June: Meltdown & Shell, Arctic drilling & New Shake events!

17 June 2013

Platform turned 30 last Saturday! We’re going to send another email about this soon, but we just wanted to say thank you to all the people who have supported, collaborated and engaged with us over our three decades. We wouldn’t be still at it if it hadn’t been for all the people standing with us.

We were also honoured last month to receive the CIWEM and CCANW AWEInspiring Arts & Environment Award for “putting creativity into the heart of environmental policy and action.’

Now on to June’s newsletter.

Russian Roulette: International Oil Company Risk in the Russian Arctic

Oil majors rushing to partner up with Russian energy giants in order to gain access to the country’s Arctic resources are gambling shareholders’ money on ‘a five-bullet Russian roulette’ of poor environmental and safety records, lack of transparency and experience in offshore drilling, as well as the uncertain outcome of a Kremlin power struggle over energy policy.

Read our new report, published with Greenpeace UK and Share Action, and covered by the Financial Times.

Shell, Meltdown and Global Fracking

Yoko Ono’s amazing curation of the Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre is happening right now. We’ve released a new report Shell: Global Mega-Frackers that juxtaposes the Southbank sponsor’s track record of fracking on every continent on the planet, with Yoko Ono’s inspiring stance against fracking in the state of New York. Shell is fracking or planning to frack in Canada, the USA, Argentina, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, the Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, China and Australia. Read the report here.

Shake! showcase and new intensive course

We are happy to let you know that applications for the Shake! intensive course are now open. This time we are running Shake! at the landmark Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Tottenham during the summer, 5-9 August. Over the five days, the 16-25 year olds will experience interactive workshops, stimulating dialogue & skill-shares with practicing artists, activists and educators.

If you would like to get a better idea of Shake! join us on Sunday, June 23rd, 7pm at The Albany in Deptford for the Shake! Showcase Voice! Verse! & Power! Featuring freshly created poetic, filmic and musical responses to injustice from previous Shake participants, the showcase will present an original and inspiring mix of political creativity. It is free but there a limited number of spaces. You can get your tickets here. For more info email [email protected] or check out our blog.

AkpoBari Celestine at the Shell Shareholder meeting in London. Photo: Amy Scaife
From the Niger Delta to the City of London

In May AkpoBari Celestine from the Nigerian NGO Social Action came to London to the Shell Shareholder meeting. His main reason for visiting the UK was push Shell to clean up their mess in Ogoniland – his and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s home region. An UNEP report from 2011 showed that the clean up would take 35 years and $1bn of start-up finance. Celestine works with impacted communities in the region and says that the clean up has not yet begun. You can read Sarah Shoraka’s account of his visit here, and you can also watch the Reuters video, and a video that we commissioned.

How you can help

To help fund Platform’s work please donate here. If you can, a regular, monthly donation is especially useful as it helps us to plan our future work with confidence. If you’d like to chat about the work we do or discuss how you’d prefer your donation to be spent, we’d be happy to talk to talk to you. You can contact any of our team on +44 (0)20 7403 3738 or email Tanya Hawkes at [email protected].