“At our core, we are just nature, creatures of nature. And so when we connect back with ourselves, I feel like people will find motivation or can find motivation in that.”
Interview with Abby from KYCA
What is your group’s objective?
Our objective is to spread more environmental awareness, but also to fulfill our own need to do something about climate anxiety. I think also just building community, which you guys are very aware of. That's literally what you're doing, which is awesome.
What kind of things do you do to spread awareness?
I feel like lately, it's been a lot through just art. But also having conversations with your friends that make them more aware of things and teach people things because we can't forget the power of those personal conversations. On the day to day we can teach people a lot. Also, we've had a few different waves of what our focus has been. When I first joined, it was more political action we were doing. They were doing work with the Kingston climate leadership plan. And trying to change a lot of the things in that. But it's just kind of moved more towards creative stuff. Like we did our art exhibit last year.
What are your biggest challenges?
It's hard to get other perspectives a lot of the time. We've been planning a divestment rally. And we were talking about how do we get commerce kids and business kids, people that usually don't really care? How do we get them to care? I find our demographic is a lot of women and white women usually. And that's also just where you live, but yeah. Also, there are definitely challenges because we don't have a hierarchy. We don't necessarily have roles. There's definitely been times in the past where people want things to be led a certain way and and someone else wants to lead a different way. That would be one thing that we struggled with for sure. Another thing is sometimes just feeling like what is our purpose? Are we fulfilling that? Are we actually doing meaningful things? So we often try to reflect on that.
What is your relationship with QBACC like?
We've been working closely. It's nice, because there are some things that they're not allowed to do, that we can do, because we don't have rules. I actually can't think of anything specific off the top of my head, but the school has rules. They're not technically allowed to put posters up, for example, but if we put posters up, it's fine, whereas they could get their funding cut off. And QBACC also is great to work with, because they've got so many more people. So they've got a lot of projects happening. So it's awesome that we can support some of their projects. And sometimes they just need volunteers. So we'll just be hands on deck if needed.
And how do they support you?
In the same way. We collaborate on a lot of things, Abby, you know, the gala that we hosted with them. And also, a few times they have helped us out financially, printing posters and stuff. They want to help other climate groups. It's been really awesome. Collaborating with groups. And definitely the Gala is the biggest little collab with No Clear Cuts Kingston as well. And Ryan, the AMS environmental Commissioner.
Could you talk a little bit more about the gala?
It was about the ongoing development proposal at the tannery site, which is down by Bell Park. The development reached the Ontario land tribunal. They needed more backup, and they needed more evidence, and they needed more for their arguments. They being No Clear Cuts. So we helped them to raise their overall target of $50,000. But the gallery's $12,000 towards paying for expert researchers to go in and do more, get more data from the site to help with the argument of, hey, we should not develop on this land. Because if you develop and put the clay cap down, it's going to actually make a lot of environmental conditions worse. So the Gala was really awesome, because it felt like we were having a direct impact right in Kingston.
What are your current projects?
Currently, we are making art for the Spire, exhibits up front. We're making an ocean scene out of plastic. We are doing the divestment, supporting QBACC mainly with that. And there's also a rally being planned by someone else who I'm meeting with soon. So just supporting those groups, and then we are still working on the zine, but I just don't know what that will end up looking like. But it may just be something that is like an online file, but it is still in the works.
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