Saving the planet, one magic trick at a time

For 34-year-old Megan Swann, turning magic into something green was trickier than it first appeared. “You soon realise when you’re working as a magician and doing parties that no one wants to hear about deforestation while performing the ‘torn and restored newspaper’. “’Happy birthday: the world is burning!’ doesn’t really work,” she laughs.

But she persevered in conjuring up ‘environmental magic’– a new take on the age-old art form that aims to inspire climate awareness. It’s a beguiling combination. There is, after all, something unnatural about magic: it breaks the laws of physics, suspends reality for a few enchanting seconds and disrupts our perception of the world. But it turns out it could also be a powerful force to help us reconnect with nature.

Swann has been set on this course ever since she received a magic set when she was just five. Then, three years later, Roy Marsh – a magician and now her friend – performed at her birthday party and she was spellbound, attempting to replicate the effects for friends and family. “It was quite an important part of my journey. I think I bored everyone slightly doing all these tricks,” she recalls.

A couple of years later as a budding magician, Swann enrolled in the Young Magicians Club (YMC), the youth wing of London’s legendary Magic Circle. “Suddenly I wasn’t just doing stuff from kids’ magic sets any more. My friends and family were like: ‘What? How did you actually do that?’” Card tricks didn’t appeal. “They’re boring. There are only so many ways I want to be able to find a card!” Instead, Swann got into silent stage magic, using music to swerve the need for a script and to calm her nerves.

But divination wasn’t her only devotion. She’s always loved nature and nearly became a vet, instead opting to study wildlife conservation at the University of Kent. “I liked the idea of saving the world. I’ve always been into doing stuff for the greater good that makes people happy rather than something that makes lots of money.”

Swann’s dissertation shone a spotlight on her love of entertainment, focusing on the power of performance skills in education. “I studied the animal shows at London Zoo and surveyed people [who were watching],” she says. “The things people remembered most were what they found the most enjoyable and funniest.”

Even more powerful is the shock factor. “The element of surprise can be quite good because your brain tries to think back to whether you could have seen that coming and so you remember it,” she explains.

Unsurprisingly, she once again made a link to the world of magic. In magic, after all, surprise is in surplus. It was here that she began to fuse the two loves, putting together a cabaret show a couple of years after graduating university that featured some tricks that were linked to wildlife conservation.

Swann realised that educational shows – rather than casual events – were her calling and designed a show for schoolchildren. It included the aforementioned ‘deforestation deception’ and other green-fingered sleight-of-hand. “I tried to link the tricks to actions that people watching could take. So, I produced flowers and reminded them all to grow more things,” she cites as an example.

I try to talk about what we can do and the progress we’ve made. People don’t need a lecture. They need inspiration

Other tricks included the ‘needle through balloon’ representing heat being trapped, ‘endless water’ to capture the impact of turning off the tap and ‘the miser’s dream’ – a magic routine in which magicians classically produce coins from the air – but with lightbulbs instead of hard cash. And, like any good show – fire. “Because global warming’s going to make things hot!”

Always in several places at the same time, Swann also enjoyed a spell as the first female president of the Magic Circle from 2021 to 2023. “It was quite a stressful time, during Covid,” she recalls. “But it generated so much positive press and there have been a lot more women coming through. When I was in the YMC I was often the only girl there but now there are entire groups of women. They feel a lot more comfortable now.”

Swann laments that she still has to deal with lame jokes about her being the magician’s assistant. But she knows how to silence them. “My partner’s a magician and he takes great delight in telling them I’m the past president of the Magic Circle,” she laughs.

Now, she is collaborating with UCL to adapt her act for adults and make it even more memorable. The university runs a programme called Performing Planet Activism, part of which involves funding artists to collaborate with researchers to develop environmentally themed pieces of art.

She’s realised she isn’t the only one with special powers. “It was incredible to meet all these artists operating in this sphere. I thought I was really weird,” she laughs. Working with Ilan Kelman – professor of disasters and health – the pair are challenging climate doomism through her magic with a little help from an extremely glamorous assistant: Positive News.

“Professor Kelman was really keen to work with me on the message of hope. He actually put me on to Positive News,”says Swann. “I use the weekly newsletter emails as a source of information when I need to create new tricks.” Her latest act is centred on action. “I try to talk about what we can do and the progress we’ve made. People don’t need a lecture. They need inspiration.”

She’s also taking her show to corporate events to encourage people to live in more eco-friendly ways. “My job is to get people taking action and committed to sustainability,”as she puts it. “It’s about turning that despair into action.”

In the future, she hopes to do more research to evaluate the effectiveness of different parts of her act. For now, she’s quietly confident that she’s having an impact. “It feels totally ‘me’ and I feel so much more confident. It’s what I’m meant to be doing,” she says. “They seem to find me really funny, which is a new concept.”

My job is to get people taking action and committed to sustainability. It’s about turning that despair into action

Swann tries to avoid anything too dark. “I think I have the positivity element spot on, which people don’t expect when they hear it’s climate themed.” And she has new tricks up her sleeve, including an act that sees her predict the future outcome of our actions, producing flags from around the world with various positive stories about their climate policies.

The industry more broadly is also slowly becoming more sustainable, Swann reckons: some decks of cards are now recyclable, and manufacturers of props appear to be considering the environment a little more. For her own part, she uses public transport to reach her shows: “If I have a long journey, I charge a bit extra and put the money towards a sustainability initiative.”

But why is magic such a magnificent way of turning those disillusioned with sustainability into climate wizards? “It’s an unusual way to engage people and it’s really visual. It appeals to everyone,” she answers, before puzzling over the question further. “It reminds us that even impossible things can be done.”

Photography: Sam Bush