Climate festival brought art and science together in Belgrade
For three days at the end of September and beginning of October, a climate festival was held in Belgrade, Serbia. The festival brought together researchers, decision-makers, and stakeholders from different parts of Europe to discuss how climate services can help strengthen societies' resilience to climate change, with a particular focus on countries in southeastern Europe.
The festival, which had the theme “Empowering society through climate services,” raised questions about how scientific knowledge about climate change can be made more useful in practice. During presentations, discussions, and interactive sessions, experiences were exchanged on climate services related to agriculture, health, energy, and climate adaptation, among other things.
One of the project's initiatives has been to combine art with science, which has led to several open calls for artists. Both last year's winner, the digital installation "M1L3NΛ", and this year's winner, the multimedia performance "Breathing", were on site to showcase their works of art.
Iréne Lake, SMHI.
SMHI's participation in the festival
SMHI participated digitally in the festival as one of 33 actors in the Climateurope2 consortium. Participation provided an opportunity to learn from other countries and actors.
– CE2 seeks to contribute to strengthening our resilience to climate change by supporting and standardizing the development of climate services. There is a need for equivalent, quality-assured climate services for everyone. The festival is part of an effort to disseminate information about climate services to society and also to evaluate results with representatives from various sectors of society and within the project. The results from the festival will be included in plans for future work. For us, it is important to see that our efforts are beneficial and to take the lessons learned with us in our continued work, says Iréne Lake, international project manager at SMHI.
Recordings from the festival and interviews will soon be available on the projects YouTube channel.
Lindha Nilsson, SMHI.
Workshop on visions of the future
During the interactive part of the festival, Iréne Lake and Lindha Nilsson from SMHI held a workshop entitled Create Your Future together with participants who were in Belgrade. The aim of the workshop was to allow participants to reflect on a possible future in which society has adapted to climate change.
– Despite the fact that there were many activities going on at the same time, only a small group of participants took part in our workshop. They chose to focus on water shortages affecting people, animals, and plants. The group created a future environment where water was managed efficiently and drought-resistant crops were grown. The participants enjoyed the activity and there were lively discussions within the group, says Lindha Nilsson, administrator and coordinator at SMHI..
SMHI was also partly involved in planning the training modules for the sessions for young researchers.
Launch of Climateurope2's new platform
One of the main activities during the festival was to launch the project's new digital platform. The audience was given an introduction to its various functionalities. The idea behind the platform is to offer registered users the opportunity to collaborate on developing guidelines, effective methods, and recommendations to promote the standardization of climate services. The users will mainly consist of specialized groups and stakeholders developing climate services in Europe.
The platform also aims to collect and make the results available to anyone who is interested, both registered and non-registered users. As a registered user, you also have the opportunity to get in touch with colleagues and find other experts in the field of climate services to collaborate with.
If you are curious about what the platform looks like, you can find it on the project website, and there is also an introductory video on YouTube.
