Creative Climate Futures: Our Embedded Artists

From now until March 2025, Creative Climate Futures will work with organisations and local residents in two “pioneer” neighbourhoods in Glasgow to understand what climate change means locally, to imagine what climate ready futures might look like, and to speed up local action to make these a reality.

These neighbourhoods are some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - where flooding and overheating are more likely, and where underlying social and economic inequalities might make it harder for communities to respond to these impacts.

Our Artists

We are pleased to announce the two artists who will be working with our pioneer neighbourhoods over the course of the project to co-design climate-ready futures, agree priorities and instigate action. Our chosen artists were selected after a competitive application process, overseen by our project partners Creative Carbon Scotland. 

Easterhouse - Rebecca Fraser

Rebecca Fraser grew up in the east end and currently lives in Mount Vernon. She studied printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art graduating with an MA Fine Art in 2012. She is a freelance community artist based in Parkhead Schoolhouse and is part of a collective of local charities called the ‘Parkhead Alliance’. She collaborates on partnership projects working holistically to improve the local area. Since 2017 she has worked closely with Parkhead Housing Association, initially acting as “Artist in Residence” as part of their 40th Anniversary year.

Rebecca told us,

"I am excited to be working with the people of Easterhouse and seeing where this project takes us over the next year! I plan to provide caring, cosy, creative spaces to help people daydream about the future and think about what their community needs. I hope we can capture this vision of the future and that it will inspire a legacy of positive changes for local people."

Gorbals - Elena Mary Harris

Photo - @CherryManMedia

Elena Mary Harris is a participatory artist based in Glasgow. Working across arts, education, health and social care settings, advocacy sits at the core of how Elena envisions and designs creative projects. She wants to create spaces where people who often go unheard, will be listened to and encouraged to speak up in audiences they may not otherwise have access to. Creative practices are a way to put these ideas and opinions forward and can create a starting point for people to share their experiences and have an impact on decision making that affects them and their community. 

Looking forward to Creative Climate Futures, Elena said,

"I find that conversations about climate change can be challenging and the settings that we have these in are not always accessible. Creative advocacy is a really big part of my practice and I hope in this project the we can creatively collaborate to instigate collective action in our communities."