Ahead of the release of a new documentary spanning their career, The Indiependent caught up with British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey to discuss the development of The Art of Activism and the drive behind their most iconic works.
The Indiependent: When were you first approached for the documentary?
Dan Harvey: Fiona [Cunningham-Reid, director] started off filming Extinction Rebellion [XR] and the events in London, and she wanted something to hook that onto. She knew of us and decided to use us to base some of the film on, and then it slowly developed, becoming more about us. It had a sort of organic growth to it.
Heather Ackroyd: My history with Fiona goes back to 1987, when she was working on an independent film I was involved with. We have a very open, trusting dialogue with Fiona, and I think that’s why we could allow her to go into the intimate aspect of our lives – as well as the [Covid] crisis going on outside, there was another crisis going on in our relationship. She never took sides and kept a very open presence.
That honesty comes across very powerfully in the film. How was it letting a filmmaker into your workspace—did it shift your process, or add to the collaborative aspect?
HA: I think it was important that the film didn’t focus on our crisis; we didn’t want it to become a soap opera, compared to the operatic scale of the climate emergency! We needed to address it because the reality of the pandemic is that many partnerships and marriages were really tested, and it would have felt disingenuous whilst talking about truth and facts with XR not to address what was going on between us. At the same time, we wanted the metanarrative to be activism: our work, the climate emergency, collaboration, and ultimately the creativity at the centre [of XR] which has been our guiding force.
DH: A lot of couples during Covid had never spent so much time together, but me and Heather had never spent so much time apart. It was a very particular time though; the five years Fiona was following us were a momentous period with the changes that Covid brought about, the fact that it became possible for things to be slowed down and stopped, and it’s quite strange that everything seems to have gone back to how it was before.
HA: I don’t necessarily agree that that’s the case. The corporate capitalist model has returned but it was there with a vengeance during the pandemic, with everyone compensating for their angst and fear with spending. The big shift that has happened is a political seizure by the right-wing in America, and that is a huge meta-change in the situation because they are making a bonfire of every environmental and health regulation they can get their hands on.
DH: And nothing is normal nowadays, everything seems to be moving in the opposite direction to how it should be. So we need more activism, people understanding and acting on the truth, because it’s more difficult these days. The problem is that information doesn’t always get out there. The power and money pushes one agenda, but there’s an awful lot underneath that, and it’s a matter of finding out how to get involved and receiving that information.
The launch of Culture Declares Climate Emergency is covered in the film. What were the aims of the movement when it was set up, and how has it moved forward?
DH: We were very much involved in XR and drawn to them by their imagination and creativity (such as the pink boat displayed in Oxford Circus); the graphics and attention to visual details was incredible. The woodblocks were amazing as a way of branding with no commercial side. But we were aware that there was no way for cultural institutions to support non-violent civil disobedience, even though it was so important for culture to have a voice in this.
HA: We actually formed on April 3rd 2019, before the major XR protests like the pink boat; it was just mind-blowing on so many levels, and incredibly affirmative (some of the best street theatre I’ve ever seen). Climate Declares as of 2025 has been going for five years, with distributed hubs and an international programme in Uganda, Germany, Spain, USA etc. We struggle financially just to fund a national coordinator, but it’s still around with fantastic resources and tools available online. It’s about decolonisation, regeneration and the complexity of the situation rather than quick solutions. And it still has a firm foothold in activism; while we haven’t done major action in some time, we still support other activist groups.
Perhaps the most striking image in the film is the grass cloak that featured heavily at these Culture Declares/XR protests in 2019. Was this always something you had in mind, or did it grow out of your activist involvement?
DH: We actually first grew the grass cloak in 1991, as part of an anti-fur campaign, photographing it outside the Ritz’s fur shop. Though the shop closed down a few months later, the piece inadvertently began a vogue for fur coats dyed green. The cloak itself is a symbol of taking something that looks and weighs very like the pelt of an animal, and yet it was living.
HA: Those coats appeared on the news, and in a spread of the Independent newspaper at the time. When we regrew them as part of XR’s anti-fast fashion movement, it became huge on social media and led to Prada and Vogue making commitments to the cause. They’re a favourite of ours.
And the grass portraits as well? It’s a very moving moment in the documentary when we see these first being unveiled to their subjects.
HA: Again, Dan and I – through a kind of alchemy – made this discovery and finessed it, working with people who could help us on the technical side. Our works slip very much between analogue and digital for these large projections: trust me, none of this has come about easily! But we still love doing these photosynthesis pieces because it’s happening on a molecular level. Chlorophyll is the reason why our planet is so exquisitely green.
DH: Without the fact that plants photosynthesise, we wouldn’t have life on our planet, the food that we eat—or fossil fuels either. The pieces shown in the film were for the Hayward Gallery. We project a negative onto growing grass in a dark space, so it only gets light from the projector. Areas with more light develop chlorophyll, whereas those in the dark remain starved as they grow. The result is the tonal range of a black and white photo, in shades of yellow and vibrant green. These are ephemeral pieces; in the right conditions they can last for years, or we will allow them to degrade before composting them.
I was curious about the ‘behind the scenes’ footage that we see; was that shot for public consumption, or just for your own archive?
DH: Our work is ephemeral, so recording and documenting it is very much part of a process.
HA: There’s a wonderful film of us when we were grassing the church [Dilston Grove in Bermondsey] in 2003 that we have never properly put up. The problem we have is we’re often very stretched, and we want to be very present—so we have ended up with all of this archive. Fortunately Fiona did transfer some of our video tapes onto master digital copies, but we still have to get most of those from the editor! We’d love to get these out there, but we’re just trying to keep on top of things.
Especially for young people, it feels like the government has been trying to ringfence science and the creative industries, putting these sectors in opposition. Could you talk a little about how you see art influencing science and engineering?
HA: Our most formative science relation was with Professor Howard Thomas (who passed away in 2022). We went down for 10 days of research with Howard and his team who had been working on chlorophyll breakdown, and ultimately their work was influenced by this collaboration. That has led, over the last 20 years, to Aberystwyth University building a pioneering Plant Phenomics Centre, because of Howard looking at our portraits and realising their potential.
DH: They had been working on a type of grass known as StayGreen which, due to a gene mutation, didn’t break down its chlorophyll. They put blades of this and regular grass in a scanner, and the two could be separated due to a very slight colour difference. This led to adapting a hyperspectral scanner from satellite technology to scan plants across fields for fertiliser use etc. And it all stemmed from the grades of colour in our images.
HA: What’s interesting is there was a real accusation from some scientists that the artists were always gaining more from these collaborations. Howard would turn round and reply that this project “has fundamentally changed how we do science”.
Interview by Max King
Ackroyd and Harvey: The Art of Activism is available in UK cinemas from 19th September.
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