2020 - Ellie Harrison

Lecture

Artists & Climate Change: Awareness

3 Dec 2020
Scottish Artists Union
Lecture

Just Transition: a fairer, greener Scotland

25 Nov 2020
Just Transition Commission, Scottish Government
Lecture

How can we build a green recovery?

23 Nov 2020
Glasgow Covid-19 Action Group
Lecture

Art, Activism & Sustainable Transport in Glasgow

20 Nov 2020
Impact Arts, Glasgow
Lecture

Spotlight on Glasgow

14 Nov 2020
From the Ground Up, COP26 Coalition (0:37:00-0:39:10)
Lecture

Dear Green Glasgow

12 Nov 2020
Masters in Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art
Lecture

My Philosophy of Art School Education

4 Nov 2020
Contemporary Art Practice Speaker's Programme, University of Dundee
Lecture

Ellie Harrison: Bunker Talks

22 Oct 2020
Manchester School of Art
Lecture

Building Back Better Public Transport

19 Oct 2020
People Before Profit Scotland launch event (0:55:40-0:58:43)
Media

The City Adapts

19 Oct 2020
Embassy of Mobility, World Design Embassies (Netherlands)
Lecture

A Green Recovery: the Future of Transport in Glasgow

14 Oct 2020
Greenpeace Glasgow
Lecture

Imagine if buses were free…

19 Sep 2020
Free Our City launch event (0:41:08-0:54:15)
Lecture

Dark Days

1 Sep 2020
Academy of Urbanism, Glasgow School of Art
Media

Building back better in the ‘Dear Green Place’ with free buses and trains

1 Sep 2020
Scottish Left Review (Issue 119 p.8)
Lecture

Save Gurnell

6 Aug 2020
Overview & Scrutiny Committee, Ealing Council
Media

Review: Edinburgh Art Festival 2020

4 Aug 2020
Fleming Collection
Media

Artists to present work outdoors and online to mark dates of cancelled Edinburgh Art Festival

1 Aug 2020
The Scotsman
Installations

Tonnes of carbon produced by the personal transportation of a ‘professional artist’

This graph was first compiled as the central illustration of Harrison’s 2019 book The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint to illustrate the artist’s increasing amount of travel in the years running up to her 2016 project and the dramatic impact it had on reducing her carbon footprint for transport. It was updated in 2020 for display at Edinburgh Art Festival.
Media

Welcome to the 15-minute city

19 Jul 2020
Financial Times
Lecture

Performing Solidarity – Ethics and Responsibility

2 Jul 2020
Middlesex University
Lecture

Artist Talk: Ellie Harrison

30 Jun 2020
Castlefield, Manchester
Lecture

Scotland’s Response to the Climate Emergency

10 Jun 2020
Friends of the Earth Scotland (0:18:29-0:28:49)
Writing

Artist as Active Citizen

Harrison reflects on The Glasgow Effect for this new text commissioned to launch a-n‘s year-long research project with AirSpace Gallery: Artists Make Change (May 2020 – May 2021). It is published alongside a new text by Dave Beech reflecting on the history of political art, to provoke discussion about artists’ roles in affecting social change. (Word count: 1,540)
Lecture

Free Public Transport

1 May 2020
Glasgow May Day, Glasgow Trades Council (1:38:32-1:46:22)

Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.