Art = catalyst for change

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

I can’t imagine a more inspiring place to celebrate Earth Day/Week/Month 2015 than Melbourne, Australia.

This year, CLIMARTE has organized a month-long arts and culture festival with a brilliant title – ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 – that presents 25 curated exhibitions alongside keynote lectures, public forums, films, bike tours, sustainable architecture tours, anthropSLAM and more throughout Melbourne and greater Melbourne. The festival runs through 17th May.

Climarte, Jack Rowland, Melbourne Festival organizers have ensured that each event is accessible by bicycle and public transport. Event-specific map references (love this feature!) are provided for each venue to encourage use of public transport and to help out-of-town participants navigate Victoria’s public transport system.

Melbourne residents have been invited by the artists of one of the events – The Water Harvest – to contribute directly to an installation that celebrates the seemingly small acts of collecting rain/grey water. There is still time left to fill out an online form and contribute a small ‘collection sample” of water that has been collected, harvested, re-purposed or recycled by local residents. Each sample will be presented in a small vintage bottle (which will be returned to each contributor at the end of the festival), etched with the water harvester’s name and geographic coordinates of where the water was collected.

Here’s a video of CLIMARTE’S CEO Guy Abrahams talking about ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015:

The festival offers an outstanding series of keynote speakers — all free (but early registration strongly encouraged!) — including David Buckland, Director Cape Farewell: the cultural response to climate change (UK); Chris Jordan, artist and Director of Midway (US); and William L. Fox, Director of the Center for Art+Environment, Nevada (US).

To inspire you on this Earth Day 2015, here are some words of wisdom from the CLIMARTE website:

  1. Art can show us where we have been, where we are now, and where we might go.
  2. Art can be a call to action.
  3. Art can be a catalyst for change.

If you missed our Earth Day 2014 post “Calling all artists”, take a look here.

You can follow Joan Sullivan, a renewable energy photographer, on Twitter @cleanenergyphoto

———-

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Powered by WPeMatico

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.