People around the world participated in a global spectacle on Saturday, September 12, 2015 to honor the creativity, dignity and resilience of communities affected by mining and oil and gas development. The Ground Beneath Our Hearts included acts of art and ceremony to celebrate the human spirit and love of place.

The event’s founder, author Trebbe Johnson of Radical Joy for Hard Times, enlisted Heron’s Eye to handle social media and public relations. “What Sandy and Krista bring to their work is not just superior-quality writing and photography, but real commitment to the project itself,” said Johnson. “I cannot imagine any team working with more integrity, professionalism and creativity.”

  • Heron’s Eye established and managed content for The Ground Beneath Our Hearts’ Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
  • Curated the hashtag #HeartGround.
  • Funneled event-day content from communities around the world onto all social media channels in real time.

Participating communities included the Knitting Nannas of Gloucester, New South Wales, Australia (gas drilling); a group of students from Johannesburg, South Africa (gold mining); people in Bunmahon, County Waterford (copper mining) and Ballycastle (coal mining), Ireland; the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) in West Virginia (mountaintop removal); Araracuara, Colombia (gold mining); Longmont, Colorado (gas drilling); Durango, Colorado (gold mine waste spilled into Animas River); Bhaktifest at Joshua Tree, California (gas drilling and water depletion); and Sumgayit, Azerbaijan (petrochemical industries).

Many of the participating communities sang the original song, “The Ground Beneath Our Hearts,” composed especially for the event by award-winning American composer John Kusiak and his son Jackson Kusiak.

The Ground Beneath Our hearts was co-sponsored by renowned Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who in 2003 coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to describe the sense of homesickness people feel when their homeland is negatively impacted while they are directly connected to it.

“A shared experience of earth pain is a foundation for a shared experience of earth joy,” said Albrecht. “The aim of The Ground Beneath Our Hearts is to create joy in places where desolation and destruction can no longer be tolerated or hidden from view.”