June Forum: Drought in Armidale

The next SLA Forum, at Kent House on Thursday 6 June, will be on Community Weathering: ‘response-ability’, environmental justice, and climate change in everyday action on drought in Armidale presented by Jennifer Mae Hamilton {pictured}.

Jennifer has the rare skill of crossing the boundaries between academia and every day communication, including the use of street theatre. She is a Lecturer in English Literature at UNE, with research interests in, Weather in Drama, poetry and Literature;  Environmental Humanism; and Feminist theory

What will be particularly special about this talk, is an original slant on how to think about local drought.

While SLA has frequently used the word resilience in forming goals for Armidale, Jennifer recommends an alternative: ‘weathering’, drawn from her research with other scholars. “Weathering suggests responding to and be affected by something,” whether it be “an argument, an unjust policy decision, a drought.”

“I will Propose a framework for thinking about drought that is both responsive to the situation, the broader climate emergency and social justice.”

“At the same time, I will consider both the limits and possibilities of grassroots community action by adopting the hyphenated form, ‘Response-ability’…what responses are available to us, what we are able to do in the context of the place in which we live, and how our responses ‘overlap (or not) with our broader sense of responsibility to act.”

Jennifer went on to say: “Building on the permaculture principle ‘start where you are, use what you have, do what you can’, will open up into a wide-ranging discussion about the possibilities of multi-tasking in response to the drought in Armidale.’

For Jennifer, ‘what I do and the accumulated effects of what everyone does, is the ecological crisis.’

Jennifer’s thinking on weather and water infrastructure can be accessed for free via the Sydney Review of Books Website.

Forum Thursday 6 June 2019: 7–9pm Kent House, Faulkner Street, opposite Central Park

The forum is followed by a delicious light supper and informal conversation. Everyone is Welcome, as are small donations