Speaker
Speaker
Speaker
Speaker
Swansea University
18 October
12:35
Changing the Story: Can the Creative Industries Lead the Climate Transition?
20 October
14:25
Changing the Story: Can the Creative Industries Lead the Climate Transition?
Prof. Owen Sheers
Swansea University
Writer/ Professor in Creativity
Speaker Biography
Owen Sheers is an award-winning poet, author and playwright with a particular interest in creating ground-breaking hybrid works drawing upon a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. He is the author of two poetry collections, two novels, three verse dramas and multiple works for TV, film and theatre. His 2016 film-poem The Green Hollow, about the Aberfan disaster was BAFTA and Grierson nominated and won three BAFTA Cymru awards including Best Writer. Twice winner of Wales Book of the Year he was the recipient of the 2016 St Davids Award for culture and the 2018 Wilfred Owen Poetry award. In recent years Owen has focused on projects around the climate and ecological crisis, including The Water Diviner’s Tale and oratorio for children, Sea Change a new opera for WNO and The Trick a 90 min BBC drama about the Climategate events which was nominated for a BAFTS Cymru Best Film award and, recently GALWAD a transmedia project set between 2022 and 2052.
As Professor in Creativity at Swansea University Owen’s mission is to encourage interdisciplinary creative collaborations across colleges and faculties, with a particular emphasis on projects addressing the current climate and ecological crises. Last year he curated, in collaboration with Dhaka Literary Festival in Bangladesh, Everything Change, a series of panel events about creativity and the climate crisis.
Owen is a patron of STAMMA and the Children’s Bookshow and ambassador & co-founder of Black Mountains College, a new college in the Brecon Beacons National Park devoted to the challenges of a transition to a sustainable way of life.