The extraordinary mimcry of Australia’s lyrebird has inspired artist Zoë Palmer to create an extraordinary opera, or, as she describes it, an interactive musical adventure made especially for 0-2½ year-olds.  Musical Rumpus:  Lyrebird has toured venues in the East End of London, culminating on 4 and 5 December in the final performances at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Road, as part of the Spitalfields Festival.

I asked Zoë why she chose the lyrebird to provide very young children with their first music theatre experience. Like many of us, Zoë first discovered the lyrebird through David Attenborough’s Life of Birds.  “Ever since I saw that clip on YouTube I knew I wanted to work the lyrebird into one of my shows.  I was inspired by the incredible mimicry, this bird that could imitate anything from other species to camera shutters.

“It was also very moving, because this particular bird was imitating chainsaws, too, creating a record of the destruction of its own habitat.”

So how did this become the inspiration for Musical Rumpus?  “I’ve been specialising in early years music, but I’ve also recently completed a Masters in Human Ecology, and I realised the lyrebird is some kind of metaphor for creative development.
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“It’s an abstract piece, but it is based around the idea of the bird doing what children do, borrowing material and creating their own language.  Eventually it comes together in a developing language of words and song.”

She also sees a deeper, primeval connection.  “Before words and music were natural sounds, which blossomed into beautiful loops and patterns and sang the world into being.”

The 50-minute work casts the children as a “roving chorus”, gathering sounds from three different environments: home, city and forest, and creating their own song.  Parents are invited to engage, too.  Some, Zoë says, are a bit frightened, uncomfortable with letting go and simply being, but most get wrapped up in a shared experience with their babies.

​Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Forestry Commission England have announced the second edition of Jerwood Open Forest, an opportunity for visual artists to propose ideas for a major new £30,000 commission to be realised anywhere within England’s Public Forest Estate, supported by Arts Council England.

​We are all with Paris, trying to understand the incomprehensible.  And with or without Friday’s outrage, in two weeks’ time we would still all be with Paris, trying to unravel the tangle of politics, science and human rights that is the climate change agenda.  Next month world leaders assemble there for the most important climate change negotiations to date, and tens of thousands of activists and fossil fuel industry lobbyists will converge on the city, too.  At the forefront of representing civil society will be ArtCop21, a climate festival of culture and arts, with over 120 events, exhibitions and installations across the city.  It’s a global festival:  artists are participating on all continents with over 420 events in total.

Meanwhile, Paris and the other great cities of western Europe remain in the minds and the hopes of a tide of refugees, many of whom are there already, most are yet to set off on the most traumatic and possibly hopeless phase of their lives.

​The world leaders at the climate summit will trade rhetoric on these issues, and the original purpose of their conference may be pushed into second, or even third place behind discussing (the oil-rich) Islamic State and the human tide flowing across our borders.  They will want to compartmentalise their agenda, keep these issues separate in their talks, they are each complex enough on their own.

​​But there is a case for keeping it all ravelled together.  If carbon emissions targets were simply about striking a balance between conflicting economic pressures on western governments, there would be no need to assemble in one place to thrash them out.  But we all know it is not that straightforward.  The pressures would still keep coming.  Expect the natural environment to fail across swaithes of poor-world and rich-world alike.  Expect a 100-year wave of climate refugees into the richer, less climate-vulnerable world if we get it wrong for them.  Expect the handy distinction between economic migrant and refugee from terror to disappear.
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​Politics has no language for this complexity, but art has.  Three reasons to look to Paris:  solidarity between grieving nations; hope for a climate deal that demonstrates governments can act together and with resolve; and a cultural focus that will help us all understand the world a bit better.