Climate Gathering 2026

Climate Gathering 2026

Hosted by Greenwich+Docklands International Festival & OutdoorArtsUK

Fri 4 Sep 2026

• 1 – 3pm: Climate Gathering
• 3 – 5.30pm: Nature Speaks programme as part of GDIF 2026

At The Moorings Social Club, London, SE28 8BG

BSL interpreted + wheelchair accessible venue. Contact access@festival.org for access requirements.

Join the Conversation on Climate-Conscious Creation & Touring in Outdoor Arts

Greenwich+Docklands International Festival and OutdoorArtsUK invite you to an industry gathering exploring how artists and presenters can reimagine the future of outdoor performance in response to the climate crisis. Bringing together a panel of international and UK artists, we will explore how work created for public spaces and natural landscapes can embrace more environmentally conscious ways of being made, shared and experienced. Through presentations and open discussion, we'll exchange ideas, inspire new approaches and reflect on how creative practice can work more consciously with the places and communities it inhabits.

Speakers include:

• El Conde de Torrefiel (Catalonia): sharing their artistic practice of creating work for natural landscapes and their approach to concept-touring with I Have No Name; 
• Lorna Rees (UK): reflecting on her collaborations with ecologists and audience engagement models in Canopy to discuss the climate crisis in locally-relevant ways;
• J D Swann (UK): Speaker for the Living at Three Rivers, the UK's first Zoöp, will introduce the organization's model and his role in translating the interests of the ecosystems at Tump 39, a rewilded Victorian ammunition store in Thamesmead.
  

Following the Climate Gathering, attendees are invited to Nature Speaks at GDIF 2026 (3 – 5:30pm) featuring El Conde de Torrefiel's I Have No Name and Lorna Rees Company's Canopy in Thamesmead's much-loved Tump53 Nature Reserve.

This event is kindly supported by Peabody.

Image credit: Canopy by Lorna Rees Company.

Nature Speaks at GDIF 2026

Enter a hidden natural world for a two-part immersive storytelling experience celebrating our relationship with trees and giving voice to nature itself.

A former munitions storage site, once part of the Royal Arsenal, is now a much-loved nature reserve, which plays host to this two-part immersive storytelling experience. You’ll be guided through a woodland glade to experience a ritual fusion of imagery, music, sound and storytelling before entering a meadow, in which you’ll be confronted with the voice of nature itself.

CANOPY by Lorna Rees Company

Canopy is an immersive sound installation for forests, woodlands and urban parks. Joyful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, Canopy celebrates the profound connection between humans and trees.

The powerful relationship between humanity and our oldest neighbours, trees, is explored in this immersive experience.

Follow a woodland trail featuring ingenious design, storytelling, sound and music featuring the voices of over 500 contributors including local children, young people, ecologists, artists and musicians.

I HAVE NO NAME by El Conde de Torrefiel

This enthralling outdoor installation gives voice to nature itself.

Nature speaks. Are you ready to listen?

This impactful open-air installation gives voice to nature within the extraordinary hidden landscape of Tump 53, a former ammunition store and now a wildlife reserve.

Words appear. Thoughts surface. Questions linger. Epic in ambition and its sweeping perspective back into deep time and the future, I Have No Name is a contemporary oracle, translating what nature has to say to us in a tone that shifts between the intimate and the prophetic.

As day fades and perception shifts, the installation quietly turns the gaze back on us, asking not how we see nature, but how we are seen in return.

Access info:

The site is a nature reserve with woodland. There are areas of grass, soil and narrower paths. GDIF has made adjustments to ensure wheelchair users can access the installations and performance.

There will be an access map available on site and online coming soon.

Canopy

This is an immersive audio experience. There will be written transcripts of each installation.

Digital audio description of each dome will be available on site

I Have No Name

This installation show features an LED screen with lots of text.

There are 10 headsets at each performance for digital audio description, available in the accessible viewing area. To book your headset email access@festival.org

For more information on accessibility for Nature Speaks please contact access@festival.org or visit the event page