Dr Fabienne Viala (Director of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies) explains the concept of ‘artivism’ to us, in its Caribbean context, as a fusion of art forms and practices through which artists confront and engage with a range of publics. Fabienne argues that artivism activates the empathetic imagination, and looks at how environmental and racial justice are brought into dialogue through her work with Caribbean artivists.

Dr Chantal Wright (Warwick Writing Programme) delivers the first of our ‘Literature, Language and Translation’ Faculty of Arts at Home films: ‘The Literary Translation: A Guide for the Perplexed, Curious and Uninitiated’. Chantal is an important advocate for translation as a profession and a practice, and she draws our attention here to the creative processes of literary translation. She highlights, for example, the significance of the #namethetranslator​ hashtag, and the campaign to properly credit translators for their work. Her film urges us, more broadly, to appreciate the fact that translated works are the result of the creative endeavours of two people.

Explore with Professor Silvija Jestrovic (Theatre and Performance Studies) some ideas from her recent work about the presence and absence of the author, in ‘The Author Dies Hard’. Siilvija challenges us to think about the questions ‘Who is the author?’ and ‘Where is the author?’. Her wider work looks at how the author is constructed through cultural and political imaginaries and erasures, intertextual and intertheatrical references, re-performances and self-referentiality, and what the politics and ethics of these constructions are.

Hear from Dr Eris Williams Reed (Classics and Ancient History) about her work on the history of the Roman Near East and ancient communities’ interaction with the environment. Eris looks for expressions of environmental loss and ecological grief in the Safaitic inscriptions of Northern Arabia and uncovers the precarious, volatile and fragile relationship that some people in the ancient world had with their environment.

Hear from Dr Pietari Kaapa (Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies) about his work on the relationship between media and climate change. Pietari asks us to think here about the environmental impact of the production of our media and reports on the work of the Global Green Media Production Network.

Hear from Dr Jonathan Skinner (English and Comparative Literary Studies) about his critical and creative work in the field of ecopoetics. Jonathan illuminates for us the importance of the writing and study of poetry in environmental contexts, and highlights the important work that poetry can do in times of environmental crisis. He reads here his poem ‘Paragraphs on Forest Bathing’, written for the HS2 protest encampment at Cubbington Woods, Warwickshire.

In the first of our Faculty of Arts at Home films focusing on environmental issues, hear from Dr Olga Smith (Institute for Advanced Studies, History of Art) about her research on ‘Visualising Climate Change’. Olga explores the effect of images on our perception of global climate change and how this might impact upon public awareness of these issues, as well as on the formation of environmental policy. Her broader research looks at the relationship between humans and nature in contemporary landscape art.

In the final of our ‘Health, Wellbeing and the Arts’ Faculty of Arts at Home films, hear about the research journey of Dr Somak Biswas (Institute for Advanced Studies, Global History and Cultures) and Dr Sara Bamdad (Sociology, now at the University of Kent) on their fascinating project, ‘Queer Immigrants of Colour, Coventry 1970 to Now’. As well as discussing some of their findings, they talk about the challenges of doing this research in lockdown.