Storm-Cloud: Observations of the Sky

Storm-Cloud: Observations of the Sky comes to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Saturday 24 October. It's an immersive performance on climate change and air pollution, led by Dr Tom Payne, a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Acting at Sheffield Hallam University, with digital projections by Jake Goodall and music by David John Brady.

The piece restages Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, a public lecture John Ruskin delivered at the London Institution in February 1884. In it, Ruskin described a new kind of cloud he'd been watching for years: a 'plague-wind, sun-blighting' that he blamed on the furnaces of industrial England. At the time, it seemed eccentric; today, it reads as climate reporting. Payne re-imagines the lecture as verbatim theatre, combining the original text with live spoken word, digital projection, and a weather soundscape.

It draws on Ruskin's own use of projected cloudscapes, which were drawn by assistants like Arthur Severn. Festival Director Dane Comerford notes that Ruskin was 'looking at the sky and keeping a record' — something scientists and artists both do — and that the Festival brings them together. The museum stays open afterwards, with a bar and the collections to wander through, so you can stick around and talk it over rather than heading straight home.

It's a night that puts a Victorian's observations of the sky alongside the climate conversation we're having now, set inside the museum's collections. The performance is on Saturday 24 October at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, with the bar and the galleries remaining open after the show.