WEEK THREE
FREEDOM, JUSTICE, JOY.
Environmental awareness and sustainability have become an important part of our festival programme. In the final week of Freedom Online, we explore how artists are responding to the climate crisis and local environmental challenges.
Through their work, these artists highlight the urgency of climate action while also imagining hopeful and creative possibilities for a more sustainable future.
Highly Sprung: Urban Astronaut
Highly Sprung is the UK’s leading physical theatre company working exclusively for and with children and young people. They create award-winning outdoor and indoor performances that tell stories through movement, gesture and dance. Stories that are inspired by humanity, science, and the complex world around us. Using their own physical theatre techniques, they empower young people to explore how their bodies can be used to develop their own unique performing style. Every piece they make is original and devised by young people and our core team of artists and writers. As well as touring work, they run weekly performance workshops for children and young people, and projects in primary and secondary schools across the UK and internationally. They also lead the UK’s only Physical Theatre Fellowship programme for emerging artists.
Here is a behind-the-scenes look at their touring production Urban Astronaut. How was the aerial rig created? What has been the impact of the show? Here is Mark (aka the Astronaut himself!) to answer your questions.
The future. Earth is uninhabitable; destroyed by environmental pollution. But could this devastation have been prevented? The Urban Astronaut, suspended in the air on a gravity defying flying machine, returns to present-day Earth to find out. On his journey, he meets a girl who gives him hope and shows him how the human race can act to avoid planetary destruction if it acts now. Urban Astronaut has toured across the UK and internationally, inspiring vital conversations about the climate crisis.
Watch the video: Urban Astronaut
Kaleider: Arch
Kaleider’s Arch. Documentary & Online Book
A behind the scenes documentary
In 2024, In Situ Associate Artist Seth Honnor, with his company, Kaleider, premiered Arch in a tour to 8 contexts across 7 countries.
Arch is an attempt to build a freestanding arch, made two thirds of concrete and one third of ice. Deceptively simple, yet surprisingly emotional – breath, heart, and muscle entangle with the perpetual inevitability of collapse.
This short documentary takes us behind the scenes with the company, revealing an effort that at times seems to echo the artwork itself.
Kaleider’s 2024 Tour of Arch In Pictures: Online Book
Arch is an attempt to build a freestanding arch, made two thirds of concrete and one third of ice.
Deceptive in its simplicity, Arch unfolds as a surprising emotional journey. An exquisite combination of breath, heart, and muscle entangle with the perpetual inevitability of collapse.
Living with Water
Lee Pitcher, Head of Partnerships for Yorkshire Water and a Board Member for Living with Water, recently co-hosted a Planet Possible podcast.
Tune in to listen to Lee Pitcher and Paddy Brow, Head of the Living with Water Programme for Wastewater Treatment for Northern Ireland Water, discuss how they’re tackling some significant pollution challenges, and learn more about Hull’s Living with Water programme.
Listen to the Podcast Episode:
Watch the video: A Hidden Legacy
Tom Hopper: A Hidden Legacy
When Mark gives up his engineering career to pursue his passion, he unearths a deep sense of purpose that leads him to craft a unique legacy.
The film follows Mark Kemp, a fossil hunter from Bransholme, who shares his incredible story of quitting his job as an engineer to follow his passion.
Hull through and through, Mark tells his story set alongside the natural beauty of the East Coast, a part of our region often overlooked.
Aarti Bhalekar & Anuskha Khemka: Will We Disappear In The Cover of the Sky?
Will We Disappear in the Cover of the Sky? explores the shifting landscape of avian ecology in the UK through a more-than-human lens. This experimental film invites viewers to traverse environments, from urban parks to open skies through the eyes of a starling. As human activity intensifies, the bird narrates its growing struggle with disrupted wayfinding and shrinking foraging grounds.
Central to the film is the concept of 'umwelt', an organism’s unique sensory world. Humans often overlook these alternate perceptions. The film asks: Can understanding a starling’s umwelt inspire new ways of thinking? Can translating sensory experience through digital technologies evoke biophilia, a deeper emotional connection to other life forms?
Starlings are now critically endangered. According to the RSPB, their UK population has declined by 82% since 1979. Through poetic storytelling and immersive digital media, the film aims to raise awareness and foster empathy for these vital species.
Watch the video here:
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