå University.
Projects
Shaped Climate Futures
The climate crisis affects people and societies globally, but for many in Sweden, it still...
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