HARD RAIN: What’ll You Do Now? exhibition comes to Kew Gardens

Saturday 14 May – Saturday 29 October 2011
 
Press Preview: 10 May 2011 at 10.30. If you would like to attend please get in touch with the Kew Press Office on pr@kew.org

This summer, visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew will have the chance to see the groundbreaking, internationally acclaimed touring exhibition, ‘Hard Rain’, and the launch of the brand new exhibit ‘What’ll You Do Now?’ Set outdoors, along Kew’s Syon Vista, which runs from the iconic Palm House down to the Thames, visitors will see stunning imagery, and consider the bold questions both exhibits raise about aligning human systems and natural systems.

 

The story of the exhibition began in 1969 when its founder, Mark Edwards, when lost on the edge of the Sahara desert, was rescued by a Tuareg nomad, who led him to his camp, made a fire and started playing Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’. As Dylan piled image upon image – “sad forests”, “dead oceans”, “where the people are many and their hands are all empty” – Edwards was inspired to set out on a 30-year photographic journey taking him to over 150 countries.  The result is ‘Hard Rain’, a photographic essay following the Dylan lyric line by line to illustrate the interlinked challenges of poverty, population expansion, habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution and the wasteful use of resources. Often considered in isolation, these challenges are all intrinsically linked with climate change. The Hard Rain exhibition has been seen by 15 million people on every continent and has attracted the support and endorsement of political and environmental leaders across the world.

 

The new display, ‘What’ll You Do Now?’ launching at Kew Gardens, explores solutions to the problems raised in Hard Rain. From new technologies and development projects through to lifestyle approaches, the display highlights British-led solutions at home and overseas, and presents to visitors the need for them to be scaled up and widely adopted to help create a more sustainable future. 

 

Co-authored by award-winning environmental author Lloyd Timberlake, it includes contributions from a host of high-profile names including Sir David Attenborough, Jonathon Porritt, Chris Goodall, Fred Pearce and Kew’s own Professor Stephen Hopper.

 

Mark Edwards, founder of Hard Rain Project, says, “This exhibition is designed to renew the ambitions for change in a large cross-section of the public and encourage political and business leaders to take bold, long-term decisions to secure our gains and avoid disasters that appear increasingly imminent. We have the technologies and lifestyle approaches needed to create a genuinely sustainable civilization; more are in development. The question is: is there the political and public will to scale up these solutions? It will be a wrenching change, and most of us are comfortable with our carbon-based lifestyles. It will take continued leadership from the top by politicians, business and NGO leaders. And it will take grassroots leadership to create the bottom-up movement required to maintain the resolve of decision-makers.”

Professor Stephen Hopper, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says, “We are delighted to be hosting this exhibition at Kew Gardens, a place where rigorous plant science, aimed at tackling some of the big environmental challenges we are facing, comes together with the beauty of nature.

“In a time of climate change, plants have never been more important. They act as carbon sinks whilst also providing us with many resources from food through to medicines. We have to rethink how we live sustainably with plants and address the serious business of repairing and restoring damaged vegetation if we're going to have the buffers to climate variation that plant life offers.”

HARD RAIN: What’ll You Do Now?’ will be launched at RBG, Kew as part of Kew’s Summer festival, themed around the different worlds that can be discovered at Kew. For full details on Kew’s Summer festival click here

 

‘HARD RAIN: What’ll You Do Now?’ is presented by Hard Rain Project and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and supported by People’s Postcode Lottery.


The carbon emissions from Hard Rain Project have been fully offset through Forest Credits.


Ends

 

 

For more information please contact the Kew Press Office on 020 8332 5607 or email pr@kew.org
 
Visitor Information:
 
  • Opening hours (to 27 August): 9.30am – 6.30pm. Weekends and Bank Holidays; 9.30 – 7.30pm
  • Last entry to the Gardens, the Glasshouses, Galleries and the Xstrata Treetop Walkway is at 5.30pm
  • Admission: Adults £13.90, Concessions £11.90, free for children under 17 (with an adult).
  • Visitor information: 020 8332 5655 or info@kew.org
  • Website: www.kew.org
About Mark Edwards:
Mark Edwards is one of the few environmental communicators to have personally witnessed the global issues that are defining the 21st century. Assignments for magazines, NGOs and United Nations agencies have taken him to over 150 countries. One of the most widely published photographers in the world, his pictures are in many international museums and private collections. In 1985 he founded Still Pictures, the world’s leading photo agency specializing in the environment, social issues and nature.
Previous environmental exhibitions include Focus on Your World, a display of 400 large prints at Heathrow Airport. It was seen by over 5 million travellers. Mark has written several bestselling books on photography and co-authored Changing Consciousness with experimental physicist Professor David Bohm. www.hardrainproject.com
 
Bob Dylan:
Now in his sixth decade as the most influential singer-songwriter on the planet, Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was written at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when the world was on the verge of nuclear wipe-out. Now we understand that our environmental problems are just as desperate and just as threatening as nuclear blasts. www.bobdylan.com
 
Lloyd Timberlake:
Co-creator of What’ll You Do Now? and chief advisor, Hard Rain Project, Lloyd Timberlake has reported on environment and development issues from more than 60 countries. He is an associate of the Global Challenge Network, and recently advised President Obama’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. www.globalchallengenetwork.com
 
What’ll You Do Now? contributors:
 
Hard Rain Project is a not-for profit company established to support public exhibitions and other communications that campaign for realistic solutions to the interlinked problems of climate change, poverty, the wasteful use of resources, population expansion, habitat destruction and species loss. The launch of What’ll You Do Now? at Kew is the start of a world tour collecting and displaying a wide range of solutions. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will exhibit the combined display at the Rio Earth Summit in May 2012. www.hardrainproject.com
 
People’s Postcode Lottery has raised over £12 million for good causes across Britain which benefit both people and the planet. The Lottery supports its charity partners’ commitments to protect the marine environment, highlight the fragile nature of our oceans and campaign for better fishing practices.www.postcodelottery.com

Rainforest Concern’s Forest Credits programme was set up with the objective of encouraging individuals and businesses to acknowledge and address their impact on the environment by using the unique power of the forests to lock up carbon, whilst also protecting biodiversity and helping local communities and indigenous peoples. Rainforest Concern has helped to protect over 1.6 million hectares of threatened rainforest since it was established in 1993. Both organisations are non-profit. www.rainforestconcern.org and www.forestcredits.org.uk

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class Herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction. Its landscaped 132 hectares and RBG Kew’s country estate, Wakehurst Place, attract nearly 2 million visitors every year. Kew was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2009. Wakehurst Place is home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, the largest wild plant seed bank in the world. RBG Kew and its partners have collected and conserved seed from 10 per cent of the world's wild flowering plant species (c.30, 000 species). The aim is to conserve 25% by 2020, and its enormous potential for future conservation can only be fulfilled with the support of the public and other funders. 
 
Kew receives funding from the UK Government through Defra for approximately half of its income and is also reliant on support from other sources. Without the voluntary monies raised through membership, donations and grants, Kew would have to significantly scale back activities at a time when, as environmental challenges become ever more acute, its resources and expertise are needed in the world more than ever. Kew needs to raise significant funds both in the UK and overseas. Members of the public can support the work of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership by getting involved with the ‘Adopt a Seed, Save a Species' campaign. For £25 an individual can adopt a seed or for £1000 anyone can save an entire species. www.kew.org/adoptaseed.
 
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