The Rescue Project
Gretchen Miller
Have you ever rescued a riverbank? A tract of bush, an eroded beach, a native animal or bird? What do you feel as you tend to tired earth, or engage with the intrinsic value of an old-growth giant, or look into that creature’s eyes? And, in some way, do these things rescue you?
The Rescue Project is a co-creative digital citizen storytelling space full of unique actions for the natural environment in the context of the climate crisis. In text and sound, Australian land and animal carers but also artists and casual visitors tell 500 word stories of intimate relationships with home ground. Together they proffer companionship to those yearning to engage but paralysed by anxiety or doubt. Ten stories were selected for reading aloud by their writers and set to sound design. And there is a longer dive into the rescue actions of a single community, that of the Atherton Tablelands, where we are audio-immersed in the wettest part of the driest continent on earth. We’re walking through the landscape with people looking after tree kangaroos whose fragmented forest habitat needs reconnecting, finding seeds for propagation, replanting great tracts of rain forest, and protecting the whole from a tiny but deadly invader – the yellow crazy ant.
The Rescue Project helps us find courage during climactic times.
About the Artist
Gretchen Miller is an internationally recognised audio documentary producer with 20 years at ABC RN, Australia’s public broadcaster. Gretchen has created over 80 audio features, using sound and spoken word to evocatively capture the essence of human engagements with the natural world. There she trailblazed climate and environment citizen/co-creative storytelling such as Hot Summer Land, Birdland and the Trees Project, tapping into the psychological connections of unique individuals to native birds and forests. Interviews with numerous leading environmental academics, scientists, activists and media personalities include: David Attenborough, Ove Hough-Gouldberg, Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa, philosopher Glenn Albrecht and Robert Pogue Harrison. But alongside these experts are interwoven local storytellers, from turtle rescuers in Queensland to Karen rebels fighting to save pristine forest in Myanmar. Gretchen is currently a freelance podcast host and producer, and in her third year of a PhD in environmental communication at UNSW (Australia).