The Community Weathering Station is a settler-led project on Anaiwan land. In rethinking life in Armidale, we acknowledge Indigenous water and land sovereignty; this sovereignty was never ceded.
The project is facilitated by Jennifer Hamilton: https://linktr.ee/jmhamilton
Background:
The project centres around the concept of “weathering” which continues to develop:
- Weathering is a word to describe the act of being eroded and worn away and also making it safely through something like a storm.
- Weathering was then developed as a CRITICAL concept the context of contemporary feminist and environmental cultural studies by Astrida Neimanis and Rachael Loewen Walker in the article “Weathering: Climate Change and the Thick Time of Transcorporeality” Hypatia 29.3 (2014)
- The Concept was then further developed in a short paper by Neimanis, but this time in collaboration with Jennifer Hamilton. This paper is simply called “weathering” and is in the journal feminist review (2018).
- During 2016 and 2017, Neimanis and Hamilton, along with Rebecca Giggs, Tessa Zettel and Kate Wright became “The Weathering Collective” and undertook a series of retreats and experiments designed to think critically and culturally about weather in relation to bodies. This work is documented on the website “The Weathering Station“. We also produced “The Weathering Map” for Chart Collective’s project Legend.
- Neimanis and Hamilton further developed the concept’s potential for translation into early childhood pedagogies in collaboration with Common Worlds Research Collective. This occurred in 2017 at an early childhood education research retreat on Rindö in Sweden, funded by The Seed Box: A Mistra+ Formas Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. This work is documented in part on The Weathering Station blog and then became “A Field Guide for Weathering” published in the open access Canadian Journal The Goose.
- In 2020 AstridA, Tessa and Jennifer ran a seminar called “Weathering Everything” which formed the basis of the article “Feminist Infrastructure for Better Weathering” In the journal Australian Feminist Studies.
- In 2020-2022 Jennifer and a local GP Sujata Allan collaborated on “The Armidale Climate and Health Project” which applied the idea of weathering to help bridge the gap between personal and planetary health.
- In 2023 the armidale climate and health project continues to develop as a project focussed on food, education and community health.
- In 2023 Astrida and Jennifer have started writing book about the different creative and critical methods used in their weathering work.
CoWS is a grassroots experiment, building on this knowledge, but applying the concept to in Armidale.
Community Weathering Station (Cows) 