The Scottish Maritime Museum will be hosting a weekend raising awareness of the issues of climate change and its effects on our coastal regions and oceans. There will be exhibitions, talks, children’s activities, and workshops for all ages.

Scottish Maritime Museum Irvine

Saturday 25th September:

Ocean Posters Against Plastic Pollution Exhibition with Curator Dr John Ennis 

The international student design project visually inspires and stuns. Hear from the exhibition’s co-curator Dr John Ennis about the incredible project that calls for change in the way we interact with the environment around us.

A Plastic Ocean Documentary Screening and Plastic Pollution Poster Workshop 

On Saturday 25th September there with be screenings of the 20 minute version of the fascinating and eye-opening documentary A Plastic Ocean, 2016, directed by journalist Craig Leeson. A Plastic Ocean documents the newest science, proving how plastics, once they enter the oceans, break up into small particulates that enter the food chain where they attract toxins like a magnet. These toxins are stored in seafood’s fatty tissues, and eventually consumed by us.

Sir David Attenborough, who appears in the documentary, called it, “One of the most important films of our time.”

‘A Plastic Ocean’ screenings throughout the weekend will be accompanied by a Plastic Pollution Poster Workshop where families will make posters inspired by the lifecycle of different plastic products using coffee cups and toothbrushes. The workshop is free with your admission ticket.

Saturday Screenings (22mins) followed by Poster Workshop (30mins)  - Education Room 

11am, 12.30pm, 2pm and 3.30pm

Sunday Screenings (1hr 40mins) - Cinema Bus 

11am and 2pm

Sunday Poster Workshop   - Education Room 

Drop in session all day.

Sunday 26th September 

Stiches for Survival Demo, Sunday 1pm - 4pm 

The Ayrshire 'craftivists' taking part in Stiches for Survival are making part of a 1.5-mile-long knitted scarf, a message for the negotiators at COP26 urging them to take bold and binding action together.

The length of the scarf represents the 1.5°c target in the Paris Agreement. This has been calculated as the maximum temperature rise the planet can tolerate before the effects of climate change become catastrophic. After COP26 the scarf will be repurposed into blankets for refugee communities. Some of the more creative sections will be kept for an exhibition and ongoing campaigning

Basking Shark Sculpture (All weekend) 

Also on show in the Museum Courtyard on Harbour Road is artist Justin Vibert Wilson’s seven metre long, life size basking shark made of recycled materials.

The shark, which represents what is the largest fish in British waters and the second largest fish in the world after the whale shark, was created for the Giving Nature a Home project in the run up to COP26 in collaboration with Garnock Connections, the RSPB and Climate Change Scotland.

The sculpture highlights the issues of plastic pollution in the oceans and waterways of the world. The choice of materials represents the discarded packaging and fishing industry litter that ends up in the ocean causing problems for the fish and mammals that inhabit that environment.

Climate Fringe Week celebrates and supports all the ways people can engage in climate activism, as part of an organisation, with friends, family or wider community, to bring about climate action.

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