There is a festival that is most fine, which is underway in Melbourne and we trouped along to the Market Day yesterday and were happy to see some of the organisations we know well there, including the Thin Green Line (helping rangers who protect wildlife in some of the most dangerous parts of the world), Fifteen Trees  (revegetating rural Victoria), Friends of the Earth and so on and so forth.  I had a lentil burger with homemade tomato sauce - delish.  

Our preparations for the Get Eco Creative Exhibition next weekend have taken up a lot of personal time, and hence there hasn't been much written on here.  We are all volunteers for this Festival so it's nice when people get acknowledged. 

Huge thanks must go to Master Andrew Ioannidis, artist (architect and musician) without whom I would be having huge hissy fits, by now! And as of yesterday, the Get Ec0-Creative Exhibition is coming together, much more smoothly than anticipated.  

Hope to see you there next Saturday or Sunday 23-24 February, from 11am to 5.30 Space 39, upstairs 39 Little Collins St Melb.  It's a visual and conceptual exhibition as to how we express our green messages. 

A piece of super star art (which is short for superlative starfish work of art). 

Photo and sculpture courtesy of artist, Laine Hogarty, who also was the designer of my book cover.  

SEASTAR
The artwork used 30 Kilos of aluminium drink cans in the formation of a star fish, it was 5 metres across. Commissioned by Barwon Coast as part of art based responses for the “Too lovely to Litter campaign”. Keep Australia Beautiful waste research indicates that the largest proportion of coastal litter is due to plastic bottles and aluminium drink cans. The star shape was selected as an easily identifiable shape that the public can connect with especially children. 

Superb. 

Here is a link to the different types of humour and we can think about which of these can be useful in conveying climate change or other environmental issues.  From memory, being ironic (using irony) wasn't mentioned.  

http://www.match.com/magazine/article/12400/the-10-different-types-of-humor/

I was wondering which environmental jokes can help serve the environmentalists cause. I think they need to be particularly clever in the way they arouse a sense of fun, and at the same time push home a green message, without poking  a whole lot of fun at us greenies.  (Okay a bit of poking fun is okay.  Maybe us greenies have to get better at the dramatic arts, and build up thicker skins!) One thing that can be said about a green joke, is that, at least the green message isn't intended to be altogether depressing!  To be fair, it's not easy to make a one-liner about the environment hysterically funny.   

A while back I posted a link to Alan Carr's video when he makes a joke about a chicken being so free range, she might as well be out having a make-over.  

Anyway, here's Ask Umbra's take on this topic, which is well worth a read: some definitely cute green jokes there.   I'm not sure whether the jokes are just meant to be generally for our benefit or serve a behaviour change purpose, or both, but I don't think it matters very much. 

http://grist.org/green-living-tips/2012-01-16-ask-umbra-got-any-good-green-jokes/

Thank you to people who have been writing in with comments on liking the website.  

That is great.  Also, it would be wonderful if you had ideas or games to share,   for promoting sustainability in a new, fun or inventive way.  Or it might be a fun educational story told, or even some performance art. These can appeal to children, or appeal to adults as well.    

The idea can be as basic as the 'Carrot Man Mystery continues' extracted from I think it was the Melbourne Times (sorry date and page weren't noted at the time, but you can find it on the web).  It seems the Melbourne carrot man has been getting a lot of 'airplay' in newspapers and on twitter holding an enormous papier mache carrot.   Now one question (of course) was why does he walk around the suburbs of Melbourne bearing a giant carrot?... Well, actually, I think it's great that we are asking questions and by asking questions we come up with new answers and new outlooks on what we are communicating, and how.  

I think the carrot could represent lots of things,  eating a whole foods diet, becoming a productive gardener, enjoying the simple things of life (go to the living simply website perhaps), but I love the simplicity of it. Does Mr Carrot Man want to be the next eco-celebrity? Is this just an eco-stunt? Any other ideas. Tut ... tut .... Do we need to be so cynical by labelling something 'just a stunt'? Let's talk things up instead of down. So when thinking about environmental education or campaign ideas, it is not just about what we do to help the environment, but also it's about how we sell (and uphold) that idea.   

Speaking of carrots, on my bloomingandbold.blogspot I wrote about this Tree Project. The project involves encouraging and enlisting people to grow seedlings on their urban property for transplanting to reforest rural properties.  (I've long had an interest in the connections between rural and urban landscapes, and how we can take lessons from one to aid the other). 

Anyway,  I thought a possible banner for the project could be 'Training Wheels for Trees'.  This is a catchy way of describing the project, and taglines or headlines like this are a way of attracting a broader spectrum of interest from newcomers.  We environmentalists are getting better at using visual imagery and catchier campaign labels.