At a kitchen table in 2010 I decided on a personal challenge: to climb a tree every day for a year – keep a photo and written diary – and maybe I’d make a book about it. I climbed my first tree that night. After two weeks of climbing every day I started inviting people to join me, recording our conversations on the branches. They would turn to politics, the environment, childhood memories, science, maths, art, the pace of life, death, waste, yeast cultures, romance, fresh ground coffee, transition, Utopia. Some of my companions included a band, a class of nine-year-old children (who sang to me about trees), a shaman family, a non-protesting protestor, a politician, a holistic economist, professors, artists, poets, activists and 44 people at once, including an eight-month pregnant woman!

Each tree was its own stage, and gave me a story; inspiring a new line of thought. I climbed in ten countries, found myself on a Norwegian chat show, in a three-story tree house theatre, hoisted into a tree by the Fire Brigade, had my hair cut in a tree, staged my own death falling out of a tree, almost fell to my death from that very tree for real, and climbed the famous Trafalgar Square Christmas tree before it was cut down in Oslo. The project came to an end with… well, I don’t want to spoil it.

The trees naturally got me closer, and more sensitive to nature, recalibrating my priorities – they gave me a framework for a kind of gentle activism – a research project for Eutopia, but as it turned out, Art of Climbing Trees isn’t really about climbing trees…

Fifteen years ago I began with climate change and a biodiversity crisis, and, like many of us, I’ve since graduated to the climate emergency, and sixth mass extinction (or first mass extermination). My concerns have grown darker, and more nuanced, and as an antidote to my fears, I’ve drawn the threads of my adventure-diary into a manifesto, or ‘Greenprint’, for transition. I’m asking, ‘Are we really going to settle for this downward spiral?’

It was an appropriate coincidence the acronym for Art of Climbing Trees is A.C.T., because that is ultimately what it’s all about.

British / Norwegian artist, writer, performer – making film, theatre, painting, montage, sculpture, buildings, books, etc.

All of it points to surviving the managed apocalypse, in style.

Shonky hub website displaying some other activities: worldgeneralstrike.org

I was responsible for most of the writing, photos, technical illustrations, and layout of Art of Climbing Trees, however there were many Co’s: collaborators, co-climbers, contributors.

Some of the Co’s after my name on the cover, will be listed on a page of thanks, when I get around to posting it, soon. In the mean time – THANK YOU!

Fifteen years after scampering up Tree 63, a Dutch elm, in Brighton (image credit, Maria Hilliard) – square-eyed; crouched over my screen too long with a hunch back… I couldn’t be happier with the book.