Arctic on foot: Meet the British artist turning a 600km climate journey into theatre

Bristol-based artist Tom Bailey has spent six weeks immersing himself in a region changing faster than almost anywhere on Earth. When British theatre maker Tom Bailey set off from the Norwegian-Russian border in March, he had a tent, a fuel stove, enough gear to survive temperatures ranging from -30°C to +15°C – and no finished show to perform. That was the point. Bailey, who is based in Bristol and works under the theatre company MECHANIMAL, was travelling more than 600 kilometres across Arctic borderlands between Norway, Finland and Sweden by ski, sled, foot and boat. The two-month journey, titled 'Threshold - A Wild New Border Journey', concluded at the Stamsund International Theatre Festival in the Lofoten Islands on 27 May. "I'm a theatre maker, an environmental artist, and I'm passionate about making work about nature and climate change," Bailey tells Euronews Earth, speaking by video link from Svolvær in the Lofoten Islands. "In the last few years there's been more of a focus on how to tour and travel with work at a time of a changing climate." Rather than fly to a location, Bailey chose to physically move through the landscape – spending around six weeks crossing remote forests, frozen lakes and coastal mountain terrain, meeting Sami communities, local residents, artists and researchers along the way. "Traditionally in theatre touring, we've kind of flown somewhere or driven somewhere and just travelled through places without much engagement with the landscape," he says. "This is a way of fully acknowledging and investigating the land I'm trying to talk about." **'**Is it time that we included nature legally as a decision maker?' The journey is as much a political inquiry as an artistic one. Bailey has been exploring what accelerating change in the Arctic means for the people who live there – and for the question of who, or what, gets a say in decisions about its future. "As the Earth warms up, as the climate changes, resources and sea become available – and there's a question about ownership, sharing of resources, sovereignty," he explains. He also raised the rights of nature movement. "Is it about time that we included nature legally as a decision maker, as a rights holder in any decisions we make about the Arctic?" he wonders. "What would it look like if the sea, or reindeer, or lichen could have representation?" Local reactions to the journey have been broadly positive, he says. "There's maybe an appreciation that I'm doing something a little bit slower – that's more about listening to people in the area, really engaging over several weeks to months with the landscape and the people and the culture." The Arctic's warm spring makes travel treacherous The journey has not been straightforward. An unusually warm spring meant the snow was often soft and slushy, making travel far harder than anticipated. Bailey ended up travelling at night, when temperatures drop and the snow refreezes, and sleeping in his tent during the day. Camp setup and breakdown alone consumed four to five hours daily – including melting snow for drinking water, a process that took roughly an hour per session. "It's been really cold, had some really long days, and pulling that sled has been exceptionally hard," he says. Brexit has added an unexpected layer of complication: as a UK citizen, Bailey is subject to a 90-day limit on time spent in the Schengen Area. "Borders are very much on my mind," he says. "I've got to be very careful about limiting the journey time and the travel days back to the UK." A show still to come The journey itself is the research. A finished performance piece, created with company designer Natasha Soonchild – who has been working as an artist in residence in Kirkenes, Norway, while Bailey travels – is expected to premiere in 2027, pending funding. Bailey is cautious about overstating the project's model for others. "I don't expect this to be a viable model for every single project," he says. But he argues that discussions about green touring too often focus narrowly on carbon arithmetic rather than rethinking the relationship between art-making and the natural world. "Sometimes it feels like we're stuck in this mindset of: business as usual, but we'll just travel by train instead," he says. "It's not quite fundamentally grappling with what I believe are the massive changes that climate change is bringing about – and the opportunities in rethinking our relationship with the planet." His bigger question is whether theatre can move beyond making work about nature to making work with it. "Maybe right now, doing a long journey through nature sometimes dressed as a reindeer is a stupid idea. But maybe in five years it will be a very viable and pertinent question," he says. Bailey gave a first public presentation of material gathered during the journey at the Stamsund International Theatre Festival on 27 May. The full performance is expected to be ready for presentation by summer 2027.