CULTIVATING COMMUNITY THROUGH ART AND ACTIVISM

MAIA WELBEL ON NAVIGATING THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Maia Welbel (she/her) is a freelance journalist and dancer currently living on an urban farm in Berkeley, CA. We took the time to chat with her and ask about what motivates and inspires her to take on the climate crisis. 

You have an amazing hands-on and research background in farming and food sustainability. Is there a place and/or person that was pivotal in cultivating your relationship to nature?

When I was little, my siblings and I would visit our grandmother on the farm where my dad grew up in a town called Sheldon in central Illinois. The sensory experience of being there contrasted so starkly from the urban environment of Chicago where we lived. The smell of damp hay, the colors of the woods in autumn, the fields that seemed to stretch on forever — I think I always felt a groundedness and peace there. My dad also talked to us a lot about how much the landscape had changed since he was a kid. He witnessed the transition of small-scale, organic farming to large-scale chemical agriculture in the Midwest firsthand. So I started thinking about the many injustices embedded in corporatized farming from a really young age, and basically never stopped thinking about it. Beginning in 2020, that same land gave rise to Zumwalt Acres, a regenerative agriculture community and agroforest that I now feel so lucky to consider a second home. 

What led you to pursue degrees in environmental analysis and journalism?

At some point in high school, I distinctly remember deciding that I wanted to go into a career that helped people directly. For some reason I felt like my two options to fulfill that would be to become a doctor or try to solve the climate crisis, and medicine wasn’t particularly appealing. That line of thinking is obviously bananas looking back, but going into environmental studies ultimately was super aligned with my interests and ambitions.

Writing was always my best subject in school and also called to me creatively, so I was fortunate to be able to study environmental analysis at Pomona College from a humanities and social sciences lens. My senior thesis ended up being essentially a work of longform narrative journalism about urban agriculture in Chicago. After I graduated, I decided I would apply to the one journalism master’s program I was most interested in (Northwestern had a climate reporting specialization and scholarship track), while simultaneously applying for various fellowship and jobs in environmental nonprofits. I got accepted into the program and decided to go. Working as a freelance journalist now feels like a dream in many ways. I get to do work I’m passionate about both in form and function. I also really hope that climate reporting as a field continues to grow and evolve so there are more work opportunities for creative, expressive, and empathetic writers. I think accessible journalism can be a vital aspect of climate activism. 

What is UneARTh? Are there any upcoming projects you’re especially excited about?

UneARTh was founded by Sara Schroerlucke and co-directed by me and Maxine Patronik. The three of us met dancing in a company together in Chicago in 2018 have since become very dear friends, so working with them is such a gift. As an organization, we seek to empower and uplift artists of all mediums whose work is in service of climate activism. Right now in practice, that means we curate and produce galleries and performances; and gather resources, strategies, and platforms to enable artists in the UneARTh community to keep making impactful, sustainable, and fulfilling work. We are in this for the long run, and we share dreams of UneARTh becoming more expansive overtime. Maybe one day we’ll build a retreat center where folks can come make art in a restorative, communal nature space by day and sing and laugh together by a bonfire at night. A big tenant of our organization is divesting from the urgency around these things that capitalism teaches us to have. So we’re going slow but dreaming big! 

Two things I’m super excited about are the virtual discussion group we are hosting for Julia Cameron’s iconic workbook, The Artist’s Way. I’m also looking forward to the workshop series and performance we are developing for a dance festival about land justice and restoration at Zumwalt Acres this summer! 

What lesson(s) from your artistic practices do you feel are valuable for confronting the climate crisis?

My personal artistic practice has taught me to be less precious about the things I create, whether it’s dance or writing or a different medium I’m trying. As much as I crave specific instructions and benchmarks to assure myself that I’m Doing It Right, I’ve also learned to recognize that the ambiguity is part of what makes it art. I think that can be applied in so many ways to confronting the climate crisis. The rhetoric around living a sustainable lifestyle or engaging in climate activism can veer a little bit toward perfectionism, and the all or nothing mentality that engenders is counterproductive. To butcher a quote from Anne-Marie Bonneau: we need lots of people fighting the climate crisis imperfectly, not a handful of people doing it perfectly. 

Do you have any favorite environment-related books/podcasts to recommend to readers?

One thing about me is I alwayyyys have recommendations. Please feel free to Direct Message me specific requests at any time. But for now I will share a few books that I’ve found particularly impactful: 
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
An Immense World by Ed Yong
Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey 
No Meat Required by Alicia Kennedy
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Cora Cliburn,
​ACC Outreach Director (she/her)
Title photo by: Ren Picco-Freeman

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