From 27 August to 3 September 2023, about 400 activists from more than 80 different countries gathered in Lebanon for the second Climate Justice Camp. 

The camp had two sessions every day and a number of workshops. I was drawn to all the art-related workshops. One was from a Lebanese organisation that works with drama therapy, Wholistic Dramatherapists. The other was led by a Tunisian youth organisation, Students For Earth, where we shared our own unique experiences and thoughts; our individual viewpoints were woven together by piecing our artworks together as a puzzle.  

This year, I was part of the camp’s Creative Spaces working group and was involved with the planning around the Climate Sculpture.

I was amazed by the people who attended. Most had never engaged so deeply with art. Many had not been in a space where they could share so openly with strangers, and in ways that are not just limited to words. 

Tears were shed. It can become overwhelming, doing something like that for the first time. It was cathartic.

Read more in Daily Maverick: No more ‘blah’: Older people need to step aside and let the young lead the response to global heating

The workshops were in English, although for many English is not their first language and they can barely speak it, if at all. 

Entering a new, unfamiliar space with so many different people from around the world who speak so many different languages, and being vulnerable, takes so much bravery. 

I truly got to witness the power of art. My heart was bursting with love and admiration for every single one of them.

Collective artwork made during the Students For Earth workshop. (Photo: Supplied)

Creating a climate sculpture

In the Climate Sculpture process, we worked with Lebanese artist and sculptor Pierre Abboud, who brought the base of the sculpture to the camp. When introducing himself and the sculpture process, someone asked how they could be involved, saying they are not an artist. 

Pierre responded: 

“Everyone is born to make art. Like you are born to walk and born to eat, you are born to make art. Some people forget as they grow, but when you make art, you remember again.”

We wanted the sculpture to be something that everyone could be part of and so all the participants were asked to bring textiles from their home countries. The plan was to glue these onto the sculpture. 

In the beginning of the week, the sculpture was a giant plain hand reaching to the sky. By the end it was filled with colour.

The process was very gentle, very caring and very actively aware. In the opening plenary, on the first day, we introduced the participants to the Climate Sculpture by reading a poem. Each stanza was read first in English, then Spanish and then Arabic, the languages of the camp. 

“We see these textiles, not as objects, but as representations of us. Just as these textiles we have brought are made up of tiny bits and pieces, fragments, we are here as people made up of stories and experiences.”

We wanted to emphasise how seriously we were taking this process, how aware we were of the power these textiles hold. Individual textiles from individual people being glued onto the sculpture, becoming part of a collective. 

I found it very easy to write the opening poem. The closing poem was more difficult; we realised we could not write it before we had gone through the process of crafting the sculpture. The intention was to write the closing poem as the week went on and say it during the closing plenary. 

As with many wonderful things, the plan changed.

Raeesah Noor-Mahomed with the completed hand sculpture. (Photo: Supplied)

Throughout the week, before we started working on the sculpture, we did exercises that helped us connect to the textiles, and each other. The textiles that had not been glued to the sculpture yet were pegged up on lines around the space. We moved around, feeling each textile and imagining their story, imagining how they would move and how they would dance if they could. Some were too big, so we cut them up, choosing the pieces we felt most connected to. 

There is something beautiful about handing over your textile, giving it to the process. About holding the textiles, cutting up pieces which would be glued onto the sculpture, becoming part of this collective creation. 

It felt like trust.

In the last workshop, we planned what we would do in the closing plenary. Instead of me writing the poem, we opened up the process. We decided to write the poem as a collective.

We walked around the sculpture and wrote down what stood out to us on slips of paper. We then put the slips into a box and pulled out one at a time, five times in total. Each time, we had a few minutes to write freely, using what was on the slip as a prompt. 

One slip said: “Be a hummingbird.” It was this slip that brought the poem together.

One person wrote: “Just as wind is essential for the bird to fly, young people are essential for saving the planet”. 

When we heard this, something clicked. The poem became about the hummingbird. 

We cut out a line from our own poems that we liked and created the collective poem through physically piecing it together, rearranging the slips, weighing them down with rocks so they didn’t fly away. 

In the process of writing the poem, participants from the Philippines introduced us to a Tagalog word: Kapwa. There is no English equivalent but as they tried to explain, I realised that in South Africa we have a similar word: Ubuntu. I am because you are. When I told them this, they said yes! Exactly. 

Kapwa. Ubuntu. I am because you are. 

I find it beautiful that in different countries and different languages we have a word to describe humans existing together, as a community. 

The Hummingbird textile. (Photo: Raeesah Noor-Mahomed)

We did not know the backstory of the textile when we wrote the poem but I spoke to the person who brought the textile, Rukia Abdi, from Kenya, and she told us the story:

This textile was inspired by a story of the hummingbird from Wangari Maathai: In a huge forest being consumed by fire, all the animals stood helplessly and powerlessly on the outskirts. Only the hummingbird acted. It flew to the nearest stream and went back and forth, back and forth, one drop of water in its beak at a time, to put out the fire and save its nest. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: Our Burning Planet

The bigger animals, who would have had more power to help put out the fire, discouraged the hummingbird, telling it that it is too small. The hummingbird responded: “I am doing the best I can.”

The state of the world is terrifying and so many of us feel helpless and scared. We want to do something but we don’t know what, we don’t know how. We feel like we are not enough. This is not true. We are hummingbirds. Be a hummingbird. One drop at a time, together, we can put out the fire. DM

Raeesah Noor-Mahomed is a 21-year-old South African intersectional activist. Raeesah began their activism in 2019 with performance art protest pieces to raise awareness about the climate crisis. In 2020 they boycotted school every Friday until lockdown in a demand for the South African government to declare a climate emergency. They have since attended COP26, COP28 and two Climate Justice Camps, and recently finished their undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town, majoring in environmental and geographical sciences, theatre and anthropology. Raeesah plans to combine their passion for social justice with their love for the arts and continue working on finding ways to share knowledge and connect with people about the climate crisis, using art as a medium for communication.