The Snowball Effect Project is as active as ever! After collecting eco-pledges at the Worcester Regional Environmental Council Earth Day picnic, Scrappy visited the 2023 Westborough Environmental Action Fair at Westborough High School. Over one third of the fair’s visitors made eco-pledges—Thank you, Westborough!
Peter Dunbeck, a dedicated environmentalist and the organizer of the fair, took the generous initiative to display Scrappy at four schools, the public library and the senior center.
Summer
Provincetown
I walked the streets for three days in Provincetown this year and collected 314 pledges. In addition to pledges focused on recycling and picking up trash, there were many centered on avoiding fast fashion, minimizing air travel, and using reusable and natural cleaning methods. Three years ago, two people said they were buying electric cars, this year there were many.
stART on the Street
stART on the Street is Worcester’s big annual street fair. Unlike two years ago, I rarely needed to explain the project and people quickly had ideas about the actions they would commit to. Students at all levels enthusiastically participated. In three hours, my helper and I collected 188 pledges.
Fall
Bristol Community College
The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery at Bristol community college invited my Elemental Artist Collective to exhibit. Instead of Scrappy, I chose a turtle form since almost everyone has seen the photograph of the sea turtle trapped in a plastic bottle yoke.
Here is where we started on opening night.
By the end of the exhibition, viewers had added 216 pledges!
Bristol Community College appears to be committed to sustainability at many levels. During our exhibition, the college greatly engaged with the gallery:
-Environmental classes, the STEM club and Honors club visited the gallery.
-Theater students are creating a play inspired by this exhibition, which will be performed locally and in a competition in Scotland next year.
-An environmentally focused art workshop was offered to the environmental studies class.
New Project
People Power: What You Can Do aims to convey that we are most powerful in groups. If we are to keep the Earth safe, we all need to take more and bigger actions at the political level. Besides voting for candidates who will promote wise environmental policies, we can connect with already existing and hard working environmental non-profits or make use of the interconnections we already have to encourage environmental actions.
Students were especially drawn to this particular piece, with varying interpretations. Everyone understood the idea of interconnection, but I will need a new project to inspire action.
The Snowball Effect Project 