The internet runs on video, and people are addicted to doom scrolling. What if you had the power to turn nonsense into meaning? A short clip filmed on an iphone can circle the planet in minutes, inspiring millions to save animals abandoned in Dubai, or they can spread panic. For environmental storytellers and citizen journalists this is powerful territory and there is a lesson to be learned. You know that a video you create can expose oil pollution in a river, highlight a desert farm growing food with almost no water, or introduce a new climate technology that runs on air and that most people have never heard about.

Environmental creators are in a unique position because many of the stories worth telling are happening outside: in deserts, forests, coastlines and cities adapting to climate change. These stories deserve attention, but they should also be filmed responsibly.

The first rule of sustainable video production is surprisingly simple: film local, and use your travel opportunities to take footage from new places. You might not use it today, but it can be your B-roll or inspiration for tomorrow. Flying a production team halfway around the world for a short clip carries a large carbon footprint and content creators don’t need to do this anymore. You can write a film, direct a film narrate and edit a film, all with tools that are within reach.

Online video editor tools can help simplify this process. Platforms such as Clideo allow creators to trim clips, resize videos and compress large files so they are easier to share online. This reduces storage requirements and speeds up publishing while maintaining quality. Mobile creators can also edit footage directly on their phones using the Clideo Video Editor, which removes the need for large desktop editing systems.

And the most compelling sustainability stories are those happening locally and which affect you personally. A water reuse project in your city, a community compost initiative, regenerative agriculture, a rooftop farm, or a new solar installation can all make powerful visual stories without the need for heavy travel, and chances are you can get interviews with the main players, because some of them might be your friends and family.

Natural lighting is another sustainability trick filmmakers have used for decades. The sun provides beautiful lighting conditions that often look more authentic than studio lights while reducing energy use. Planning your shots before filming also reduces wasted footage and unnecessary battery use.

Creators filming in nature should follow ethical guidelines as well. Wildlife should never be disturbed or baited for dramatic footage. Sensitive ecosystems like nesting areas, coral reefs or desert habitats should be treated with care and not walked upon. The goal of environmental storytelling is to protect these special places, not damage them for a shot.
Another hidden environmental impact of video comes after filming, during editing and distribution.

Massive video files require storage and processing across data centers that consume enormous energy. As global video streaming grows, the digital infrastructure supporting it grows as well. Creators can reduce their digital footprint by compressing video files, trimming unused footage and exporting videos at the appropriate resolution for the platform they are using. Not every clip needs to be uploaded in ultra-high resolution.
Beyond the technical side of filming and editing lies the deeper question: what kind of stories should we tell?

The most effective sustainability videos focus on solutions rather than despair. Audiences are more likely to engage with stories that show innovation, creativity and possibility. Instead of only documenting pollution, animal abuse, or environmental collapse, creators can highlight projects restoring wetlands, entrepreneurs building circular economy businesses, or architects designing buildings that stay cool in desert climates without air conditioning.

Even small stories matter. A beekeeper protecting pollinators, a school teaching kids about compost, or a startup turning food waste into fertilizer can inspire others to act. Yes, the internet rewards sensational content, but sustainable storytelling rewards thoughtful content and it creates good vibes that are often noticed.. Videos that educate people about water conservation, renewable energy or biodiversity often travel further than expected because viewers recognize their value.

Creators who want to influence people for good should also think carefully about tone. Environmental storytelling does not need to lecture or shame audiences. It can invite curiosity instead. A well-filmed two-minute video explaining how mangrove forests protect coastlines or how desert architecture cools buildings naturally can spark deeper conversations. Consider that your audience is just as smart as you, maybe even smarter.
Ultimately sustainable video production is about intention.

Before posting, creators can ask themselves a few simple questions. Does this video help people understand the world better? Does it respect the people and places being filmed? Could sharing it put someone at risk?

When the answers are thoughtful, video becomes more than content. It becomes a tool for education, environmental awareness and positive influence and this is the kind of storytelling the internet needs much more of.

The post How to make sustainable video content and influence people for good appeared first on Green Prophet.

Water doesn’t behave the same way twice. It absorbs sound, distorts it, carries it, and sometimes erases it altogether. That instability is where artist Tarek Atoui works. We’ve seen it in Bjork’s live concerts and now Atoui is bringing his installation to the Tate.

This October, Atoui will create the next annual Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, one of the most demanding spaces in contemporary art. Rather than filling it with volume or spectacle, Atoui is likely to do something quieter — letting sound move through materials. (Our feature and review on In The Dark bears some likeness to this upcoming event.)

Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1980 and now living in Paris, Atoui has spent years building instruments that don’t sit comfortably in concert halls. Many of them involve water, glass, and ceramics — materials that react to sound instead of simply producing it. Water ripples, bowls hum, glass vibrates at the edge of breaking. Sound becomes something you encounter physically, not something delivered from a stage.

Much of Atoui’s work takes place in low light or near darkness. When the room dims, listening changes. You stop scanning for meaning and start paying attention to sensation: vibration in the floor, resonance in a vessel, a faint shift in air pressure. Sound moves slowly, negotiated through touch, breath, and mechanical movement.

Water, glass, and ceramics aren’t supporting actors here. They carry the whole piece.

Atoui’s instruments are often activated by visitors rather than performers. A hand turns a surface. Breath enters a pipe. A motor stirs liquid in a shallow bowl. Sound emerges unevenly, depending on how gently or insistently the materials are engaged. Nothing is fixed.

This approach is evident in works like Waters’ Witness, shown at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria and later at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan, where sound passed through water-filled vessels and ceramic forms. The experience was less about listening to a composition and more about becoming aware of how sound behaves in matter — how it pools, disperses, and leaves residue. Of course the easiest way to access this kind of natural “art” is just to sit by a lonely brook and listen to Mother Nature herself, without the pomposity.

The Turbine Hall itself is an acoustic body: vast, industrial, difficult to control. Rather than overpowering it, Atoui’s practice suggests a tuning of the space — allowing sound to circulate, settle, and respond to the architecture’s own history as a former power station.

At a time when sound is usually amplified, compressed, and consumed instantly, Atoui’s work insists on slowness. It asks visitors to stay with uncertainty, to notice small changes, to listen with their hands and feet as much as their ears.

There are no instructions. No single vantage point. Just materials doing what they do best when left room to act.

The post Listening to Water: Tarek Atoui’s Next Work for Tate Modern appeared first on Green Prophet.

I was delighted to get invited to a special performance of ‘In The Dark’ this week in London, after seeing the project get birthed and thrive in my home city of Cambridge quite a few years ago.

Dynamic cultural producer Andrea Cockerton has worked within music for many years, and knew that the idea of giving audiences an immersive live musical experience – in darkness – could bring tremendous benefits, and over several iterations, this project is thriving, and has now been brought to London audiences – with the hope it will grow into the projects permanent home.

The Space:

The current venue is St Andrew Church in Holborn, on Chancery Lane, right in the heart of London’s economic district – and as I stepped out of the tube station into the street, the grey gloom of the capital City greeted me, with all the busyness and throng of a Thursday evening at rush hour. I often feel a special thrill at going to an arts event in such a mercantile environment: arts, culture and the imagination so often feel threatened by the push for finance and economic stabilty within this current political climate, in funding the sciences for instance, and this was no exception, particularly as it was in a church in the heart of it all. While inside this very special church, restored and renovated in 1668 by the eminent architect Sir Christopher Wren, outside us office blocks are reaching up high, whereas for many years previously only sky would peer in.

St Andrew’s has vaulting pillars, beautiful golden screens, some sculptures and statues, and uplighting that matches the pillars, alongside oak panelling, all in a straightforward display – a fresh simple and yet deeply spiritual space for prayer, contemplation, and tonight, immersive live sound! The space had been lit with reds, blues, and greens, enhancing the atmosphere greatly.

I took my dear friend, Mick Collins, Norwich-based therapist and writer, who talked in rhapsodic terms about the venue and the whole experience afterwards.

Music:

Transported by the choral and instrumental offerings that popped up across the space, in corners, in front of us, and alongside us. The performance was genuinely breathtaking and profound, and it needed some quiet time to fully digest the experience. Those first moments after the concert had ended were gloriously ineffable. At no stage in the hour was I tempted to lift the eye mask and peek at the scene, though I did wonder if I might have loved this even more were I lying on the floor! I particularly loved hearing male voices starting, and solo female voices, as well as elements of rhythm and percussion leading some of the pieces.

We could hear the voices and instruments travel around the space, and I felt a sharper sense of hearing sounds thrown between instruments, bouncing off each other and responding to the piece. Maybe a sound came from my row of seats, then a singer was in front, and then a chorus of voice rose from the far left. And so forth, punctuated by silences between each of the pieces.

For some of the music, I really felt there was a watery theme (having spent much of last years promoting films and activism engaging with water and rivers), which delighted me, and scanning through the programme we were cleverly handed afterwards, the titles of some of the tracks bear this out. I won’t spoil the surprise and talk about the specifics and the songs that are part of the event as I really want to maintain the joy and surprise of the not knowing, and absolutely want to encourage everyone to go and experience this event if they are able. There was a glory in sitting and having the sounds wash over me, with no knowledge, anticipation, or even expectation of anything specific. Seeing the musicians as we peeled off the provided (very thick and comfortable and available to take home! ) eye masks who clearly were as happy as the audience were, and receptive to our cheers and applause, brought us all into rapt synergy.

All my neurons were buzzing and melting, and after a few thank you’s, hugs, enjoyment of the space and the folk we had shared this with, we melted out of the church, lifted divinely by having been ‘In The Dark’.
The projects publicity says “no phones and no distractions” and absolutely, what a joy that is.

Reflection:

Walking back to the tube, and then the train home, we were both pretty speechless, unable to find words for what we have both witnessed through our audible senses. We thought a bit, sat in quiet reverie, danced with some words, and then decided to reflect overnight and see the next day how we felt. After a deep slumber, all my neutrons moulded back into the shape of me, and we checked in with each other –

Mick: “ at one stage I felt I was inside a prayer – the experience was effervescent on the inside, like champagne bubbles: certain pieces brought this up. A very sacred experience. Afterwards I was left with a sense of oneness, in a true sense of the word. Very light in the body, and my mind had been cleansed – the vibration of the sound and the instrumentation. A beautiful beautiful experience. “

‘In The Dark’ is an exceptional immersive cultural experience like no other. Hearing these musicians perform together, to us and with us, in this unique and held spiritual environment of St Andrew Holborn, is both restful and stirring, joyful and deeply prayerful, beyond words.

::In The Dark

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When a 65-year-old oak tree in Steve Parker’s yard died from fungal disease, he did not cut it into firewood or haul it away. He did not erase it. He cut the tree into disks and then turned them into records that play birdsong –– a touching tribute to the years that the tree was house and home to birds and all manners of creatures.

Parker, a Texas-based sound artist known online as @parkerstevesounds played the disks of wood on a Victrola-style turntable, and from the it the wooden records emit layered avian soundscapes, transforming dead wood into a living archive. He called the project Funeral for a Tree.

I once worked on a similar project in clay. I created a series of vessels designed to hold seeds. While shaping each one, I spoke to it — prayers, fragments of thought, small conversations with the material itself. I recorded my voice and the surrounding landscape of sound into the walls of the ceramic. Today’s machines cannot retrieve those recordings. But future instruments — capable of hearing at finer scales — may. The vessels are simply waiting for the right ears.

Trees are not neutral objects. Their rings hold records of rainfall, drought, heat, and cold. Their fibers contain chemical traces of stress, recovery, and time. In scientific terms, trees are environmental witnesses. In Parker’s hands, they become storytellers.

The project was later exhibited at Ivester Contemporary in East Austin, Texas where visitors encountered both the wooden records and the physical remains of the tree itself. The installation did not explain the tree. It allowed people to sit with it.

In a time when climate loss is reported in numbers — hectares, parts per million, extinction rates — Funeral for a Tree insists on intimacy. It is easy to talk about forests. It is harder to mourn a single trunk. It’s like people fighting for Gaza or Iran or places thousands of miles beyond their city limits, but they don’t have time to call their grandmother or check on the sick boy down the street.

Parker’s work invites us to create rituals and intimacy with objects and meaning close to our homes and hearts.

The post Funeral for a Tree plays birdsong from tree rings of beloved oak appeared first on Green Prophet.

Somewhere between TikTok hauls and next-day delivery, we forgot how to fix things. We forgot how to cook without an app and a pre-made box, grow food without a kit, and sew a button back onto a shirt without throwing the whole garment away. Clothing, once stitched with intention (my mother made her own dresses!), has become fast fashion and disposable. And with it, a quiet loss of skill, patience, and care.

Levi’s is trying to reverse that. The brand has launched a new program in high schools that teaches students how to repair, reinforce, and customize their own clothes. It’s a small intervention with big implications.

“At Levi Strauss & Co., we’ve spent more than 170 years designing clothes to be worn and loved for as long as possible. The Levi’s® Wear Longer Project builds on that legacy by giving young people the confidence and tools to extend the life of what they already own,” said Michelle Gass, President and CEO, Levi Strauss & Co. “By building up repair skills within the next generation and emphasizing the idea of durability, we’re helping spark a culture of creativity, sustainability, and pride in taking care of the things we value.”

The idea isn’t new. Many of us remember clothing swaps, community repair nights, and the early sustainability movement that made secondhand feel rebellious and smart. It carried the same spirit as freecycle and the pop-ups that would help women repair their clothes — spaces where fashion stopped being about perfection and started being about longevity. We also love it when people in big cities put clothes out on park benches. Nothing like finding a haul of cosy clothes.

For years, knitting circles, stitch-and-bitch nights, and repair cafés were quietly led by women in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. They weren’t trying to start trends. They were trying to make things last and they enjoyed creating and being together. Now, that knowledge is finally being passed to a generation that understands waste instinctively, but often lacks the tools to act on it.

In the 2010s, greening your wardrobe was pretty easy. But Gen Z doesn’t just want sustainability slogans. They want agency. My daughter is a Gen Z and she can repair jeans with a sewing machine, she can crochet a hat and halter top and she make a bag. Learning how to patch denim, reinforce seams, and turn damage into design gives young people something rare: control over consumption.

“Every year, millions of wearable garments end up in landfills, many taking centuries to decompose. By teaching repair, customization, and sustainable care, the Wear Longer Project interrupts that cycle,” said Alexis Bechtol, director of Community Affairs at Levi Strauss & Co.

Created with Discovery Education, the Levi’s Wear Longer Project brings clothing repair back into the classroom — not as a hobby, but as a core life skill. Through free lesson plans, teacher toolkits, and hands-on workshops, students learn how to sew, hem, patch, and redesign their clothes. The materials are built to fit directly into existing high-school programs for grades nine to twelve, making repair part of everyday learning rather than an after-school afterthought.

New research commissioned by Levi’s found that 41% of Gen Z lack any clothing repair or customization skills — from altering a hem to sewing a custom patch —  compared to less than 25% of older generations who often learned these skills at home or in school. However, 35% of Gen Z say they would keep their clothing for longer if they knew how to alter or repair them. 

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Gen Z may lead the way in thrifting, swapping, and upcycling, but nearly half of those surveyed admitted they don’t know how to fix their clothes. Without repair skills, even the most circular fashion habits eventually collapse back into waste. The company argues that sustainability only works when durability is personal. Knowing how to extend the life of a garment is what turns environmental intention into real impact. Without that knowledge, circular fashion remains a theory instead of a practice.

In other words: you can love second-hand clothes all you want — but if you can’t repair them, they still end up in the bin.

The Levi’s Wear Longer Project is supported by a practical set of classroom-ready repair guides that make sustainability tangible, not theoretical. Students learn how to sew on buttons, hem clothing, patch holes, and fix tears through step-by-step facilitator and student guides designed for hands-on learning. Teachers can find the guides here –– with a version for students and one for teachers.

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After a sold-out London debut in 2024, the acclaimed immersive audio experience “in the dark” returns to the capital in January 2026, with performances scheduled for January 22, 23, 29 and 30 at St Andrew’s Church in Holborn.

The 60-minute performance places 30 musicians around the audience in complete darkness. Audience members wear sleep masks while the musicians perform fully live and acoustically, without amplification, speakers, or a conductor. Sound moves around the space in a choreographed 360-degree journey, allowing listeners to experience music purely through hearing.

A similar concept in dining exists in the Jaffa Port, where diners eat in a blacked out dining hall. There are no masks to wear and servers are already blind. You need to have faith and trust in the people around you.

The concept of listening in the dark, first developed in Cambridge in 2017, has grown into an international phenomenon. Its London season in 2024 received the Offies Assessors Choice award and strong critical and audience response. Since its launch, in the dark has staged more than 60 performances for over 8,000 people in venues across the UK.

Musicians are drawn from leading institutions including the Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and West End productions. Each performance is shaped by the natural acoustics of the venue, making every show distinct.

Founder Andrea Cockerton describes the philosophy behind the project: “In a world obsessed with being seen, we’re asking people to disappear for an hour. in the dark is a quiet, sound rebellion. No phones, no spectacle, no distractions… just the rare chance to actually feel music again.”

Related: Supper trains and no-pants day train in London

Cockerton, an award-winning arts entrepreneur, is known for her ethical approach to the arts and has received recognition including the NESTA / Observer New Radicals award and the SheSaidSo Alternative Music Power 100 honour.

While not positioned as a wellness event, in the dark mirrors the way nature restores attention and awareness: by removing visual dominance, the experience encourages deep listening, stillness, and presence — the same mental state many people seek in forests, deserts, or by the sea.

The absence of spectacle becomes the point. Each seat offers a different sound perspective. Each listener becomes an active participant in shaping their own experience.

Often described as the “Cirque du Soleil of the senses,” in the dark is now planning future performances across the UK, Europe, Australia and North America.

Tickets for the January performances at St Andrew’s Church, Holborn are now on sale.

::In The Dark

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Brigitte Bardot, who died today at the age of 91, will be remembered not only as one of the most recognizable film stars of the 20th century, but the chain-smoking French actress was also a tireless advocate for animals. Long after she stepped away from cinema, Bardot devoted her life, resources, and public voice to protecting animals—especially pets and vulnerable wildlife—at a time when few public figures were willing to do so.

Bardot retired from acting in 1973, at the height of her fame, and redirected her energy toward animal welfare. In 1986, she founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which became the central vehicle for her work. The foundation focused on preventing cruelty to animals, supporting shelters, rescuing abused pets, and campaigning against practices that caused unnecessary suffering.

Much of Bardot’s activism centered on companion animals. She was a vegetarian and repeatedly spoke out against the abandonment and mistreatment of dogs and cats, supported spay-and-neuter programs, and funded shelters across France and abroad.

Related: Turkey kills millions of dogs

At a time when pet welfare was often treated as a private issue rather than a social responsibility, Bardot helped push it into the public conversation.

Her celebrity played a crucial role. Bardot used her global recognition to draw attention to issues that were easy to ignore, giving animal protection visibility it had rarely enjoyed before. Media coverage of her campaigns brought animal welfare into living rooms around the world, influencing public attitudes and helping normalize the idea that animals deserve care, protection, and dignity.

While Bardot was not an environmentalist in the modern sense, her work helped shape the ethical foundation on which today’s environmental and sustainability movements stand. Caring for animals—especially pets—created an emotional bridge between people and the natural world, reinforcing the idea that human responsibility extends beyond ourselves.

Related: She rescues animals from Bethlehem and Ramallah

For millions, Brigitte Bardot’s most enduring legacy may not be on film, but in the lives of animals who were seen, protected, and cared for because she refused to look away.

The post Brigitte Bardot dies but her legacy of animal rights lives on appeared first on Green Prophet.

You want your voice to sound clear, strong, and steady each time you sing. That goal takes more than natural talent. It takes smart habits that train your vocal cords and strengthen your control. You can build stronger vocal skills by practicing focused voice exercises that improve your range, tone, and breathing.

With the right daily routine, you can prepare your voice to handle more demanding songs while keeping it healthy. Simple techniques, from gentle warmups to stretching your range with smooth sounds, help you create a richer and more confident tone. Each step matters because consistent practice shapes your progress over time.

Humming scales to warm up vocal cords

Humming scales helps your voice prepare for practice or performance. It gently brings the vocal folds together and increases airflow control. As you learn how to sing better, this exercise helps you notice pitch and sound vibrations in your face and chest, which supports steadier tones.

Start on a comfortable note and hum a simple five-note scale. Keep your tone light and smooth as you move up and down. Avoid pushing too hard or forcing volume.

This type of warm-up also improves pitch memory and balance between your breathing and voice. Regular practice builds control without straining your throat. Over time, you will notice it becomes easier to start singing with a relaxed and connected sound.

Lip trills for breath control and relaxation

Lip trills help you build steady breath control while keeping your voice relaxed. You press your lips together lightly and let air pass through them so they vibrate as you make sound. This simple action helps you release tension in your lips and jaw.

You can use lip trills before singing to warm up your voice. They help balance airflow and sound, which leads to smoother tone production. As a result, your body learns to manage air without forcing it, allowing for a more natural singing feel.

Try short sets of lip trills a few times a day. Keep your shoulders relaxed, breathe from your diaphragm, and maintain a gentle, steady stream of air. Over time, you may notice easier breath control and a calmer feeling while you sing or speak.

Sirens to expand vocal range smoothly

A vocal siren helps your voice glide through low and high notes without strain. You create the sound by smoothly sliding from your lowest note to your highest and back down. This builds flexibility and helps your cords adjust to different pitches.

Start with a gentle hum to get your voice ready. Move the sound through your range in one clear motion, similar to how a siren gradually rises and falls. Keep your throat relaxed and use steady air support so the sound stays even.

Regular siren practice helps you reach higher notes with more balance and ease. Over time, your tone becomes steadier and your voice gains better control. This simple warm-up works well before singing songs that need wide pitch movement.

Breathing exercises focusing on diaphragmatic support

Good singing starts with steady breath control. Diaphragmatic support helps you control airflow and maintain clear tone. It also helps you avoid strain in your throat and upper chest.

Sit or stand upright and place one hand on your abdomen. Take a slow breath through your nose and feel your stomach move outward as your diaphragm lowers. Release the air through your mouth in a smooth, even stream. This motion helps your body build natural breath pressure.

Practice a few minutes each day to make this movement feel natural. As your diaphragm grows stronger, your voice gains steadiness and flexibility. You will notice smoother phrasing and more control over long notes. Keep each breath calm and focused to support every phrase you sing with consistent power and balance.

Tongue and jaw relaxation drills to reduce tension

Tension in your tongue or jaw can limit airflow and make your tone less clear. To free your sound, start by gently opening and closing your mouth. Keep your jaw loose and let it drop naturally instead of forcing movement.

Next, rest the tip of your tongue behind your lower teeth and hum a simple scale. This helps the tongue stay forward and reduces extra pull in the throat. You may notice your tone feels smoother and easier to control.

Another useful drill is slow lip trills while keeping your jaw soft. This light motion releases tightness and allows steady breath flow. Repeat each exercise for a few minutes each day to build muscle awareness and keep tension away.

Pitch matching with piano or digital tuner

To improve your pitch control, start by using a piano or a digital tuner to produce a single note. Listen carefully and let the sound settle in your ear before you respond with your voice. Your goal is to match your tone as closely as possible to that reference note.

Repeat the process with different notes to build your ear and voice connection. Pay attention to small changes in sound; even a slight shift in pitch can make a big difference. Over time, this focused practice helps you recognize correct pitches faster.

A tuner gives you instant feedback, which helps you make quick adjustments. If your pitch sounds flat or sharp, move your voice up or down until the tuner shows you’re in tune. Consistent practice builds steadier control and a more confident ear for accuracy.

Vowel shaping exercises for clarity and resonance

Clear vowels help your tone sound open and full. They carry most of your pitch and resonance, so how you form them makes a big difference. If your vowels sound forced or closed, your voice can lose strength and focus.

Start by practicing simple vowel sounds such as “ah,” “ee,” “oo,” “eh,” and “oh.” Keep your mouth relaxed and aim for smooth airflow between each sound. Move from one vowel to another slowly to feel how each shape changes your tone.

You can also use a mirror to check for tension in your jaw or lips. Small adjustments help you create a balanced sound that feels easy and natural. As you train, listen for evenness in volume and tone across all vowels. Over time, these habits lead to greater consistency and better projection in your singing voice.

Conclusion

You can build a stronger, more flexible voice through steady practice and awareness of your habits. Each exercise you use helps you develop control and protect your vocal cords from strain.sing

Keep your sessions short at first, then increase your practice time as your voice grows more stable. Small, daily effort often produces better results than rare, long sessions.

Focus on clear tone, controlled breathing, and smooth transitions between notes. These areas shape both singing comfort and sound quality.

By staying patient and consistent, you allow your voice to develop at a natural pace. With time, your strength, tone, and confidence will steadily improve.

These tips are for general practice only and should not replace guidance from a professional vocal coach.

The post Want to Sing Better? 7 Voice Exercises That Help You To Build Stronger Vocal Skills appeared first on Green Prophet.

In an era when the climate crisis often feels abstract, distant, or buried beneath the data of carbon credits or financing mechanisms of COP30, a new artistic project from Brazil is cutting through the noise—literally—by turning one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems into a musical collaborator.

Pantanal Jam, a groundbreaking sound experiment created inside the world’s largest tropical wetland of Brazil, treats nature not as a backdrop but as a full artistic partner. The Pantanal—home to jaguars, giant otters, macaws, and more than 4,700 documented species—becomes both muse and musician, shaping the album’s rhythms, motifs, and improvisations in real time.

To understand the philosophy behind the project, Green Prophet spoke with Sandro Moreno, drummer, percussionist, and co-creator of Pantanal Jam.

His reflections reveal not only the making of an album but the emergence of a new ecological listening practice—one that invites humans to stop dominating nature’s soundscape and start collaborating with it.

Take the album “Espiral,” says Moreno. “At the very beginning of the track, a jaguar growls – not as a background effect, but as a participating artist. That growl shaped the pulse of the moment. It entered the rhythm like a beat, blending seamlessly with the percussion and setting the mood for everything that followed. It was wild, unexpected, and perfect.

“Throughout the album, this conversation with nature continues. Birds like the thrush, the Pantanal blackbird, the seriema, the hornero, the potoo, the ibis, macaws, and parakeets – they didn’t just inspire us. They played with us. Their calls, cries, and chatter became part of the music’s soul, interacting with our drums, guitars, and voices in spontaneous harmony.

“This wasn’t about layering nature sounds onto music in post-production. It was about playing with nature – responding to its rhythms in real time, allowing its unpredictability to shape our own.”

Musicians have long searched for ways to collaborate with the natural world, though few have taken it as far as Pantanal Jam.

Stevie Wonder experimented with field recordings and environmental textures on albums like Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, one of the earliest mainstream attempts to treat nature as a co-composer rather than a backdrop.

If you love this kind of sonic ecology, you’ll probably also enjoy our stories about Plants that talk using sound and AI, how we might one day speak “dolphin”, and crickets composing the soundscape at the Venice Biennale.

Scientists and sound artists have also translated plant electrical signals into audible frequencies, creating “plant music” that reveals hidden rhythms in living organisms. And Björk, through projects like Biophilia, has blended natural processes, digital ecosystems, and experimental instrumentation to explore how the environment can shape melody, structure, and emotional tone.

Pantanal Jam emerges in this lineage but roots itself directly in a living biome, playing not about nature or around it, but with it in real time.

According to Moreno, when the group set out to create Pantanal Jam, they weren’t planning to simply compose music. They were planning to listen—deeply—to “one of the most biodiverse and magical places on Earth,” responding to it “in the most honest way we could: through sound.”

Moreno describes the concept as letting the living landscape lead: the wind, the water, the rustling trees, and most importantly the animals. These weren’t atmosphere or incidental texture. They acted as “fellow musicians,” their voices forming motifs that shaped the improvisations and guided the compositions.

For a percussionist, this demanded a different kind of listening. Moreno says rhythm exists everywhere in the Pantanal: in the lapping of water, the beating of wings, distant thunder, or dawn animal calls. Playing in that environment required letting go of control, responding intuitively, and allowing the environment to lead. It became less about performance and more about presence.

His description of the project extends beyond technique. Pantanal Jam, he says, is an invitation to reconnect with the earth through music, to experience the wild not as an accessory but as part of our own creative process. Art doesn’t have to dominate nature. It can dance with it.

This approach lands at a crucial environmental moment. The Pantanal is under escalating threat. Wildfires in recent years have burned unprecedented areas, droughts have intensified, and agricultural expansion continues to alter the wetland’s hydrology. Projects like Pantanal Jam do not pretend to solve these systemic issues, but they shift the cultural lens: they ask listeners to hear the biome as a living, expressive presence rather than a resource or backdrop.

By bringing listeners into this sound world, the project acts as both artistic innovation and subtle ecological advocacy. It reminds us that ecosystems are not silent. They speak constantly—if we listen.

::www.pantanaljam.com

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A newly commissioned quilt, “Big Bluestem,” by textile artist Pauline Burbidge has entered the permanent collection at the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Created using cyanotype techniques on fabric—an old 19th-century sun-printing method once used for botanical documentation—the quilt captures grasses from Nebraska’s prairies and turns them into a living memory map. Fossils, bison, insects, and historic symbols are stitched into the back like a quiet ledger of land and humanity.

We’ve been experimenting with cyanotype over the years and love how you can take objects and prints and turn them into photographs.

This return to slow, tactile, land-connected craft echoes a larger cultural shift we’re seeing across climate art, regenerative design, and local storytelling. Quilts are becoming scrolls. Soil is becoming ink. Memory is becoming a material.

Pauline says: “To me, the importance of the tall-grasses is key to our future balance – the well-being of humans, animals and plant life. There are very few Tall-Grass Prairies left! I would love to see more conservation and development of them – they are so important!”

Craft as Archive: Dirt, Ink, and Healing Objects

@greenprophet Reposted from @Kedma_link We travelled to the site of the Nova dance floor October 7th massacre with our mother and collected earth from the dance floor. The memorials written by mothers for their daughters and sons tore our hearts out. Our Scottish mother cried and screamed to us last night — let the world know what happened in Israel! They don’t know. They don’t understand. We don’t want to fight. There is a belief in the Holy Land that all material carries a divine spark. And the materials and matter that come into our lives has a purpose, just like relationships, fortune, love, and pain. While we can’t form complete pots or cups from sand, we imbue our vessels with sparks of the earthen memory from Nova and are curious to see if something extra, like a maker’s spirit, can be felt when holding or drinking from such cups. We are looking for people from all over the world to try our experiment. Can you feel anything that matters in the material you hold? Can we redeem the pain, or matter for that matter? Drop us a line in the comments with your location if you want us to send you a Nova Earth cup. We have 20 to give away and are looking for people from all over the world to participate. #Jaffa #novaearth #pottery #materialmatters #ceramic ♬ Will Ye Go, Lassie Go? – Lola Kirke & Peter Dreams & Brian Dunphy & Darren Holden & Jack O’Connell & Sinners Movie

Canadian experimental artist Karin Kloosterman, founder of Green Prophet and a regular contributor here (read her latest on how to escape a cyborg take-over by hiding out in Berlin at Michelberger Hotel), has been making vessels and tea cups using soil collected from sites of cultural and emotional rupture. One of her recent series includes 18 healing cups made from the earth of the Nova music festival dance floor, reclaiming soil touched by grief and turning it into a shared ritual of remembrance. She also embeds seeds and found materials into vessels as anonymous time capsules, to be uncovered by future humans in a cyborg world.

Jason Logan’s “Make Ink” project in Toronto creates pigments using rusted scaffolding bolts, berries from alleyways, copper pipes, and soot from bus stops—turning urban scrap into poetic, usable color. The book is a handbook for those who want to create ink as memory rather than commodity. Andrian Pepe in Lebanon reconstructs identity through wool and traditional textile forms, using craft as emotional cartography.

Experimental biofabricators are now printing patterns on fabric using mushroom-based inks, and even making mushroom paper and mushroom-based leather—creating textiles that age, change, and biodegrade intentionally. Quilts that are meant to return to the earth.

From Knitting Elephant Sweaters to Soil Teacups – Folk Traditions in the Anthropocene

On Green Prophet, we’ve covered similar folk gestures over the years: The knitters in India making oversized sweaters for cold elephants, a gesture of absurd tenderness that went viral. Women’s collectives in the Middle East knitting protection around trees like they were family members.

These are not just cute stories. They signal something deeper: a hunger for connection to land through material ritual. When the digital world feels weightless, people turn to thread, soil, and plant dyes as a way to say: we are still here.

Start Some Projects With Your Local Spirit and Materials

Make quilts printed with plant shadows using sunlight and mushroom ink. Begin soil ceremonies—collect clay or earth from places under stress and turn it into vessels or fabric dyes. Create urban ink labs in schools and kitchens, inspired by Make Ink. Start a climate memory quilt—invite refugees, festival-goers, farmers, firefighters to each contribute a patch using pigment or soil from their land.

Love the idea of craft from place? Read these articles on Green Prophet:

• Japanese factory lets you knit your own socks with a bicycle
• Japanese Newspaper with Seeds You Can Plant
• Weaving Ghandi’s Hope Into Her Coats
• Guy Lougashi’s Dumpster Diving Designs Inspired By …
• Flour Sacks to Ecological Fashion Statements in Times of Crisis
• How to Make Mushroom Paper
• 4 Fun Crafts to Reduce Waste
• Heatherwick Converts Desalination Plant Into Craft + Museum
• Adrian Pepe’s Lebanese Culture, Craft and Identity Through Local Sheep
• Weaving Gandhi’s Hope Into Her Coats
• Sustainable Tunisian Crafts by Matali Crasset
• The One-Eyed Salt-Carver from Siwa Who Still Loves His Craft
• Make Moss Graffiti
• Ramadan Crafting Ideas
• DIY: Building a Garden Room in Your Backyard

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