FORWARD: Issue #6: Climate
From the Editorial Team
From Refuge: Heatwave, where multiple artists brought participants together to creatively address current climate situations and inspire a collective future, Contact, by artist Asha Bee Abraham. Read about it. Photo by Bryony Jackson.
Partnering with Artists in the Global Fight for a Sustainable Future
The Role of Artists in Addressing the Climate Crisis
By Theresa Sweetland, Jen Dolen, and Mallory Rukhsana Nezam
As the consequences of climate change loom large, the fate of our planet rests on the collective actions of governments, businesses, communities, and individuals worldwide. While the challenges are daunting, artists are stepping into the forefront of the climate justice movement, leveraging their creativity to amplify urgency, mitigate climate threats, facilitate community-led solutions, communicate complex data, and innovate preparedness, all while engaging vulnerable communities in solutions. In this publication, we delve into the practical and transformative. Artists are partnering with scientists, universities, policymakers, communities, and others addressing crises that are also top-of-mind to civic leaders: air pollution, heat extremes, floods, and climate-induced population displacement.
While the challenges are daunting, artists are stepping into the forefront of the climate justice movement.
The AIR (Action for Interdisciplinary Research) Network team—scientists and artists—educated an informal and marginalized community facing multiple environmental challenges about air pollution and health. Read about The AIR Network. Photo by Charlotte Waelde.
Drawing on a variety of art practices, artistic interventions directed at international policymakers at diplomatic conferences highlight the critical importance of addressing disaster displacement. Pictured: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction leadership, artists, and conference delegates at Geneva in 2019. Read about DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys. Photo by Platform on Disaster Displacement.
Working with FEMA, artists Drew Austin and Nathan Hall created a mobile musical sculpture aimed at educating residents about flood risks and mitigation. Read about Floodline Chime Pavilion. Photo by Jason Kress.
Artist Xavier Cortada teamed up with a local high school and homeowners in his own neighborhood to create yard signs that signal sea-level elevations and give residents tools to take action. Read about The Underwater. Photo courtesy the artist.
As we explore the potential for artists to be partners in designing climate-resilient cities, FORWARD’s editorial team centers BIPOC voices and experiences. From coastal regions threatened by rising sea levels to Indigenous communities facing displacement due to environmental degradation, artists shine a spotlight on the disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations. These communities, with their history of being disproportionately affected by environmental injustices, are often underrepresented in decision-making processes. Artists can play a pivotal role in bridging this gap, using their skills to amplify the voices of those most affected by climate change and to advocate for more equitable and just solutions.
The Global Climate Crisis
Our climate is in peril, and the impact of this crisis situation is being felt across the globe. Extreme weather events, pollution, rising temperatures and sea levels, and devastating natural disasters are affecting vulnerable populations unequally, exacerbating social and economic inequalities. In summer 2023, wildfires burned across multiple continents, and Canadian wildfire smoke affected the air quality of communities across North America and into Europe. Climate scientists are citing July 2023 as the hottest month on record—and likely hotter than any in the past 120,000 years. A study on the collapse of oceanic currents also has global implications. Amid these problems, we still have time for solutions.
Artists are emerging as powerful allies and leaders, employing their creativity to spark conversations, mobilize communities, and advocate for climate justice.
Addressing climate change is not merely a matter of environmental concern; it is a pressing issue of social justice and human rights. In this battle for a sustainable future, artists are emerging as powerful allies and leaders, employing their creativity to spark conversations, mobilize communities, and advocate for climate justice. In each of this issue’s case studies we highlight the specific roles artists are playing in the effort to tackle climate change. These include:
- Amplifying urgency
Breathe:2022, and DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys
Art has the unparalleled ability to transcend barriers and resonate with audiences on a deeply emotional level. By using their talents to depict the urgency and severity of the climate crisis, artists catalyze public awareness and galvanize action. Through their unique lens, they humanize data and statistics, breathing life into accounts of the human impact of climate change.
- Mitigating a climate threat
Eco-murals, and Yasmeen Lari stoves
Artists are using art to create direct solutions that help stop climate harms. Through creative problem solving and imagination, artists are increasingly playing a role in reducing those harms and creating deployable tools for communities to use to tackle problems caused by climate change.
- Facilitating community-led solutions
The AIR Network, Heat Response, and Wingo-WHAT?
In the face of climate change's harsh realities, artists are forging deep connections with vulnerable communities. They engage with those most at risk of harm, listening to their experiences and co-creating artworks that amplify their voices and perspectives. Through community-based art projects and inclusive initiatives, artists foster resilience and empower vulnerable communities to become active participants in shaping their own climate futures. These community-led collaborations provide a road map for a process that can lead to more responsive climate change solutions that directly address the problem.
- Communicating complex data
The AIR Network, Floodline Chime Pavilion, Resilience Planning, and The Underwater
As climate change denial and misinformation persist, artists serve as educators, translating complex scientific concepts into accessible narratives. Through their art, they help explain the intricate cause-and-effect relationships that impact climate change. By empowering individuals with knowledge, artists equip communities with the tools to advocate for climate justice and contribute to informed decision-making.
- Innovating preparedness
Refuge: Heatwave
Government entities worldwide have invested in the preparation needed to withstand environmental disasters. As these threats worsen with climate change, the practice of disaster preparedness has grown, yet tragedies such as Hurricane Maria reveal the need for more understanding of culture, equity, and the lived realities of vulnerable populations. Artists are imagining more adaptive preparedness processes and are bringing local communities directly into the driver’s seat, helping them to determine how to protect the places they call home.
Artists Changing the Climate Narrative
This publication is filled with inspiring case studies spanning the globe, showcasing artists who are trailblazers in the fight against climate change. From artists collaborating with public health organizations to address climate-induced health challenges, such as air quality, to those employing their art to combat heat extremes and floods, the studies demonstrate the immense potential of art to effect positive change for our climate.
Artists are redefining the narrative of climate change, inspiring a global movement, and co-creating just solutions.
The intersection of art and climate justice marks a new era in humanity's fight for a sustainable and equitable future. By partnering to amplify urgency, mitigate climate threats, facilitate community-led solutions, communicate complex data, and innovate preparedness, artists are redefining the narrative of climate change, inspiring a global movement, and co-creating just solutions. By highlighting successful projects and initiatives, we aim to spark dialogue and catalyze action toward a more sustainable and inclusive future. Together, we can build a future where every community has the tools and resources to meet the challenges of a changing climate.
Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan's first woman architect, developed an eco-stove that empowers impoverished women while reducing air pollution. Photo courtesy Heritage Foundation of Pakistan. Read about Yasmeen Lari's stoves.
An interactive community mural designed by artist Jenna Robb as part of Heat Response in Philadelphia. Photo courtesy Trust for Public Land. Read about Heat Response.
We aim to spark dialogue and catalyze action toward a more sustainable and inclusive future.
The issue also includes the fifth installment of Public Art Now, a recurring collection of selected works featuring leading voices sharing public art of the moment. We’re thrilled that Amal Khalaf is our next Public Art Now guest curator. Readers will also find a Toolkit filled with resources for working creatively in climate-related fields, along with our popular Dream Job description. Benny Starr is the creative mind behind this issue’s Dream Job.
FORWARD Editorial Team:
Bio
Theresa Sweetland
is the executive director of Forecast Public Art, a national organization dedicated to advancing justice, health, and human dignity through public art. At Forecast, Theresa also serves as the publisher of FORWARD, a digital publication and conversation series that highlights how artists are partnering with cities, institutions, and communities to courageously tackle the vital issues of our time, from affordable housing to public health to the fate of our climate.
She holds a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs with a concentration on community and economic development. She is a co-founding artistic director of B-Girl Be, the world’s first international women in hip-hop summit, now recognized in the Harvard Hiphop Archive. Theresa is a founding director of Creative CityMaking, a pioneering partnership between artists and city staff to advance racial equity goals and engage underrepresented communities in determining the future of Minneapolis. She serves as creative director for Chroma Zone, Minnesota's largest mural festival and public realm initiative dedicated to supporting women and BIPOC muralists in Saint Paul. She was recognized for bold new steps and strategic leadership with the Sally Ordway Irvine Award for Initiative in 2015 and is a 2023 FutureGood Studio national leadership cohort member. She is a solo mother of two wonderful kids and lives in South Minneapolis.
Bio
Jen Dolen
guides imagery and narrative. As project manager for FORWARD, Jen oversees all production of the digital publication. She has been involved with Forecast Public Art’s publications since 2013, sourcing and organizing images as well as writing for Public Art Review. She also previously managed Forecast’s esteemed Public Art Library. From website to social, Jen handles all communications and content needs for the organization, as well as digital asset management. She kindly asks that you follow Forecast on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for Forecast’s monthly Public Art Update.
Jen holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree with an emphasis in arts management and museum studies from the University of Minnesota, where she focused on image rights, as well as an MLIS from St. Catherine University, with attention to special libraries and visual resources. She earned a BFA in photography and psychology with minors in English and ceramics from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. For over a decade, Jen worked in the camera industry and was involved behind the scenes with several vibrant Twin Cities arts organizations in a variety of capacities, including stints as a tour guide for the Walker Art Center—the garden tours were her favorite—and as a board member for Altered Esthetics. Energized and inspired by work that holds community value and impact, she strives to become better at communications and advocating for social justice, and pays attention to place. She thinks a lot about the power of information, messaging and context, accessibility, and representation.
Bio
Mallory Rukhsana Nezam
is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more just and joyful. She specializes in public art, creative placemaking/keeping/knowing, and the public domain. Through her cross-sector practice, Justice + Joy, she engages government, artists, advocacy groups, elected officials, community members, and urban planners to de-silo the way we run cities and build new models of creative, interdisciplinary collaboration. She has helped build inaugural arts & culture teams in non-arts organizations at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston, Transportation for America, and PolicyLink. She is a co-founder of the Cross-Sector Artists in Residence Lab (CAIR Lab).
Raised in St. Louis, MO, she was the founder of STL Improv Anywhere, and collaborating founder of the Artivists STL. Through her art practice she disarms and disrupts public space norms using play and participatory performance. She holds a master of design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and her research focuses on the racial equity impacts of artists residencies in local government. She was a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow, a 2019–2020 inaugural Practices for Change Fellow at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and a 2018 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow. She seeks to be in every room she’s not supposed to be in.
FORWARD: Issue #6
Climate
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