exploring Urban Heat islands

Urban heat raises a host of health problems. Heatwaves, exacerbated by urban heat islands, are torrid manifestations of how high temperatures disrupt city life, bringing issues of climate injustice into stark relief. Yet extreme temperatures are only one aspect of the ever-evolving relationship between urban heat and health, one that has some positive features, such as summer festivals or swimming outdoors. 

Melting Metropolis brings together a team of scholars, a community engagement manager, and a research artist to understand better the past and present of urban heat and health. With a focus on sensory, community, and cultural experiences in postwar London, New York, Paris and Port of Spain, the project is investigating how city dwellers have experienced heat and sought to mitigate its impact on their health and well-being. It aims to move beyond the widespread focus on “climate resilience” to uncover the multiple responses to urban heat and health during an era of climate breakdown. 

As the project’s Research Artist, I am developing new creative methodologies to support public engagement with the academic and community research taking place in each city. Working across the four cities, I am conducting my own field research while designing and co-developing cross-disciplinary projects to explore:

1. Embodied climate through mark-making

2. Carnival as climate activism and as a collective ritual experience

3. Storytelling (and story sharing) to inhabit alternative perspectives

Current public artwork projects include My Body is a Sundial and Stand of the Sun.

Melting Metropolis is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award and runs from 2023 to 2029. It is based at the University of Liverpool and Queens College, City University of New York, with project partners the Living Centre in Somers Town, London, and Queens Memory Project, New York.