conscient podcast

This posting was written and recorded while on a trip to northern India. It explores the inter-relations of culture and climate. The audio version is fun because of the soundscapes of Delhi in the background (car horns, bird song, sweeping of leaves, music, etc)

It features excerpts from my comments to the Create Canada project which is important given its potential to deepen conversations about the role of culture as Canada faces existential threats from the regime of our southern neighbour.

I did not agree with all their postings but I saw merit in their...

Hey there faithful, brave and patient conscient podcast listeners, 

Welcome to the 3rd conscient roundtable. Live radio style again. First take, only take, kind of thing so please bear with me. This is an exciting and unique episode coming up, with an international scope. 

It was recorded on Thursday, March 20, 2025 on Zoom with participants Kashee in India, Shaun and Marcela in Ireland (though Marcela is originally from Venezuela), Greg in the United States and myself in Vancouver. So the five of us chatted for over an hour. 

At the beginning, you’ll hear me ack...

What can I do to support the grieving? There's so much to grieve. Whether we think about the crisis of climate, whether we think about the political crises, the issue of displacement, which is around the world. Forced displacement, such a huge crisis. How do we manifest the kinds of spaces that people need to be able to individually and collectively get in touch with how they're feeling and do it in such a way that opens the possibility for what you're talking about with the renewal, or, you know, a post traumatic growth, if you will. And in my...

this moment in canadian culture

reflections on conscient e214 roundtable – this moment in canadian culture 

Note: you can read the original posting on my a calm presence Substack here.

Also see the Transcript of this episode for the complete posting. 

Big thanks to all roundtable participants, Robin Sokoloski, Annette Hegel, Jai Djwa, Owais Lightwala, SGS, also known as Sarah Garton Stanley, Max Wyman and Chris Creighton-Kelly for taking the time to share their thoughts and to you for listening and considering what ‘this moment in canadian culture’ means to you. 

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END...

Hey there faithful and brave conscient listeners, 

Welcome to the second conscient roundtable conversation. This one was recorded on Sunday, March 16, 2025 in Vancouver. In a minute you’ll hear an acknowledgement about the original stewards of these lands followed by a minute of silent contemplation.

Normally, conscient roundtables feature a group of artists and cultural workers talking about their passions, fears and dreams and, in fact, we did do this, but this was a special episode of the conscient podcast : e216 in memoriam tracey friesen. Tracey left us on January 6, 2025 at age 58.

Who was Tr...

I would say that while there's absolutely no question that we're in a crisis, there's no question about multi crisis. I'm not sure we're in the state of collapse. And I think that methodology, that vision, that understanding of the world can lead to... You were talking about it a few minutes ago, doom scrolling and just doom. I find that that can create a lot of inertia in people, a lot of hopelessness and pessimism. I have a colleague in the US, Arlene Goldbard, and she's quoting (Antonio) Gramsci and she says, ‘pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the...

I think, as has already been mentioned by a number of you, that we need to slow down, not speed up. This is a moment for really slow thinking and to be listening and to be doing deep listening. I like this concept that we use, again in Primary Colours. Instead of thinking of outreach and trying to convince people and tell them about how great the arts are, we need to do in-reach, we need to go into communities and listen to people, go where people are and understand what it is they understand about their cultures, plural. And...

The arts have that capacity to be powerful broadcasters, conveyors of messages, invitations to celebration, reflection, storytelling, narrative building and so on. There's a vital role here for the arts. But like the rest of society, frankly, whether it's the banking system or government we're simply not doing it well enough that we could say we're satisfied with how much is happening and everything's going to be okay. It's not. If we just stopped now, chaos and worse are due. It's not to say that we can hold up the arts and say, if only you were doing your job...

There's been a real lack of positive action and response from the arts community to these existential questions that confront us. And I really wonder whether that's not because they're simply bewildered by what's been going on. They're terrified, most of them. A lot of the conversation that goes on that I'm aware of has to do with the precariousness of existence for the artist. There is no there's no solid ground for them to work on when there's no money. So they're afraid to rock the boat, one thing. But they do tend to talk in circles without ever...

I think there is a responsibility we have as artists to relate to our artistry responsibly. And that has to do with sensing into our artistic sensibility as a medicine or a gift that we were given to come into this embodiment, to become the people that we are and share this medicine with the people in our community around us. And I think it's about asking the question, what is a medicine that I can bring? Not from a place of heroism, not from a place of saviorism, but from a place of genuinely, honestly inquiring, asking what is...

Hey there

Welcome to the first conscient roundtable conversation recorded on Saturday March 1, 2025 in Tiohtià:ke (also known as Montreal). 

This episode features local artists, activists and cultural workers Alyssa Scott, Devon Hardy, Jimmy Ung, Katrine Claassens, Sophie Weider, Sébastian Méric de Bellefon and myself (I’m actually from Ottawa) talking about our passions, fears and dreams and engaging in some playful banter, though, I have to say, this group had some pretty serious issues on their minds.

Do you know any art and science jokes? 

Our conversation lasted 91 minutes and is p...

I think that the first thing artists have to do is to start telling the truth. You know, just like climate change five or six years ago, you just didn't really want to talk about it. You got shunned in polite company if you talked about it. Now we have the c word, right? We've got collapse. But the conversation hasn't started yet. And I think just broadly speaking, the artistic community… The best of the artistic community, has always been on the edge, right? The social edge. Pushing, complaining, challenging, resisting…

Robert R. Janes

My conversation with...

I’ve been (earnestly) taking courses, workshops and seminars these last few years, while producing over 300 podcasts about art and ecology, as my way of helping future generations prepare for what we are leaving them. 

My most recent learning and unlearning exercise is Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2025, a 10 week course inspired by the work of British ecologist David Fleming. 

I wrote about the first three weeks of the course in prepare, bend, sustain posting (also available in audio). So this is part 2 of 2. 

Surviving the Future has been very influential in my life. <...

Note: to read this posting on a calm presence see a conscient rethink

a conscient rethink

What needs to be said? Who needs to say it? Who wants to hear it? How does it help? 

February 16th, 2025, on the unceded lands of the Algonquin-Anishinaabe people.

I started publishing the conscient podcast and balado conscient in May of 2020. 

My goal was to ‘explore art and the ecological crisis as a learning and unlearning journey’. 

At that time I believed that ‘the arts and culture could play a critical...

Note: I wrote this facebook posting this morning (February 11, 2025) that I’m repurposing as a calm presence essay and as a bonus episode of conscient. 

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Hi,

We need social media spaces that are non profit, with decent values and ethics, community spirit and maturity. 

This will come. 

In the meantime we have extractive behemoths like Meta, that are nonetheless the product of human ingenuity and that are useful to help connect (even though I think having coffee with a friend or chatting by a fire is better.)

This...

What triggered my climate denial bubble to burst? I feel compelled to share this personal experience, in the hope that it might help others who are also struggling with the current sustainability crisis and searching for a path forward…

This is an ENCORE episode of the conscient podcast from season 1, episode 1, first published on April 30, 2020.

Kaboom !

You’ll understand what this Kaboom is about in a few minutes. 

This episode…

prepare, bend, sustain

what I learned in the first 3 weeks of surviving the future 2025

Note: the original posting on my a calm presence Substack is here. 

Sarah Heynen, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Food & Ecology, suggested I take Surviving the Future : The Deeper Dive (StF), a 10 week course offered by Sterling College, in Vermont. The course is informed by the work of English economist, cultural historian and writer David Flemingand is led by British author and activist Shaun Chamberlin.

Sarah was right about taking the course.

So far it...

What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post-carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to be a different world, not long from now. If we do this, and we must do this, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss and sacrifice and challenge, not just with what's happening externally from a climate point of view, but in how we're going to have to make changes to our lives and reorient our energies in terms of our advocacy. I feel like there's an...

A bonus episode in between seasons 5 and 6, featuring my new year’s 'a calm presence' reflection on hope with writings and stories by Peter Schneider, John Crier (as told to Vanessa Andreotti), Richard Heinberg, Zia Gallina, Naomi Klein, Azul Carolina Duque, Jem Bendell, Robert R. Janes and Hildegard Westerkamp. 

To read the original posting on Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com/p/when-spirit-becomes-one-5f5

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END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 202...

Note: this is the audio version of my 'listen and co-create' posting on 'a calm presence'. 

On September 23, 2024, while driving in Victoria BC to record a conversation with educator and musician Azul Carolina Duque for conscient season 6 (to be released in 2025), I was listening to Nate Hagens' The Great Simplification episode 139 : Bioregional Futures: Reconnecting to Place for Planetary Health with regenerative living activist Daniel Christian Wahl. 

As I listened to the 36th minute of this engaging podcast, I felt a wave of relief ripple through my body, as if a burden had been lifted…

I...

flowing through

opening ever-new vistas through listening and conversation 

I received an email from composer Hildegard Westerkamp, about ego, and set Hildi’s words to  sound. 

Below is my reading of an executive summary of my ‘letter to the arts community about the ecological crisis - let’s put the climate emergency back onto our agendas’. I invite you to read the complete letter, when you get a chance, in English or in French, however this summary will give you the basics. I also invite you to submit comments on my Substack, on any of my social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked in) or directly to claude@conscient.ca. 

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Dear Canadian arts and cultural sector,

I hope these words find yo...

Welcome to the conscient podcast season 6 trailer

I’m Claude Schryer, the host and producer of both conscient podcast and its french equivalent balado conscient. 

I’m speaking to you from unceded Algonquin-Anishinaabe land also known as Ottawa. 

This trailer will give you an idea of what’s to come with this learning and unlearning journey of mine that I started in May 2020 still exploring art and the ecological crisis however a lot has changed since then. I wrote about in my a calm presence Substack : a conscient rethink

Here's an excerpt...

My interest in science is quite poetic. The things that I find the most interesting about science are when it can be woven into a story that makes sense and I think that's kind of artistic in a way: you take the scientific knowledge and make it into a more abstract kind of poetic thing.

Note: I'll be back during the winter of 2025 with season 6 on the theme of 'art and culture in times of crisis and collapse'. Also, this episode was published on October 23, 2024 : our daughter Clara Schryer's 23rd birthday. Bonne fête chère Clara!

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The planet's not dying. Our place and our version of it may be dying. So how do we deal with that? How do we accept and live with the knowledge that our version of it is dying. It's not something to panic about in the sense that the whole thing's going away, hopefully. We don't know, but I think that notion of living with grace, living without fear, trying to live without anxiety, because those are just places where we flounder, shut off and develop toxic escapes.

(photo of Kenneth Newby by Linda Ofshe)

I first met...

​​I think if we can reimagine what matters to us and pursue that, then perhaps there's a chance that we can stop this truly self-destructive pursuit of infinite more, and in material terms, become happy with enough, without giving up the idea of personal growth and evolution, because I do think that is core to what it is to be human and even just alive. Life is about growth. The history of life on earth is one of ever more complexity and richness. And I think it would be like, I just don't agree with the argument that we have to s...

In the face of destruction, we should create. In the face of hurt, we should heal. In the face of hate, we should love. That's my feeling and figuring out how to do that is everybody's job.

I’ve known Sheila James for 25 years as an arts funder colleague, artist, filmmaker, writer, but also her work as an equity expert, social activist and as a family friend. 

Our conversation began with an overview of her views on equity and how it differs from equality. For example: 

gliding towards a crash

reflections on this moment 

Note: This bonus episode is from my ‘a calm presence’ substack about ‘short, practical essays about collapse acceptance, adaptation, response and art’. Cover photo was taken by me at Tribune Bay, Hornsby Island, BC on September 17, 2024.

Friends and colleagues often ask me why I focus my energies on ‘anticipating, observing, and experiencing societal disruption and collapse’ (deep adaptation forum).

A good question.  

Instead of societal collapse, Arno Kopecky (author of The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis and...

I'd like to use art more as a tool to get people thinking, get people involved, especially young people, and hopefully, help them process the emotions of climate change and move towards a space of action and hope. At least for me, as a young person, art felt like the way to have my voice be heard, and I hope to help other people experience that as well.

I first heard about Sophie Weider from an email she sent me on August 14th, 2024. With Sophie’s permission, here is an excerpt: 

All artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art (and that's going to piss some people off - Claude Schryer). I think it will. Climate infuses all our responses to everything, to relationships, to our culture, to our history. You can't ignore the climate that it's happening in, and that's why it has to be somehow in the art that you are involved with.

Leslie Reid, an Ottawa based artist and educator, has been influenced by her family’s military background transitioning from political science to art. Her work explores sensory and emotional responses to en...

We're going through a crash, the sixth extinction, climate collapse, geopolitical collapse, economic collapse, all types of overlapping, interlaced cycles of destruction. And like on planes, what you can do, at best, is to get ready for a glide as opposed to a hard landing, because that means some will survive, and those that survive aren't necessarily the lucky ones. So while we're on the plane, instead of putting on our noise canceling earphones, pretending that we're not in a sardine can, we could try turning to each other and saying hello. So many things can happen between the moment...

I believe that we are all connected by these invisible threads, the shared sinew amongst all living things, that includes humans, plants, animals, what have you, and that what art is, is the lighting up, making those invisible threads visible. … It doesn't really explain in that analogy what art is, but it certainly speaks to the way it functions and why it should matter to society : why arts should matter.

In this episode, Robin Sokoloski (she/her) discusses her recent experiences and current work in the arts research sector with a focus on how the arts community can have me...

I really think art is one of the most important things to help tackle issues and create social change. There's that quote from Maya Angelou that goes something like ‘people will forget what you say or do, but they'll never forget how you make them feel’. The power of art is to evoke feelings that stick with people and that's often what inspires people as well.

Maggie Chang is a poet, writer, and artist whose environmental journey started in first grade when she learned about deforestation of the Amazon in school. Since then, Maggie has led campus secondhand clothing sale...

This is a bonus episode from my 'a calm presence' substack: lens shift featuring an excerpt from e164 jimmy ung - proximity proportionate responsibility.

The original text is below. The audio version was recorded on my iPhone in Vancouver on September 9, 2024 (4 minutes, 36 seconds). I also invite you to read the comments about this posting including one by Don Hill about the use of 'either/or dilemmas' in this kind of writing, which is a fair point (thanks Don). My response included that I sometimes 'do not leave enough room for the listener or reader to take their...

The role of the artist in the climate crisis is not simply to communicate scientific information in a sort of dressed up kind of way, but really to engage the imagination to do that thing that only art can do, which is getting at these almost imperceptible shifts in identity, in purpose and meaning, and the way that we as humans think about our relationship with the natural world and our place in it. It’s ineffable, that kind of shift. If that’s not the role of art, I don't know what is.  

Judi Pearl has been a passio...

If we're going to see change happen, it's going to be because people change and that doesn't occur when you preach to them or you evangelize or anything else. It comes because people, in whatever way is appropriate for them, as individuals, begin to reevaluate the way they live, the way their friends live, and make different choices and say to the government, more has to be done. Because what we're losing and what the next generation, our children and grandchildren will lose is immeasurable and we have to act now. Later is too late.  So Climate Legacy essentially is t...

That's the thing about the future's work and foresight work is you need a very broad range of thinkers. You need people from different perspectives who speak different languages and who recognize different worldviews. I think that's always why artists will be important in that process, because they are not necessarily coming from sort of mainstream culture. They may be immersed, raised in mainstream culture, but they're often trying to say, hey, there are other ways of seeing the world, and there are other ways of responding to the world that we're in right now.

I first met Zan...

I think a lot of people right now are feeling terror or feeling deep grief - worry about climate - and might mention it in a joking way over dinner, like ‘oh, well, we'll see if we're all around in 20 years’ and there's so much truth to that, to the pain people are feeling in the worry. And so in the end, I think and hope that it's helpful to share my personal emotional experience of this, even though it's very vulnerable to do so.

As promised during our first conversation on June 10th, 2024, in e187 alice irene whittaker - ca...

It’s really important to have some sort of horizon to grasp onto and work towards and for me that is thinking about what possible worlds might exist and how can I spend my time contributing to making those worlds possible. Of course that is a huge question and it changes a lot day to day. I have been thinking a lot lately about how art and scholarship around the environment can teach and inform one another in terms of practice and action.

I know Emma Bugg from two art and environment research activities in Canada : Sustainability and the Ar...

The majority of individuals who work in this sector are deeply concerned about climate change and deeply motivated and often doing a lot about it in their personal lives but as a sector, we don't really have a vision of what our relationship is to it.  So the kinds of responses range from a kind of silence on it and trying not to look at it directly in the eye to a superficial level of conversation, saying things like touring requires flying : flying bad, therefore, we should stop touring. (Owais Lightwala)When we're living in moments of deep confusion and c...