Codename Seedling: Building Creative Bridges Across Oceans

Posted on March 31st, 2025

In the realm of climate education, art has the power to transcend borders and connect young minds across vast oceans. Over the past year, our involvement in the Erasmus+ project Codename: Seedling has demonstrated exactly that, exploring non-formal climate education through playful international collaboration. 

A reflection from Associate Director, Toby Peach.

A Meeting of Creative Minds

Codename: Seedling has brought together artists from across Europe – Denmark, France, Belgium, Portugal and the UK– allowing us to explore diverse participatory practices and creative methodologies around Climate Justice. Climate Justice means finding solutions to the climate crisis that not only reduce emissions or protect the natural world, but that do so in a way which creates a fairer, more just and more equal world in the process. Unpacking how we, as Artists, can make work that engages audiences in these conversations through young engagement was our focus. Through these enriching exchanges, we began developing an innovative project called “The Island,” which would become a bridge between young people from two distinct island nations: the United Kingdom and Vanuatu.

The seeds of this collaboration were planted years ago through my connection with Rik Hinton, a fellow community theatre practitioner. While I completed a placement with Coney during our third year at university, Rik ventured to Vanuatu, where he worked with a community theatre company called Wan Smolbag. His initial experience blossomed into a permanent move to Vanuatu, where he continues to create impactful projects across Vanuatu.

The concept was simple yet powerful: as both the UK and Vanuatu are archipelagos, we wanted to co-create an imagined island through play with young people living in each place; an island that would represent our shared experiences and distinct perspectives. We would work with our resident group of young people, The Young Coneys, and Rik would work with a group from Wan Smolbag. The pandemic initially delayed our plans, but Codename Seedling provided the perfect opportunity to resurrect and expand upon this vision.

Building Bridges Through Creative Exchange

The project began with video exchanges between the young participants. The young people in Vanuatu took the first step, crafting an initial outline of their imagined islands. They were guided by two fundamental questions:

• What elements from their own islands would they want to share with others?
• What missing elements would they like to see in this new, imagined place?

Their creative offerings were both thoughtful and imaginative. The young Vanuatu artists incorporated various elements into their island design: sea creatures, a tower, volcanoes, and even a robot. What struck us most was not just the creativity of their contributions, but the extraordinary care and attention to detail they brought to the physical creation process. Using simple materials like newspaper and PVA glue, they delicately constructed their vision, creating a video tour to share with the UK participants. This careful craftsmanship set a powerful precedent for our group of young people in the UK to build upon as they prepared to add their own layer to their evolving island.

The Power of Response and Responsibility

As the Young Coneys began working with the offerings from Vanuatu, we witnessed something remarkable: their deep sense of responsibility and care for the contributions they had received. We discussed this further with the Young Coneys and explored what it would mean for our exchange. Their approach fundamentally shaped our understanding of the project, transforming it into an exploration of care and responsibility, particularly within the context of climate justice.

In our  workshops with both the Young Coneys and the group in Vanuatu, we made a decision that we wouldn’t actively bring climate justice or the climate crisis into the creative space. We would respond to these themes  if they came up, or to any questions asked. However, after consideration and discussion as a team,  we decided it was irresponsible for us to bring this theme to the groups, particularly those in Vanuatu, who live on the frontlines of the climate crisis every day. We felt we didn’t have the correct time and support in place to explore climate justice or the climate crisis well and with care.   We instead focussed on collective imagination and collaboration, with a focus on crafting a shared landscape both groups felt connected to.

The Young Coneys’ contributions to the Island were both innovative and thoughtful. Their additions included a carbon-neutral boat capable of powering parts of the island, an in depth history of the cat treehouse, and the cats who lived inside, and a racetrack encircling one of the islands. These elements weren’t created in isolation but rather in conscious dialogue with the offerings from Vanuatu, building meaningful connections between the two groups to create a truly shared place.

The third layer, created by the Vanuatu group in response to the UK additions, further emphasised this beautiful interplay of care and responsibility. We watched as the Vanuatu group developed their ideas in response to the Young Coneys’ contributions – trees sprouting near a cat treehouse, rainbow fish populating the seas, and an airport taking shape. Each addition contributed to a growing, shared understanding of what this island could represent.

From Youth Exchange to Performance Workshop

In December, our team of artists – Mel Frances, Germma Orleans-Thompson, Pavlos Christodoulou & Toby Peach – developed these exchanges into a participatory workshop for an adult audience designed to spark conversations about climate justice through the lens of care and responsibility. The timing of this development proved particularly poignant – just as we were play-testing the workshop with adults in the UK, Vanuatu was struck by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. This wasn’t merely coincidental; Vanuatu was ranked as the country with the highest disaster risk in 2022, particularly vulnerable to intense natural hazards like tropical cyclones, a vulnerability likely exacerbated by climate change, whilst generating 0.0016% of global carbon emissions. This was the conversation we wanted to be having with audiences: highlighting the inequality at play, and the necessity of action.

The Belgium Exchange

January 2025 saw us bringing “The Island” workshop to Destelheide, Belgium, where we shared it with three different groups: the Erasmus project artists, and two groups of adults participating in a wider symposium exploring innovative approaches to youth arts and climate activism. We adapted the exchange mechanics used with the young people, but introduced a specific focus on climate justice – a theme we had consciously chosen not to explore with the youth groups due to time constraints and our commitment to handling such discussions with appropriate depth and care.

The workshop evolved to explore power dynamics and ownership over the island, building to a powerful moment of acknowledgment regarding the Vanuatu earthquake. This served as a stark reminder of climate justice issues and the particular responsibility of adults in the Global North to acknowledge and act on the climate crisis.

Looking Forward

The project’s conclusion , and particularly the development of the performance workshop, brought participants to a deeper understanding of climate justice and its inextricable links to colonialism. Through careful facilitation and intentional debriefing, participants moved from creative engagement to meaningful reflection on their role in addressing these crucial issues.

As we look toward sharing “The Island” workshop with UK audiences as part of Coney’s final programme, we’re excited to see how this unique approach to exploring climate justice through creative exchange and participatory practice will continue to evolve and impact participants.

We will also continue to develop our methodology of playful exchanges across continents as we look at how we can build connections between international groups of young people to develop creativity, compassion and agency.

The journey from a simple creative exchange between young people to a powerful tool for exploring climate justice demonstrates the potential of artistic collaboration to address complex global challenges. Through care, responsibility, and creative dialogue, we’ve created something that bridges not just geographical distances, but also helps us understand our shared responsibilities in facing the climate crisis.

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