Latest news with #Johnsons
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘People can't imagine something on that scale dying': Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef
Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. 'I feel like I'm going to Auschwitz,' she says nervously. 'On the one hand, I'm so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there's going to be so much that's gorgeous. And yet, I'm also scared.' In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni's assignment: documenting the current state of the world's biggest coral reef. Reefs are hubs of biodiversity, supporting about a third of all marine species and 1 billion people, and crucial to the Earth as both a carbon sink and a home to algae, which produce at least half of the planet's oxygen. The Amazon rainforest, which produces about 20% of our oxygen, is often described as the Earth's lungs; being the size of Italy or Texas, you could call the Great Barrier Reef the left lung and the Amazon the right. But the gigantic reef is not well: it has been hit by six mass coral bleaching events in the past nine years, an alarming trend driven by record marine heatwaves. If coral reefs disappear, scientists warn there will be a domino effect as other ecosystems follow – a step down the path towards mass extinction. Anohni has been thinking about what she calls 'ceremonies fit for purpose', for a loss of this magnitude. When a sudden catastrophe happens, like a terror attack or natural disaster, humanity has worked out ways to process grief and anger en masse: funerals, memorials, protest, activism. But what do we do in the face of a slower death – like the worst global bleaching event on record, which is happening right now and has hit more than 80% of the planet's reefs? 'Where are the ceremonies fit for the purpose of naming and commemorating the times that we're living through?' she asks. 'To see the Great Barrier Reef fall, that's 10,000 9/11s.' 'People can't really imagine something on that scale dying,' she says. For this year's Vivid festival, Anohni is performing two shows at the Sydney Opera House, titled Mourning the Great Barrier Reef, featuring songs from across her career and footage of the reef captured at Lizard Island. With the help of Grumpy Turtle, a production company that specialises in underwater and conservation films, Anohni will be directing the scuba team from the surface in her snorkel. The image of such a poised performer, bobbing along in the ocean, seems wonderfully incongruous even to her. 'I can't believe I'm doing it,' she laughs. 'I feel so privileged just to go. I'm scared and I'm very excited. But I'm with a great team, and they're all very knowledgeable, so they'll help me through it.' Just as a dying star glows more brightly before it goes dark, coral look even more beautiful in distress. Fluorescing – a phenomenon when corals release a garish pigment into their flesh as a sign of heat stress – is deceptively spectacular; and bleaching – when corals expel the photosynthetic algae that give them colour in response to warmer ocean temperatures – turns them a dazzling white. 'It is like when someone's dying, sometimes they show the gold of the soul,' Anohni says. 'They throw their life force into a final expression. That's what coral bleaching is … she's saying goodbye.' She describes a conversation she had with a scientist who went out to visit a dead reef with a group of Danish students, 'and they were all saying it was the most beautiful thing in the world, because they didn't even know what they were looking at was a bunch of skeletons'. Anohni has long been singing about the climate crisis, sneaking this bitter pill into her beautiful, otherworldly songs. 'I need another world,' she sang sorrowfully on 2009's Another World. 'This one's nearly gone.' On 4 Degrees, released as world leaders met for the 2015 Paris climate conference, she sang her grim vision of the future: 'I wanna hear the dogs crying for water / I wanna see the fish go belly-up in the sea / And all those lemurs and all those tiny creatures / I wanna see them burn, it is only four degrees.' She has grown used to being seen 'as a kind of a Cassandra on the sidelines'; the prophet doomed to be ignored. Still, she is 'so grateful' for being alienated in a way – as a trans artist, as a climate activist – 'because when you have an outsider status, you have an opportunity to see the forest for the trees'. Her songs are often about how everything is connected: patriarchy, white supremacy, late stage capitalism, climate change denial, public surveillance, centuries of extraction and environmental degradation, and societies built on religions that preach that paradise is elsewhere, not here – 'all this unwellness that we have woven together', she says. Naomi Klein recently described Anohni as 'one of the few musicians who have attempted to make art that wraps its arms around the death drive that has gripped our world'. Anohni has a special connection to Australia: in 2013 she was invited to visit the Martu people of Parnngurr, in the West Australian desert, 'an experience that changed me forever'. When she asked one Martu woman where they believed people went after death: 'She just looked at me like I was an idiot and said, 'Back to country'.' This 'deeply shocked' Anohni, from a British and Irish Catholic background. 'She had a profound, peaceful acceptance of this animist reality,' she says. 'I was raised in a society where they believed that only humans had souls and that this place was basically just a suffering ground where we had to mind our Ps and Qs. I no longer believe that.' In 2015, she played two concerts at Dark Mofo to raise proceeds for the Martu's fight against a proposed uranium mine on their ancestral lands; the following year she joined them on a 110km protest march in the outback. She even willingly entered Australia's most hostile environment – Q&A – where she memorably blasted a panellist for opposing wind turbines, telling him: 'You're doomed and I'm doomed and your children are doomed.' 'I screamed at those fucking wankers, and made a fucking fool of myself,' she says, smiling, 'and I was torn a new arsehole in the Murdoch press.' But at the same time, she was inundated with messages of support from all over the country. 'I was proud of the chance to be of service to Australians,' she says. Still, she agonises over her own impact on the environment, even the decision to go to Lizard Island. She is not assigning blame to anyone else – if anything, her finger is directed firmly at herself. 'Just coming to Australia is an intolerable equation – the amount of oil that I burn to get there,' she says. Now if she performs in Australia, she does it for a cause and leaves the proceeds behind 'because there's no way morally to justify it any more'. For the Vivid project, Anohni is also interviewing eight 'incredible' scientists about what they have observed on the Great Barrier Reef, including Dr Anya Salih, an expert on reef fluorescence, and the 'Godfather of Coral', Prof Charlie Veron. 'They're the ones who have stewarded the reef, who've watched her and cried with her as she's declined,' she says. She admires that they don't hide their grief; as Veron told the Guardian back in 2009: 'The future is horrific. There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise.' 'Australia is pioneering in this oeuvre of environmental feeling,' Anohni says. 'It's could be something to do with the Australian temperament. It's more expressive. It's stoic too, but there's room for feeling. The English scientific community is very, very cruel in that regard – any expression of emotion is grounds for exclusion from any conversation of reason.' It is her hope that her Vivid shows will be fit for purpose – to show people the reality of the reef and give them a space to both marvel and grieve. 'But to grieve doesn't mean that a thing is done – to grieve just means that you're recognising where we are,' she says. 'For an hour and a half you can come to the Great Barrier Reef with me, and we'll look at it and we'll feel it. Without understanding what we're looking at, there's no hope of finding a direction forward. It's actually a profound gesture of hope.' Anohni and the Johnsons will perform Mourning the Great Barrier Reef at Sydney Opera House on 26 and 27 May as part of Vivid festival
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
John Lewis expands repair service to boost circularity for garments
The service rollout to John Lewis locations, except for the Swindon and Canary Wharf stores, builds on the positive response from a pilot programme initiated in July 2024. The initial trial was conducted in five locations: Oxford, Liverpool, Cheadle, Milton Keynes, and Welwyn. Feedback from the trial indicated high demand for minor fabric repairs and seam mending – a reflection of customers' desire to maintain their frequently used items – as well as trouser alterations for improved fit. Starting 9 April, customers will have the convenience of dropping off items at any John Lewis store for cleaning, mending or tailoring. The retailer said that the ongoing collaboration with Johnsons, a subsidiary of Timpson Group, will continue to provide an array of services including clothing repairs, alterations, dry cleaning, and handbag refurbishment. Johnsons will facilitate the process by collecting the items, performing necessary services, and returning them to the store in pristine condition. The suite of offerings extends beyond apparel care to include household textiles such as duvets, bedding, curtains, and rugs. John Lewis service & hospitality director Katie Papakonstantinou said: 'We're so excited to bring this service to all John Lewis stores. John Lewis has always been committed to providing a brilliant retail experience for customers, and repair adds another dimension to that. 'The great thing about repair is it works for the old and the new. Whether you need something tailored to fit you better or want to give your mum's old handbag a new life, we've made it easy to restore treasured products.' In alignment with sustainable practices, John Lewis pledged commitment as an inaugural signatory to Textiles 2030 led by Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which champions a shift towards circularity in textile production and consumption. The retailer has observed a growing consumer interest in domestic repairs; sales of haberdashery items have risen by 36% annually while searches for John Lewis sewing machines have surged by 50%. Specifically, searches for 'pink sewing machines' have soared by 255%, indicating a trend where consumers are buying these machines as gifts and seeking to extend the lifespan of their possessions themselves. John Lewis Partnership ethics & sustainability director Marija Rompani said: 'We're still learning about which circular economy models work so it's great when a trial delivers positive results and shows us how we can make it effective at scale. Repair is a crucial part of the circular economy and mirrors our commitment to designing items with quality and longevity in mind, as part of our circular strategy.' Research conducted by WRAP suggests that over 80% of clothing repairs potentially prevent new purchases by extending the life of existing garments rather than replacing them with new acquisitions. In June last year, John Lewis launched a 20-piece circular designed collection across its Home and Fashion divisions. "John Lewis expands repair service to boost circularity for garments" was originally created and published by Just Style, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Brickery, Lego-inspired cafe at Newport on the Levee has closed. Here's why
A Lego-inspired cafe in Newport has abruptly shuttered. The Brickery Cafe & Play, located at Newport on the Levee, has permanently closed after nearly 15 months in business, according to a social media post from the toy store and cafe. "Maybe you've heard the news or maybe you haven't, but we have come to the difficult decision to close the Brickery, as of today, March 3," the post reads. Owners Daniel and Serenity Johnson cited the temporary three-month closure of the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge as the main reason for the cafe's closure. More: 2 Newport eateries to close amid 'devastating' impact of Big Mac Bridge closure "We put our whole heart into this thing, and we will be forever grateful to those of you who made it a joy to come to work," the Johnsons wrote. "We truly enjoyed building with you." The Johnsons opened The Brickery Cafe & Play in December 2023, as a place for children and adults to play with and build LEGOs. The cafe featured a play area for kids ages 5-12 and spaces for adults to work on larger builds. It also included an event space that could be rented for birthday parties and art shows. 'Bridging Back Business': NKY businesses to offer weeks of deals after bridge reopening This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: The Brickery, a Lego-inspired cafe at Newport on the Levee closes
