Bridging Climate Justice, Arts, and Community
In the heart of Vancouver and Montreal, a unique and vibrant collective is redefining the intersection of climate justice, arts, and community engagement. Meet the Sword Fern Collective, a dynamic group co-led by Paige Hunter, Victor Yin, and Erica Binder, three passionate individuals who have merged their diverse skills and experiences to create a powerful force for climate action.
We had the pleasure of interviewing the collective and hope you enjoy learning more about them!
The Founders
Erica Binder (she/her) is a musician and arts management professional based in Vancouver who is like, really into arts and culture - specifically the ways which the arts can be can be applied as a tool to strengthen communities and preserve shared histories. Erica is a classical trumpet player turned shower vocalist and ukulele plucker, and she can almost always be found running around in the woods or (more likely :’) ) hunched over her laptop, latte in hand, tip tapping away at her latest project. Her main loves in life include reading, gravel biking, and her gorgeous gorgeous pals - including the other 2/3rds of sword fern.
Victor Yin (he/they) is a chaotic queer POC that grew up in Burnaby and just moved to Montréal. Victor studied human geography and has a cert in urban studies, and a graduate cert in environmental education and communication! He has worked in the social housing sector and cares too much about our society. He tries to do a lot of writing and poetry and reading and he also likes biking and rock climbing and absorbing personality traits from other people. cringe and also a certified yapper.
Paige Hunter (she/her) is certified granola girlie born and raised in Langley, BC and recently transplanted to Vancouver. Her passion for climate justice began with seeing land-use change in her community and watching her Fern Gully VHS every day. She studied resource and environmental management and geographic information science, and wants to pursue a masters' in climate disaster management (where? when? who knows…). She's been a climate activist for !!12+ years now!! and will be one 4 lyfe. Paige plays bass trombone, which is how she met Erica, and she's a huge fan of skiing, running hiking, cycling, rock climbing, thrifting, and reading fantasy books (or reading anything Victor writes <3). In 2023 she was named one of Canada's Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 by the Starfish Canada and yes, she puts that in all of her bios.
What inspired the creation of Sword Fern Collective, and how did the founders come together to mobilize collective climate knowledge in Vancouver?
The creation of sword fern collective is definitely a funny one. Honestly, we were all fans of each other and deciding to slide into each others instagram DMs. Victor saw that Paige was giving workshops and wanted to collaborate, and then Erica saw that we were co-creating virtual climate education workshops and wanted to co-produce a climate concert! One year, two events, [many newsletter posts] (http://swordfernco.substack.com), and many, many laughs later we're co-leading an organization we're really proud of.
Sword fern collective started as a project to take climate change knowledge down from the academic "ivory tower," and contextualize it through an emotions-grounded lens. We (and our peers) all experience climate anxiety and grief—we wanted to find ways to catalyze hope. Erica brought this phenomenal wealth of knowledge in how the arts, specifically, can be a tool for getting people interested in climate action. We saw this really cool overlap in all of our interests and skills, and an unmet emotional need in our communities, which led us to combine climate education, access to the arts, and emotional resilience.
How does Sword Fern Collective approach the challenge of fostering hope and compassion in climate justice discussions, especially in the face of widespread eco-anxiety and despair?
We really focus on community, whether it's through our [newsletter](http://swordfernco.substack.com/), workshops, or events. There’s a lot of rhetoric in the climate space telling us to "feel hopeful" but it's hard to find that hope in isolation. The three of us write a lot about community and relationship-building, and our event series, The Art of Change, is about a collective climate art experience. When you get people in a room witnessing and creating climate art together, you see them start to recognize the little sparks of hope in each other.
We don't have a perfect solution, and we know that group settings can create tough climate despair spirals. But we're also not trying to force people to be happy and hopeful, because the truth is scary and challenging—the world is indeed in a grave state. Our aim is to give people a place to process and sit with their climate emotions. Sometimes, that looks like a release of heavy emotions, such as someone creating a collage about their climate grief, but often that creative outlet allows people to process their emotions.And by offering a collective space to do so, we can help them see that they're not alone. That’s what it’s really about—we want to show people that they have a community and empower them towards collective action.
Can you share a specific example of how Sword Fern Collective has successfully sparked dialogue within a community, leading to tangible climate solutions or actions?
In winter 2023 we launched our Art of Change series with a mixed-media concert in Heritage Hall in Mount Pleasant. We worked with a string quartet from UBC who improvised a piece in response to video compiled from community submissions, and added this a to a program of collective singing and other nature-inspired pieces from living composers. This was a very unusual concert - we weren’t sure how it would be received by the Vancouver community, but we found this first instalment to be quite successful. Over 80 attendees came out to witness music and come together. In the discussion period, we asked participants questions like, "**What’s missing in your community?" and “What would motivate your neighbourhood to pursue change together?”** Many of the attendees did not know each other, but we hoped by experiencing art together, people would open up.
And it worked! We saw people having in-depth conversations with complete strangers, and once the event concluded we had participants come up to us saying that while they’d come for the music, they had some really meaningful conversations with complete strangers. We even had some people share that they’d invited the people from their discussion circles over for dinner. This community-building continued in our second event, focused on creative writing, this past June.
How do you balance the need for urgent climate action with the importance of maintaining a compassionate and inclusive approach in your work?
The interesting, and sometimes criticized, part of our work is that we fit into an area of the climate movement that moves purposefully (aka, a bit slowly). Our focus is on building community relationships and understanding our climate emotions, and this focus means that our work goes at the pace of the human heart.
We are all living in a climate that will continue to change over our lives, even if we do every ‘perfect’ action today. That certainty of change means that it is necessary for us to prepare (and repair) our communities for this new reality. By helping people feel emotionally capable, instead of emotionally paralyzed, our hope is that communities feel able to take action and know that their actions have impact.
We tie in the urgency by partnering with community leaders working in a variety of climate areas. We want to platform frontline work or direct action that is already happening, and show people where they can go to take action. This is something we only started doing recently in our newsletter, but we want to bring it into our events and community work.
What role do arts and culture play in Sword Fern Collective's mission, and how have you used creative expression to engage communities in climate justice?
One of the reasons we focus so much on art is its powerful emotional force. With climate data, it’s easy to ignore or push it away with the logical side of the brain. But with art, that “logic wall” is bypassed and the impact is felt immediately. This is amplified in a group setting!
We’ve all experienced friends, family, and strangers be confrontational about climate change, but we’ve also seen how people react to art. [Paul Nicklen](https://paulnicklen.com/) and [Cristina Mittermeier] (https://www.cristinamittermeier.com/) are two climate artists who come to mind on this topic. Their photography gives viewers an instant, emotional connection to their subjects, and their photographs of the climate change impacts on wildlife are haunting. Their work transcends any barriers put up by language, background, and education, and strikes right into the heart of what’s at stake.
In our work at sword fern, the use of arts and culture also gives us the opportunity to platform local artists. We are able to support our creative communities, and we disrupt expectations in both the climate and art spaces. When we’re engaging our communities in climate justice, we’ve found that the arts are the most unique tool for bringing new people in. Many people who have come to our events for the first time are drawn in by the artistic element. Live performances have a way of “priming” your audience for whatever message you want to share, because being an audience member is a humble experience. When you‘re an audience member the experience isn’t about you, so you’re able to check your ego at the door and be completely present. When we move from a live performances to a more collaborative discussion, people are much slower to put their walls up, and have a much better response to climate justice topics.
We also really love making arts and culture accessible. Both art and climate spaces in North America can have these weird, elitist, “ivory tower” feelings associated with them, but we show people that they don’t need a prestigious degree or high tax bracket to create art that helps them process their climate emotions.
In the past, audiences have worked with musicians and poets to co-create art, and Paige recently ran a virtual climate writing workshop with The Starfish Canada where people wrote hopeful short climate stories. In all instances, we’ve heard people say that they’d never felt like they were good enough to create climate art, or that they’d put up other barriers to prevent them from being creative. To be able to give people a place to feel and be creative has been an immense privilege, and it has shown the need for more work in this underserved area.
Looking ahead, what are the future goals and aspirations for Sword Fern Collective, and how do you plan to further advance climate justice and community empowerment in the coming years?
Our 2025 plans include an expansion in Montreal, with Victor leading some exciting work with climate and art communities there!
Longer term, we want to continue supporting educators! We’d love to work more with teachers and school boards to bring this to students, and we also are working with arts organizations across Canada to see how they can incorporate climate and climate emotions into their programming and operations.
Do you have any other information you'd like to share with our followers?
We're looking for written submissions for our newsletter and have financial support available! Fill out the submission form here: https://victorsyin.fillout.com/rerootsubmissions
Sword Fern Collective stands as a beacon of hope and innovation in the climate justice movement. By intertwining arts, culture, and community engagement, Paige, Victor, and Erica have created a space where people can process their climate emotions, find solidarity, and mobilize towards collective action. As they continue to grow and expand their reach, their work serves as a powerful reminder that even in the face of daunting challenges, community, creativity, and compassion can be the catalysts for meaningful change. Follow Sword Fern Collective on Instagram (@swordfernco) and subscribe to their newsletter (https://swordfernco.substack.com/) to stay updated on their inspiring journey and upcoming initiatives.
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