The Message is the Medium is a new arts movement created by Societás in partnership with Medium Magazine and our friends and colleagues to bring the world’s visual and audio arts students, graduates and professionals together behind humanitarian and environmental issues to help communicate messages and information on climate change, natural resource depletion, species extinction, poverty and slave labour.

A campaign to inspire the masses and help change citizen behaviour through the creative mediums. A chance for artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, poets and designers to utilise their talents for the common good.

The Messages will include Climate Change, Species Extinction, Natural Resource Depletion and other environmental and social issues.

The Mediums will include the full spectrum of the arts including Music, Film, Art, Advertising, New Media, Design, Poetry and Writing.

The Message is The Medium panel will be announced in August, but those we can already confirm onboard include:

Jules Peck - author of Citizen Renaissance
Laurie Cansfield – Publisher of Medium Magazine
Melissa Sterry – CEO, Societás
Ciaran Mundy – Director One World Wildlife
Lucian Tarnowski – Director of Take Heart India
Cyndi Rhodes – Founder of Worn Again and Anti Apathy
David North – Editor of Sustained
Marc De ‘eath – Publisher of Sustained
William Shaw – RSA Arts & Ecology
Julia Forster – author and Schumacher UK Council member
Caleb Klaces – poet, founder of Like Starlings
Joanna Yarrow – founder of Beyond Green

The Message is The Medium launch project will be a National poetry competition. Citing Alan Brownjohn’s Poem ‘The Last Rabbit as an example of a poem with the ability to inspire action on critical environmental issues – we are inviting the nation’s poets to pen a poem of our times, which explores one or several of the issues we face.

The poetry competition will be open to adults aged 18 and over. Poets will be invited to pen a poem to The Message is The Medium competition brief, which will be announced soon. Having penned their poem, entrants must submit a short film of themselves reading their poem – stating the name of their poem and their name at the start of their film. They must then load their video onto YouTube.com, and if they wish other social media sites (i.e. MySpace.tv) and email the link to their video on YouTube.com and a Word document version of their poem, with their name, address, date of birth, email and phone number to us. The entry email address will be disclosed when we announce the poetry competition brief and entry deadline.

The winning entries will be published in the following magazines and websites: Medium Magazine, Sustained, LikeStarlings and on the Societás blog, amongst other titles.

Where did the inspiration for The Message is The Medium, otherwise known as M=M, come from? The sustainable arts movement was inspired by this Alan Brownjohn Poem…

WE ARE GOING TO SEE THE RABBIT...

We are going to see the rabbit,
We are going to see the rabbit,
Which rabbit, people say?
Which rabbit, ask the children?
Which rabbit?
The only rabbit,
The only rabbit in England,
Sitting behind a barbed wire fence
Under the floodlights, neon lights,
Sodium lights,
Nibbling grass.
On the only patch of grass
On the only patch of grass
In England, in England
(Except the grass by the hoardings
Which doesn't count).
We are going to see the rabbit
And we must be there on time.

First we shall go by escalator,
Then we shall go by underground,
And then we shall go by motorway,
And then by helicopterway,
And the last ten yards we shall have to go
On foot.
And now we are going
All the way to see the rabbit,
We are nearly there,
We are longing to see it,
And so is the crowd
Which is here in thousands
With mounted policemen
And big loudspeakers
And bands and banners
And everyone has come a long way.

But soon we shall see it
Sitting and nibbling
The blades of grass
On the only patch of grass
In - but something has gone wrong!
Why is everyone jostling
And slanging and complaining?

The rabbit has gone,
Yes the rabbit has gone,
He has actually burrowed down into the earth
And made himself a warren, under the earth,
Despite all these people.
And what shall we do?
What can we do?

It is all a pity, You must be dissapointed,
Go home and do something else for today,
Go home again, go home for today,
For you cannot hear the rabbit, under the earth,
Remarking rather sadly to himself, by himself,
As he rests in his warren, under the earth:
"It wont be long, they are bound to come,
They are bound to come and find me, even here."

The Message is The Medium website will launch soon at...

http://www.messagemedium.org

Meanwhile you can join us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MequalsM