'I STAND FOR WHAT I STAND ON' - Rebecca's climate strike performance

Over the last year, Cohort 4 BGFer Rebecca has been working with her local UK Student Climate Network group in Gloucester and Strike a Light - an organisation working to make Gloucester a city with a vibrant culture for all - to put together something creative inspired by their shared experience of the global climate strikes. This culminated in a performance in Gloucester Cathedral in October 2020. Read on to find out more about the event, and the continued work of UKSCN Gloucester in the build up to COP26 in Glasgow later in 2021.

UKSCN Gloucester and Strike a Light met at the September 2019 global climate strike. From the very beginning there had always been a suggestion of putting together a show. The process started in February 2020 where after the Australian wildfires, it was decided that we would hold a fundraising gig in aid of the victims. Here we performed a scratch (work in progress) based around our school strikes.

The process of turning the original performance into something bigger slowed down during the first lockdown but we continued to meet online and work out what we wanted to do. In August 2020 we began working with our director. We then worked online for a couple of months creating texts about our experience of school strikes, attitudes of others towards the school strikes and lists of changes we wanted to see.

In September we rehearsed in person for three weeks leading up to the scratch. Here we worked on mashing texts together and adding movement. We also got inspired by the ghost photo shoot trend on TikTok and choose to begin the show dressed as ghosts.

On October 17th we performed our scratch (called 'I STAND FOR WHAT I STAND ON') in Gloucester Cathedral under Gaia - a seven metre diameter recreation of Planet Earth created by artist Luke Jerram. This was very poignant not only because we were underneath a model of what we are protecting hanging by a thread above us, but also, as we have not been able to do any of our usual actions due to the pandemic.

We are now working online again to create something even bigger with the hope of touring and going to COP26 in the autumn. If you are interested in following the progress check out UKSCN Gloucester’s Instagram and Twitter accounts.