The Day We Cleaned the Sky 

What if the future remembered us differently? 

Step inside and enter a story told from the future. This installation expands on an animated folktale, developed in response to working with Dunblane Primary school children and learning about the importance of Greenhous Gas removal: imagining a time 500 years from now when people look back and celebrate the moment humanity restored balance.

The story revolves around the idea that representatives from various ecosystems of our planet – forest, sea and bogland - come together to remove carbon from the atmosphere. They do so by illustrating some of the ways scientists are exploring – planting more forests, restoring peatlands and trapping carbon rich seaweed deep underground.

And in this journey to a clean sky, the children from the modern world witness the compassion needed for the planet. They must show love and care to the living things around them – the swifts – to restore harmony.  Swifts live almost entirely in the sky and so in this tale, they are the ambassadors – helping to pull carbon down and cleaning up.

The exhibition will show the animation with its beautiful original soundtrack by David Ford, as well as development paintings that explore the creatures and habitats of the story.

The work of the school children will also be on display. They explored their own ideas of how they might clean the sky, from solar powered hoovers to forests planted in the clouds, and how they might celebrate ‘Clean Sky Day’ in the future.

The work draws on folktale traditions from around the world, but instead of retelling the past, it imagines a future memory. Through workshops with young people, the project asks what greenhouse gas removal might mean to the next generation — not just as a scientific concept, but as part of everyday life and storytelling. 

 “Children don’t just inherit the future — they help shape how we imagine it.” 

The project connects to greenhouse gas removal as one of many ways we might respond to climate change, while foregrounding the importance of creativity and intergenerational thinking. 

About the artist 
Selina Wagner is an award-winning animation creator and storyteller, working with communities to explore future narratives through film and participatory practice. 

What stories will future generations tell about the choices we make today?