A group of West storytellers have launched a green manifesto – "a vision for the arts in a time of environmental crisis".

Firesprings, based in Bath and Stroud, Gloucestershire, ask: what is the raison d'être of the arts in an age of global ecological crisis?

They have issued a pamphlet as a clarion call to everyone working in the arts today who wants their efforts to make a difference. Their vision is one that holds together commitment to artistic integrity and craftsmanship with responsiveness to the peculiar challenges of our time.

Foremost among those challenges, they say, are the strained relationship between human beings and the ecosystem we inhabit and the vital need to sustain empathy for that which is outside ourselves.

Fundamental to the arts task in such an age is a willingness to embrace contradiction, not least the deepening polarisation between scientific and economic materialism and metaphysical sources of meaning and hope.

Firesprings is a co-operative of performers and writers who have been working together since 2000. They perform at diverse venues in Bath, and regularly for the Bath Literature Festival, as well as across Britain and, separately, abroad.

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, rrp £2.50, is available from Awen Publications, 01225 334204, or the website at www.awenpublications.co.uk