Geht’s nach Bonn – We’re off to Bonn

Will we make the connection? 

In June, Ruth, Anne-Marie and Lucy travel by train from the UK to Brussels then onto Bonn where the 2025 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks are being held. 

This Bonn Climate Change Conference – known as SB62 – continues the fiendishly tough work of getting 198 countries to agree just solutions to halting the rise in Earth’s temperature and compensating for loss and damage already well underway. 10 years after the momentous Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise above pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees, and with scientists now saying the world could experience a rise of 2 degrees by 2029, the Bonn talks are a kind of critical world ‘homework’ for COP30 (Conference of the Parties) to be held in November in Belém in the Amazon, Brazil. Unlike COPs held in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia or even Belém Brazil, as Walking Forest artists, we can get to Bonn easily. By train.

Plenary Hall World Conference Centre Bonn, Germany

Such ‘COP’ journeying has become something of a tradition for Walking Forest since 2018. Building on earlier trips to Katowice, Glasgow and Bonn we’re now travelling with a kit bag that includes seeds from the last standing suffragette tree, bells, blankets, walking staffs, blackboards, recording equipment, pine cones, pins, needles, coloured thread and the all-precious, embroidered Honouring Cloth.

We’ll be in residence from 17- 21 June at the Bundeskunsthalle (the art and exhibition hall of the Federal Republic of Germany), located close to the World Conference Center, where the UN talks take place – along the River Rhine.  On Thursday, as part of the Bundeskunsthalle’s own Interactions X WEtransFORM we’ll create a series of ‘spaziergang’ – 75 minute walks, departing from the Bundeskunsthalle and setting out to the UNFCCC Campus and then ‘looping’ back to our basecamp in the Museum’s Salon: an intentional linking of the cultural space of the Bundeskunsthalle and the global talks nearby.

Tree lined stree in Bonn, Germany

We invite participants to Walk with Walking Forest exploring ways we can stand up with, as and on behalf of Earth with space for conversation, reflection, connection with each other and wider nature and to witness the UNFCCC by hearing from people within the talks. Setting out throughout the day – at 11am, 1pm and 4pm – the walks will accumulate stories of female-led activism in defence of Earth and creative connections as we go.

Back at ‘basecamp’ in the Museum’s indoor Salon we’ll offer a quiet space for the Honouring Cloth – where people can share stories and stitch any ‘more-than-human being’ they wish to honour and see imagery from the Walking Forest story.  Since 2021, the embroidered Honouring Cloth has been hosted by individuals and groups at international climate related events and gatherings.

Next day, we’ll take the Honouring Cloth to the  Bonn Climate Camp –  outside the Conference Centre, a space for the youth-led climate movement to build skills and strategies around climate justice, activism and advocacy.

Walking Forest are also partnering  with The Entertainment + Culture Pavilion which champions the role of art and culture in realising a just, climate resilient future. Raising the profile of artists, makers, storytellers and indigenous communities their ambition is to integrate culture into the Secretariat Climate Frameworks and Global Action initiatives. We will also be gifting seeds of the last living Suffragette tree, planted by a young Rose Lamartine Yates over 110 years ago, in a UK arboretum planted by suffragists and suffragettes to activists at the talks in gratitude for their tireless work.  

Honouring Cloth, Bonn 2024

Since we started ‘seed gifting’ in 2018 we’ve found those on the front line of climate work to whom we gift a seed make an instinctive connection to the seed’s story and Rose’s bravery in the campaign for women’s equality. Accepting the seed, they connect back to their own steadfast courage, joy, grief and vulnerability. Amidst the intensity of climate talks where the stakes are so high, the one-to-one exchange with the seed of a living pine tree, gives people a ‘pit stop’ of calm and heart certainty. What keeps people going? There is much to learn from the spirit of care and bravery of those who work round the clock to make change happen, especially those from the Global South, women and the young.

We’ll make voice recordings to contribute to Pause to Survive – a performance shared back home in the UK in spaces of policy making and  about the necessity to face more directly and truthfully into global narratives of climate and ecological crisis as they continue to unfold. The evolving work uses verbatim text drawn from Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, Global women Earth Defenders, scientists and climate justice activists.

RBT Seed gifting Bonn 2023

The connections we make in Bonn; the voices, stories and concerns we gather up will feed into our ongoing work, culminating in 2028 – the centenary of the women’s right to vote –  with the planting of a new woodland and a ‘camino walk’ to mark connections between the often hidden stories of forest ecology, resilient communities and women’s activism.

Whilst we practice ‘pause to survive’, breathing, slowing down, sometimes the stopwatch takes the lead. Schnell, der Zug is about to depart. Auf geht’s nach Bonn. The Earth can’t wait and nor can we. 

Click here to see our full list of events on the Bundeskunsthalle website.