A takeaway of ideas – artist Ling Tan’s Low Carbon Chinatown

Awarding-winning: artist Ling Tan. Photograph: Nick Turpin

We may sometimes wonder about the impact of our everyday actions on fighting the climate crisis. You may recycle your plastic waste or cycle to work, but can each of us as individuals really create change?

As part of her award-winning project, Low Carbon Chinatown, artist and designer Ling Tan aims to harness the power of ordinary citizens through her latest installation, Harvesting Climate Action.

 Her multimedia exhibition features 100 recyclable cardboard chairs, each offering 100 ways, or “actions”, to reduce your carbon footprint.

Each action in the display is not an order, but rather an invitation to the audience to consider the environmental impact.

Boxed in: part of Ling Tan’s art installation. Photograph: Nick Turpin

Tan has created an interactive setup featuring data maps, recipes, and audio stories that utilise scientific data to illustrate their carbon footprint.

The bite-sized information makes complex climate issues more accessible. Exploring climate action through food systems is fundamental to Tan’s work as it intertwines science with personal life.

The exhibition runs until 6 November and culminates with a Low Carbon Banquet that will incorporate dishes collaboratively developed over the past three years by UK-based East and Southeast Asian chefs, food writers, and scientists.

The event will also include discussions on climate action, scheduled to coincide with the harvest of locally grown ingredients.

Through both the installation and the banquet, Tan creates a space for discussions on climate action. “This project will bring people from different backgrounds together so that they get to know each other more, to know that there are different voices, and there’s no singular kind of conversation.”

Tan herself is an immigrant from Singapore of Chinese origin. The incorporation of Chinese food was important to Tan as a celebration of her Chinese heritage, including its cuisine.

“Food has a kind of cultural context of bringing people together,” she says. “It cuts across culture, because every food culture always encourages people to come together to enjoy the meal.”

Low Carbon Chinatown has been developed over the past three years.

For the installation, Tan wanted to expand beyond the food system by listing a wide range of climate actions.

Ideas on the box: Ling Tan’s suggestion actions. Photograph: Nick Turpin

She offers her audience a takeaway of ideas to reduce their carbon emissions.

These actions range from individual ones, such as lowering your heating by one degree, to others that are more collective, such as advocating for a polluters’ tax.

“I am interested in tackling the narrative that as an individual, you can’t do much”, says Tan.

“I think that as an ordinary citizen, I feel optimistic we are able to make changes from the bottom up…

“I wanted to broaden it out to list the wide range of climate actions that one can take across food, transport, consumer culture, and advocacy levels. I want people to understand there’s no straight narrative to tackle this complex issue. The installation will show so many different choices.”

Tan collaborated with local residents and experts including Hackney council staff, Dr Alice Garvey at Priestley Climate Research Centre, Design Council, Dr. Catherine Chong at C.L.E.A.R. and students from Gainsborough Primary School to create the 100 climate actions for the installation.

One action that particularly resonated with the artist was advocating for non-violence.

“There’s a lot of carbon emissions that come from creating violence because you’re actively destroying infrastructure and destroying the built fabric that we have,” says Tan.

Making arrangements: Ling Tan’s cardboard creation. Photograph: Nick Turpin

Tackling the climate crisis has been a lifelong passion, something Tan wanted to address using her skills as a trained architect. “I have always been interested in global conversation as an artist and a designer”, says Tan.

“So how do we use our own practice as a way to intervene on such a complex issue?”

For the past decade, Tan has found inspiration when working with communities.

“Part of the body of work that I’ve been exploring over the years is really about looking at: can we as individuals or as a group of people, a collective, come together to tackle complex urban issues?”.

She has previously explored air quality issues – however, more recently she has been drawn to food systems.

“I was working on a project as part of the London Design Festival in 2022 when I was commissioned to do a small prototype test”, recalls Tan.

“The context was that it had to happen in Chinatown. So that was when I started to formulate this new idea about how we work with people there to look at how we can tackle environmental issues.”

During the Covid pandemic, it was not uncommon for people to channel their inner baker and perfect their sourdough recipes.

The rise in experimental cooking during lockdown inspired Tan to think about the climate crisis and its relationship to what we make in our kitchens.

She brought this idea to the Design Festival project, where she worked with a large group of East and Southeast Asian communities in London to develop low-carbon recipes.

The project was an opportunity to work with the East and Southeast Asian diaspora in London, while also breaking down cultural barriers.

“Another part was how to present it to a British audience and to get them to understand it. The partnership with the festival allowed us to create a large public intervention, where people are invited to come and enjoy the low-carbon dishes right at the heart of Chinatown”.

Following the London Design Festival, Tan built up her project and created installations for galleries, museums, and festivals.

Hackney Council worked with Tan to bring the Low Carbon Chinatown to the borough.  After receiving funding from Arts Council England, Tan put together the Harvesting Climate Action exhibition.

Tan plans next to move her project abroad, to continue to invite people to get involved in reducing their carbon footprint.

Harvesting Climate Action
Hackney Service Centre
1 Hillman Street
E8 1DY.

The exhibition runs until 6 November 2025.