The Loving Earth Project

Is there something, someone or somewhere that you know and love which is endangered by environmental break-down? How does your lifestyle contribute to that threat? What could you do, or are you doing, to help reduce that threat?

The Loving Earth Project, started by Friends in the UK and now expanding internationally, invites participants to explore these three questions. The community project “celebrates people, places, creatures and other things that we love but which are threatened by growing environmental breakdown.” It offers online resources and events to help guide through this exploration and welcomes contributions to its community textile project, which encourages participants to create a visual reflection of their response.  These beautiful textile panels feature everything from wild flowers to school strikers to polar bears. The panels and accompanying texts form part of a traveling display, showcasing the many ways in which people find themselves connecting to climate crisis and the natural world. You can see some of them at https://lovingearth-project.uk/gallery/ ; they hope for a big display in Glasgow for COP 26 in November 2021 and to tour widely thereafter.

The project was initiated by members of the Quaker Arts Network in the UK, bearing in mind “the different ways in which Friends can hold spaces for the Spirit to act, including through the arts”. The Loving Earth Project is now run as a partnership involving QAN and Woodbrooke (which is focusing on offering opportunities for Quakers and Quaker groups to engage with the project), and also with a variety of other groups.  Three of the Friends taking it forward are: Maud Grainger who works at Woodbrooke to support Quakers in their engagement with the climate crisis; Linda Murgatroyd who initiated the project and is based in London; and Sue Tyldesley, based in North Lancashire, a textile artist who uses creative embroidery.

The project invites contributions from all cultures, faiths and backgrounds, and welcomes offers from volunteers as local contacts to help this project stretch across the globe. You can find more information, and contact details at lovingearth-project.uk (including an international page) , https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/learn/climate-crisis/loving-earth/  and @LovingEarthProject. To join the e-newsletter mailing list, please contact lovingearthproject@woodbrooke.org.uk