The Climate Grief Project presents: Balance Flux (26th July 2026)

The Climate Grief Project presents Balance Flux: an evening of performance and visual art which invites audiences to connect with what it means to lose our glaciers.

We will present a new work for mixed quartet composed from glacial retreat data, followed by a live glacial-inspired soundscape, with documentary of glacier film and photography displayed throughout the evening. Together, these works move through a series of atmospheric environments, encouraging you to pause, listen, and bear witness to climate related losses. 

The evening will be introduced by climate scientist and glaciologist Dr Alex Bradley (King's College London), who specialises in climate modelling and uncertainties in climate model predictions, particularly for ice sheet and glaciers. Alex's data for past and future change of glaciers is represented in the mixed quartet composition, helping the audience to connect with realities of climate change through data.

About the artists:

Rowan McIlvride is a composer and performer from the west coast of Scotland, based in London. Her practice revolves around natural systems both as compositional material and conceptual framework, alongside folklore, movement, field recordings and texture. The work she makes moves between the electroacoustic and contemporary classical, foregrounding interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation. She is currently completing her master’s in composition at Trinity Laban, supported by the John Powell scholarship.

Recent projects include lux asunder, a Creative Scotland-backed immersive sound and dance installation for Hidden Door festival’s Environments; sprùilleach cladaich written for Riot Ensemble exploring accumulative textures inspired by coastal erosion; and levity binds, commissioned by The Marian Consort and setting text from Astrida Neimanis’s writing on hydrofeminism. Most recently, she performed Hadal, a new work for voice and hydrophone in a tank of water at New Lights Festival, hosted by Alif Hilal (fka Lyra Pramuk).

The quartet: Ellie Bradshaw (trumpet) Maylee Velasco (violin) Martin Ash (viola) and Rebecca Burden (cello).

Nina Maria Allmoslechner is a London and Tyrol-based artist mainly working with analogue photography, super 8mm, 16mm film and writing, who graduated in Documentary Photography BA from the University of Arts London. Her work involves alternative darkroom printing as well as the family archive. Nina’s practice is predominantly concerned with topics around mental health, womanhood, lens-based memory representation and the natural earth.

She was awarded the BFI Doc Society Film Fund (2024), The Goethe Institute Project Grant (2023) and the DYCP through Arts Council England (2022). Her glacier photographs have been exhibited at the ‘Look Into My Ice’, an international exhibition project within the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 and OPEN ECO ‘How can photography make a difference to the climate crisis’ group exhibition at Brighton Photo Fringe Festival (2024). Nina published her book 'When White Blankets' on International Glacier Day 2025 at the Photographers Gallery in London and is currently working on a short film which is connected to the book.

Annie Mumford: a London based session drummer, educator and community music facilitator who grew up in Switzerland before moving to the UK in 2016. In a duo formation with fellow musician Stefan Knap (bassist, producer, songwriter) they will honouring their personal connection and awareness to nature, glaciers and the waters who surround us - ever changing and blending - in a meandering musical journey through percussion, atmospheric melodies and improvisation while our guests mingle and share their impressions.

About the project:

The Climate Grief Project is a collaboration between scientists and artists, providing spaces and experiences where people can process the grief associated with climate-related loss.

Despite unequivocal evidence of the increasing threat of climate change, responses remain insufficient. One major problem is the difficulty of engaging meaningfully with climate change: its causes and impacts are diffuse, globally distributed, and deeply interconnected, rather than from a single source or affecting a single location. As a result, climate change can be difficult to comprehend not only intellectually, but emotionally.

At the same time, losses of ecosystems, species, and natural environments are widespread. However, there are few spaces where people can acknowledge and process the grief associated with these losses. This project explores how creative practice can support deeper emotional engagement with climate change and climate-related loss.

Specifically, this project will explore how climate data - the primary medium through which the scientific community communicates climate change - can be translated into immersive creative experiences that foster emotional understanding among audiences.

The overarching objective is to facilitate meaningful connections with climate action through the data underpinning climate change, while providing reflective supportive spaces for audiences to engage with, interpret, and grieve climate-related loss.