The Integrity Climate Choirs - A Biosphere Project Blog

“To bring about change,

you must not be afraid to take the first step.

We will fail when we fail to try.”

Rosa Parks”

Video of the Zoom conversation between Phillip Maiwald and myself about the concept of the Integrity Climate Choirs.

Dear friends,

To kick off a new “season” on the A Biosphere Project blog, I would like to share this video of a recent Zoom conversation between myself and my friend Phillip Maiwald, about Phillip's concept of the ‘Integrity Climate Choirs’.

Phillip is a visual artist, a painter like me, and like me he decided a few years ago to stop painting in order to devote himself to the ecological crisis. He is German and lives not far from Berlin. 

We got to know each other in New And Ancient Story, the online community started by author, philosopher, and climate thinker Charles Eisenstein and his former partner Patsy Eisenstein.

Phillip is developing as an activist, or rather a ‘post-activist’. The concept of ‘post-activism’, first postulated by philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé, plays an important role in his approach, which I will explain in another post about Phillip and his work in the near future.

Phillip is now organizing a large-scale action with ‘climate choirs’, in which he wants to inspire choirs in Europe and around the world to take regular joint action with ‘Smart Mobs’. The term Smart Mob refers to a type of flash mob with a political, social, or ideological message.

“This form of protest, which has been popular among globalization critics and others for several years, refers to a brief, seemingly spontaneous gathering of people in public or semi-public places. The term was introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book of the same name and referred to a form of self-structuring of social organization through technology-mediated, intelligent emergent behavior" (Wikipedia). 

In Phillip's project, these ‘Smart Mobs’ will take the form of choirs or groups of singers, who will sing the well-known gospel song ‘Amazing Grace’ once a month in train stations in Europe and, ideally, around the world.

The website for this project is ready and online. The aim is for the project to really get underway in the spring of 2026.

In the run-up to this project, he is now interviewing various people about their first impressions of his website and project. I was honored to be asked to contribute.

The conversation lasted 45 minutes. It was a pleasant exchange, as always (Phillip and I have biweekly conversations on Zoom to exchange ideas), during which I was initially invited to give my first impression of the website for the project and to share my ideas and/or feedback about it. From that topic, the conversation drifted to the broader aspects of the meta-crisis, or the convergence of multiple ecological crises and tipping points with other crises in our global system, which has become unsustainable in its current form. But it is also a conversation that focuses on the need for a renewed belief in our agency, in creativity and energy (including cheerful energy), and new approaches that can bring new answers ‘outside of the box’ in these times of existential crisis.

Phillip, like me, believes that beauty may well save the world, and that it can certainly contribute to the way we take action to mobilize people to do something for our planet, our biosphere, and all the life forms with which we share with this planet. The idea of ‘climate choirs’ can therefore touch people in a different way than mere doom-messages, fear, anger, or despair. It can become part of an emerging new kind of energy, vitality, hope, agency, community spirit, creativity, and joy, in our response to the convergence of crises that can seem so oppressive.

So here's a call to action: if you are active in a choir, feel free to visit the Integrity Climate Choirs website and to contact Phillip.

If you know people who are active in choirs, share the link to the Integrity Climate Choirs website or share this blog post with them. It would be great if, by the time the project really gets off the ground in Germany, other countries are also participating. It can and should become a global project! So if you sing in a choir yourself, I would like to pass on Phillip's invitation: you can also be part of the Integrity Climate Choirs!

On the project website, you will also find further information, something about the philosophy behind the project, and about the history of ‘Amazing Grace’, the well-known gospel song that the ‘Climate Choirs’ will sing in train stations. You will also find the ’12 invitations’, a kind of manifesto with a proposal for 12 concrete intentions and actions that we can all start putting into practice in the transition to a better world.

As mentioned, I will write another post in the near future to tell you more about Phillip and the concept of ‘post-activism’, which I believe is an important idea in this day and age.

For now, I kindly invite you to watch the video and visit the Integrity Climate Choirs website.

Thank you for reading and watching, and until the next episode,

All the best to you,

Filip

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