'Sunlight, but dreaming' Audio Artwork
Video by Bram Thomas Arnold, Lauren Holt
Sir Partha, Chair of CSER’s Management Board, is the lead reviewer for the UK Government’s independent review of the economics of biodiversity, which launched on Tuesday 2 February 2021. The full report can be found here.
As a contribution to the final Review, Dr Lauren Holt ran a remote workshop in collaboration with artist Dr Bram Arnold, inviting philosophers, thinkers and theologians to comment on the non-instrumental and non-economic value of biodiversity, and Dr Holt wrote a companion review paper for the Treasury informed by the content of the workshop. Not only did this innovate a new audio methodology: ‘Workshops for quarantine’ which will be taken forward in other projects in 2021 as we continue to work remotely, but also produced an arts collaboration output that was part podcast, part immersive report, which was shared with the review team.
In addition Dr Simon Beard contributed an essay to the review team on the non-economic values of nature. His work focused on philosophical arguments for the intrinsic value of ecosystems as well as on valuing biodiversity for religious, cultural, spiritual, and transcendental reasons.
Coverage of the Review launch has been published in The Guardian, BBC, The Telegraph, among others.
The Royal Society held a launch event including introductions from HRH The Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and closing remarks from Sir David Attenborough.