 Welcome to Future Focus in March. We're so happy to see you guys here again. If you're new here, I'm just going to explain a little bit about what Future Focus is. So Future Focus is a youth-led monthly webinar series highlighting youth climate activists and their stories from across the state. Each one-hour session will focus on a different individual and the intersectional leadership work they are doing in their community and beyond. So to start, I'd also like to thank Mayta Anubon, Main Climate Action Now, Main Youth for Climate Justice, MEAA Changemakers, and Southern Main Conservation Collaborative for making this all possible. Last month, I was the one to give a Future Focus talk, but now here I am facilitating, and I am so excited to hear from my friend and fellow organizer, Jess Cooper. Today, she's going to talk about creativity and activism in climate spaces, and I think it's going to be really dope talk. So I'm just going to pass it over to Jess, and yeah, enjoy the talk. Awesome, thanks, Josh. Hi there, everyone. Thanks, Josh, for the awesome intro. Over the last few years, I have been getting more and more deeply involved in climate action. I've been cultivating a hardy list of organizations, causes, movements, and activities, and that's all really been over the last five years in total, but two years for climate action. A little bit about where I come from. I grew up in the foothills of Western Maine on a family farm in Buckfield, which many people haven't heard of. On this first slide that Anya's going to show, there's this beautiful painting of my grandparents' family farm on North Hill where I grew up done by an artist, Joel Bab from Buckfield. And the other picture is of some apple trees in the orchard that I grew up right next to. I have six brothers and sisters, and I shared a room with all three of my sisters at one point for several years, actually. So in a way, I feel that community building began really early for me. My graduating class in high school had 25 people give or take, and for better or worse, I knew every single one of them. I knew everyone in the school, actually, and also just about every person who lived in the town of Buckfield. The saying that Maine is one big small town really rings true to my roots. I was your classic teacher's pet and overachiever in high school. I did theater, sports, band, chorus as the class president, national honor society. I'm still learning in my 20s how to say no to taking more things on than I can handle because I constantly just wanna do it all. Someone actually gave me a great quote about learning how to say no so that people can trust my yes. So that's something that I try to hold on to every day. When I was in third grade, I received a flute through our elementary school music program. My dad was my biggest supporter when it came to music and he highly encouraged my flute, guitar, piano playing and singing. And I found that early on, music was something that gave me a lifelong community of creative people. After I graduated high school, I sat out for college at the University of Southern Maine and I was met with a flipped reality of what post-secondary education is really like compared to high school. I managed to stay out of trouble for the most part but I did end up leaving after a year following a nagging feeling that I wasn't really there for anything I felt deeply passionate about. I wasn't creating except for when I would spend time in Robie Andrews Hall, the artist dorms singing, playing instruments, taking part in a community creative flow that it seemed to happen spontaneously and sometimes without any sort of invitation or even a conversation about it, it just happened. And I've always managed to keep myself surrounded with people who are creating and kind of tapped into this flow. In 2015, I had my daughter Adelaide by far creating a whole new human being has been my most creative work. These are some pictures of me and Addy. Two years after having her, I moved to a farm near where I grew up and I lived with a musician and dancer couple and their kids and farm dogs. And surprised I actually joined a dance circus for real and a band. Once again, I was completely surrounded by people who were focusing on creating and the three of us living on the farm founded a creative nonprofit with the mission to turn our unique studio space that we had into a safe space for artists and creators of all kinds who it was targeted mostly to typically marginalized and overlooked people in the art world in our very rural and white area. But creating that was a pretty easy endeavor. I feel like everything really fell into place for that. And it kept me, it kind of introduced me to the community here in Norway. We actually took over organizing the Nora Musken Arts Festival where you can see the poster here. My friend, Carly Woods, who works in MCAN with us actually designed that poster and won a contest for it. Yeah, working with Creative Norway and doing that was really what launched me into the community here in Norway. In 2019, Scott Lawn from the Center for Necology-Based Economy here on Main Street in Norway introduced himself to me at the local food co-op. He'd recognized that I danced with the circus the previous summer and started talking to me and must have seen that I was somebody who might be interested in climate action. And he asked us if we would come and dance at a day of action in Augusta. Unfortunately, no one from our dance company could make it there on a Tuesday, but I remembered that interaction with him and I remembered looking up the day of action and that was the first time that I really looked up what CB was and what they were all about. Later that summer, we were asked by them again to perform three dances at the Global Climate Strike in Norway and that is where my climate story really began. At this Global Climate Strike, I was given the opportunity to sing, dance and speak about being a young mother and why the environment around me truly mattered. And up until then, I hadn't really put thoughts on a piece of paper, much less spoken them in front of 100 people. Being asked to write, sing, dance and think creatively about why I was at that strike was what opened my eyes to climate action and why creativity is such an important component of what I do as a climate organizer. I feel really strongly that art, dance and music are something that we all share. We all enjoy these things, whichever parts of them we enjoy, it's all different for all of us and we're all captivated by them in our own ways. Our websites that we create, infographics, flyers, signs and efforts for climate activism would be really difficult to catch people's attention without a creative individual or multiple creatives behind them. We need catchy tunes on the radio that talk about changing our actions and fighting for our future. We really need books and movies and poems and billboards and posters and shirts and banners about climate action to get people to see what we're doing and to see why it matters and to appeal to their emotions about it. Famous creators have this access to unlimited platforms of sharing, to massive numbers of people and many of them don't always use that power and opportunity responsibly. But I feel that young people have been capitalizing on this realization. Through social media and many other creative means, young people have tapped into their creative selves and have been organizing and advocating for their futures all over the world in so many different creative ways. Because we know we have to get creative and especially when coming up with climate solutions. We see adults doing the same things, things that just aren't working and in many cases are making things worse. So I think that's really where a lot of the creativity can come in and add new energy into these issues. So the pictures that are here for the learning and connections plan that I have after the global climate strike, I got an amazing opportunity to go to the MEEA Changemakers Gathering and it really confirmed that I was around the right people on the right path doing what I really wanted to be doing and that was climate organizing and learning about just the main climate organizing scene. This picture, the first picture on the left there is a Vic Barrett who was an incredible keynote speaker over that weekend. I had never heard of Vic Barrett and they really just touched me in a way. I just couldn't believe somebody so young was speaking with so much fluency and it was so powerful and that really just settled it for me that I wanted to learn about these things and I wanted to be around these creative people and I wanted to keep doing this. This other picture over here was this awesome gathering we all had at the end of the Changemakers Weekend and it just shows all the amazing people that I was able to meet and actually is a picture of one of my good friends who I work with now that moved to Norway. So meeting creative people has really been just such a wonderful thing as I've learned to become a climate organizing. Another aspect of creativity that comes up for me when I think about climate organizing is that burnout comes really fast. For me, creativity reignites that flame of climate action that I feel called towards and it keeps my work joyful amidst the heaviness that can come with it. When I experienced burnout from climate organizing the first thing I seek out is creating. I dance, I make music, I make art. I usually go to the dance studio and I turn on the music as loud as I can and I move my body and it reminds me where my roots are and where my climate action journey began. Creativity is finding inspiration. I took my experience in the creative community and it led me over and over to other people in my community who were using creative solutions to all kinds of issues including climate advocacy and action. For me, Spokefolks has been my, my baby in creativity and climate action. I was approached around the same time, the same winter that I did the global climate strike I was approached about this idea to have a bike hauling service and it really wasn't even a full idea yet. It was kind of based off from this bike hauling trash company in Northampton, Mass called Petal People. And so I started gathering with a group of people really creative, really awesome people in Norway and Spokefolks and climate organizing were the reasons that I actually moved to Norway and fully started this business. So last spring when the pandemic began, we had really started like trying to figure out what we wanted to do with this idea and initially Spokefolks was supposed to be this trash, trash recycling compost hauling and when the pandemic hit last March we decided to bring food on trailers from our local food pantries to our community. And I feel like that creative spark between our group of people was what made us say, let's take our original idea and do something different with it that can really help our community. So that was a really amazing experience to be able to be biking food to people when people were afraid to leave their homes and they were afraid to go to the grocery store and we were able to come up with a creative solution to help our immediate community, which felt amazing. And now we are hauling trash recycling and compost every week and it's so much fun. There's so much more I could say about Spokefolks but yeah, that's my baby. My other baby obviously is my daughter and creation for me has been very closely connected with parenthood. It requires huge amounts of creativity. Parenting is my number one reason for becoming a climate activist. It requires you to step into a different world filled with play and challenge. It makes you vehemently aware of the climate crisis because of the majority of what you're focused on is giving your child a bright future and everything feels so urgent. Parenting is about teaching your child to make good decisions and to be a good human, to be a steward, a climate activist and a creative thinker. Let's end this picture here. Last Earth Day, my daughter and I actually participated in an art build with 350 main calling on people to stop investing in fossil fuels. It was a really big campaign. It happened all over for Earth Day asking large finance companies to divest. And in the word fuel, the L, you might be able to see my daughter's teeny little eyes. It was a really fun way to incorporate art and community even through Zoom to send a message about climate action and what we believe in. So I felt like that was a really great example of how that can be incorporated. As defined, creativity is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new. Whether it's a new solution to a problem, a new method or device or new artistic object or form. Creativity requires passion and connecting with others through many mediums and so does climate activism. I'm here to urge you to find what makes you feel like your heart is open, like you can create anything and lands you in a network of people looking for new and creative solutions to common issues. And then take whatever steps you can to integrate that into climate action and advocacy. My last picture is of our garden from last year and that's my call to all of you is to dig in to find the things outside, inside, anywhere that make you feel at peace and make you feel creative. And gardening is the last thing for me that I feel I wanted to show that really has helped me stay creative, stay growing things. And yeah, I'm really grateful that you're all here today and interested in why creativity is so important for climate activism. Well, thank you, Jess. That was really captivating. Your story always inspires me to be more creative with my activism and I know it does the same with others in our circle. You're really a superstar. Thank you. Yeah, of course. So now I'm gonna invite the audience to leave some questions in the chat and hopefully have a cool conversation with Jess. First Jess, I wanna ask you to kick this off. How do you view your role being a young mother and only more recently entering the youth climate organizing space compared to most of the youth activists you are interacting with? That's a great question. I do feel like my role coming into the space is slightly different. As a young mother, I feel like more of an adult because of the amount of responsibility I have but I have to remind myself constantly that I am still a young person and that this is all new to me. I actually have been reflecting on this a lot lately and I feel like my role has been to learn from the people who are much younger than me who have been doing this for longer than me honestly and who have learned so much. I feel like it really puts me in a position to act as a bridge between the younger people in this space who are still in high school and have a totally different experience for me at this point and to help try and lift their voice and amplify their voice almost as an adult ally but as a youth that can come into those spaces and kind of navigate both worlds. I feel like it's a very interesting space to be and I have learned every single thing that I have learned about climate action from MYCJ and MEEA and all of the young people that I've been in these spaces with. Yeah, that perspective is so impactful especially as MYCJ in spaces like youth climate orgs diversify their age categories and their racial categories and socioeconomic status especially as a young mother. So I just, I really admire you Jess, I really do. So my next question is from Caroline Savage in the chat and she asks about ways a fifth grader could get involved. Wow, ways a fifth grader could get involved. If I had to say creatively, I would say get to know your art teachers and your music teachers and your chorus teachers and get to know them really well and seek out that adult help from people who are attacked into that creative space and also reaching out to people from Maine Youth for Climate Justice because we would love to work with young people of all ages with this kind of stuff. But I'd say for me, finding those creative people they've always been the people who were people who cared about the earth and people who were getting outside and it was those people who created a safe space for me to be myself and to explore the things that I love the most and that ultimately led to climate advocacy for me. Yeah, that's awesome. So my next question to you and this is so important in the climate justice world especially as a racial justice organizer myself and how does climate justice and the intersection of racial justice come through in your work? It's a really good question. I feel like through spoke folks that has come up the most for me. It's really come up everywhere for me because this is the first time I've been in this work and really been in touch with people who are doing that kind of work and through spoke folks, it's a worker-owned cooperative which means that it's focused on equity and it's focused on building the community and creating opportunities for all people of all backgrounds, races, everywhere. And so I feel like in working through a worker-owned co-op and learning about values and my community I've been able to really start to dig into that and find where my passion for sustainability and building community intersects with the low-income neighborhoods that really need to have these people interact with them and to work with them and to uplift them and also through Creative Norway. That was one of the first places that I realized what our mission was really about was lifting the voices of those creative people that other people in the town just weren't listening to and weren't considering and weren't creating a safe space for. And I think all of that has come into my work in true climate organizing. And yeah, it's just so profoundly important. And I feel like I am just barely even digging into the amount of work that it takes to integrate that into all of this. For sure, for sure. That's so important to hear as well. So Meredith asks, is there a plan for Earth Day this year statewide? And she also added that she has no micro-camera and appreciates your vision. Thank you so much, Meredith. From the incliners that I've heard, there's gonna be a pretty big social media thing happening and or our MYCGA newsletter, Anna Seagal. And maybe even Josh could talk more about that because I don't have all the details but I'm not sure what all the other organizations might be doing. I'm sure there is gonna be a lot happening. I know for us in Norway, first spoke folks who are planning to actually have people bring bags of trash to our little park in the center of town here. And we're gonna haul as many bags of trash as we can on a bike to our transfer station and try and really raise some awareness around the local climate orgs in our area and outdoor safely distances we possibly can. But I'm also curious to see what all of the climate orgs in Maine are gonna be doing for Earth Day. Yeah, definitely. We do have a lot of things planned. So watch out for that. So my next question to you, Jess, is what is it like to be organizing in a more rural or conservative space than a population dense area like a city? I, gosh, it's, I think it's a lot harder to, from what I have noticed seeing the youth organizers in those population dense areas versus my experience here, I feel like it's a lot less progressive and progressive is not really the word that I want to use but that's kind of what comes up for me is that it's very conservative here and it's harder to talk to the people, specifically some of the teachers and people in the schools. It's harder to get people engaged, I think in a rural area. It's sometimes harder to even get people just to come out and see our organization and see what we're doing. I think the global climate strike was one of the first really amazing successful like things that got people out and got people organized and excited and walking down the street and whooping and hollering and yelling. So I think the pandemic has added a layer to that of we're so rural, we're so far apart from each other and now we also have this added layer on top. So it is really challenging organizing in a rural space but I think for me, I've tried to just pace myself and remember that the same with the creative flow that I feel that the flow of getting people involved may be slow but those few people that do get involved are just like so there and so ready and that's what kind of keeps me going organizing in a really rural space. And I'm really curious about the experience of organizing in a more population dense place because I had really never been able to do it. It sounds really awesome. Wow. Yeah, I see the way you organize every day and I honestly admire you because I came up here from a really population dense area and I just see you being out here, being all creative and just organizing in such a flat space and I'm like, whoa, literally super powers. Tricky. So I'm gonna wrap up and I'm gonna ask the last question and I feel like this would be a good kicker. Where do you see spoke folks in creative Norway in Norway youth climate action organizing in five years? This is a really good one. Spoke folks in five years, my dream for that is that there are little bike co-ops all over Maine hauling trash and recycling and compost and educating the community about why it's so important to do those things and showing people that transportation on bikes can be really helpful and it is possible. Obviously in some really, really rural areas that's not necessarily as accessible but I would just love to see little spoke folks hubs all over the place. Creative Norway, I would love to be collaborating more having more collaboration between artists and climate because like the main point of my talk was that I think it's so important and it grabs people's attention and it gets to the core of your emotion and I'd really love to see more climate work in my creative Norway space. Yeah and seeing more marginalized artists uplifted and in that space as well. And then youth climate organizing in five years I'm gonna be 30 which is insane to think about and I'm gonna have a 10 year old at that point which is also insane to think about. But I would love to be able to have more young people in my position here in Western Maine so that it really starts to like spread across the map here because it is so rural. I think we just need people who are here and dedicated and young and have energy and I wanna be able to teach some of the young people around me how to do this work so that they can keep sending it out in ripples and waves. So yeah, five years from now I'd love to have like a huge team of young people and for it to keep going and not just end when the seniors graduate and move and I want people to want to live in our area. We're actually working on potentially having a Norway climate council here in our town and having young people involved in that and having that offered as a paid position for young people is also one of my like ultimate dreams for the next five years. That is so important. So important. I just love the work that you're doing. Like I said, it just motivates me in all of these creative ways to organize. Wow, you are a stellar organizer. Just kidding. Oh my gosh, I'm like talking to you I've learned so much from you and the young people in MICJ. I can't believe the work that you've been able to accomplish. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So we're just gonna wrap up here. I do appreciate everyone coming today and Jess, it was so amazing to hear you talk. I cannot reiterate that enough. Thank you. So for folks looking to come to attend our next talk we do not have our next speaker set yet but we will pretty soon. So if you could just keep checking the future focus page for more info which will be dropped right in the chat and have an amazing night. Thank you guys. Thanks.