Front Room / Baltic Riverside

Creative Climate Club

Fourth Sat of the month | 14:00-16:00

A free, monthly meeting for people who care about nature and are interested in responding creatively to the world around us.

Creative Climate Club is a free, monthly meeting for people who care about nature and are interested in creatively responding to the world around us, our local environment, and wider climate issues.

The monthly meetings will involve creative activities which can help us care for the environment, such as:

Creative opportunities with artists, such as painting, collage, sketch-booking, and photography
Opportunities to learn with local community experts, such as bee foraging walks, pond ecology, and talks about the River Tyne and its health
The chance to make a connection with local nature, wildlife, and planting of urban spaces, such as a ‘garden crawl’ to local community gardens

Upcoming Dates:

Seeing With Care: Designing for Humans and More-Than-Humans_ A Cyanotype Exploration of Urban Nature
Sat 28 Feb | 14:00-16:00
Free, booking advised

Discover how landscapes can respond to climate and biodiversity challenges with Stef Leach and Lotte Dijkstra, landscape architects from Newcastle University. Through a hands-on Cyanotype Exploration of Urban Nature, you'll learn to 'see' landscapes with care when designing them, capturing the beauty and complexity of the natural world through this creative methodology.

Stef Leach is a landscape architect, lecturer, and Programme Director for the Master of Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University. Her work explores how landscapes form through relationships between materials, humans, and more-than-human life, using experimental drawing, print, and photography. Her research focuses on materiality, Care-full Landscape Practice, and sympoietic design approaches. She's involved in collaborative projects including the Spaces for Nature garden at Baltic.

Lotte Dijkstra is a landscape architect, researcher, and artist exploring intersectional environmentalism and place-based creative methods in urban forests through her teaching and company Studio PLACES. She recently completed her PhD on fostering belonging in urban forests through storytelling.

Art, Nature and Wellbeing with Dingy Butterflies CIC
Sat 28 March | 14:00-16:00
Free, booking advised

Join Dr Ben Jones, founder of Gateshead community arts organisation Dingy Butterflies CIC, and Savannah Rios-Wills, Visual Artist and Art Psychotherapist, for a talk and workshop exploring art, nature and wellbeing.

This session examines connections between art, nature and wellbeing through creative community activities. We'll explore Dingy Butterflies' art, nature and food-focused work over five years. Savannah will introduce Weaving for Wellbeing, a textile and community project she's developing with artist Saya Naruse in collaboration with the Comfrey Project.

Dr Ben Jones is a researcher and arts professional with twenty years' experience applying co-creation methods with communities. He specialises in community arts, socially engaged practice, and researching culture's social impact.

Savannah Rios-Wills is a visual artist and art therapist whose practice centres on storytelling and nature. She brings expertise in flatweaving, cordage-making and textile skills, integrating natural materials into creative projects informed by her gardening experience.

Dingy Butterflies CIC has spent ten years providing opportunities for Gateshead communities to co-create projects with artists, experts and academics through place-based social engagement.

Seeing With Care: Designing for Humans and More-Than-Humans_ Whose Garden Is This?
Sat 25 April | 14:00-16:00
Free, booking advised

Led by landscape architects Stef Leach and Scott Matthews from Newcastle University's Architecture, Landscape and Planning department, this workshop invites participants to imagine and design a 'front garden' for Baltic. We'll explore the city through the eyes of plants, insects, birds and other more-than-human neighbours using drawing, tracing, collage and simple making activities. We'll consider who a garden is for, what different beings notice or need, and how small outdoor spaces can support care, life and curiosity.

Stef Leach is a landscape architect, lecturer and Programme Director for the Master of Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University. Her work explores how landscapes form through relationships between materials, humans and more-than-human life, using experimental drawing, print and photography. She's involved in collaborative projects including the Spaces for Nature garden at Baltic.

Scott Matthews is a landscape architect and founder of Hyem Landscape. With over 25 years' experience, he collaborates with communities and institutions to reimagine public spaces as catalysts for wellbeing and belonging, focusing on nature's role in urban recovery and resilience.

23 May - details coming soon
27 June - details coming soon
25 July - details coming soon
22 Aug - details coming soon
26 Sept - details coming soon
24 Oct - details coming soon
28 Nov - details coming soon

Over time, members of the club will collaborate to develop our next steps, identifying practical tasks like litter picks, gardening and tree planting that we’d like to collectively participate in, new places we’d like to visit and people we’d like to hear from, and creative activities we can respond with.

Held in our Front Room for ages 13+. Please book a free ticket before attending, donations warmly welcomed.

Creative Climate Club is part of Birds, Bees, Bikes & Trees, a three-year partnership between Baltic, North East Young Dads & Lads (NEYDL) and Newcastle University , funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.