FORWARD: Issue #6: Climate

Toolkit

Resources for making connections between art and climate, and working creatively in the climate sector

Created in partnership with

01

Cool it with Art: A How-To Guide for Tackling Rising Temperatures with Art in Our Communities

Boston's Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)

This report from Boston's MAPC says artists could be a key part of cooling cities — both literally and figuratively. The report highlights ways local governments, community organizations, and artists can dream up projects that both mitigate the physical effects of extreme heat and promote more equitable climate-conscience and resilient communities.

a report cover titled Cool it with Art, a how to guide for tackling rising temperatures with art in our communities, from MAPC
Discover More Artist-led Interventions

02

Find an artist facilitator

Forecast Public Art

Artists can help surface community concerns and facilitate conversations and creative engagements in support of community goals. Engage Forecast's team now to learn more about hiring and commissioning artists to help surface voices in your community.

Request Info

03

Research Fellow on Climate Resilience in Public Art

Forecast Public Art's Change Lab

Forecast Change Lab Research Fellows delve deep into areas of critical importance, generating insights to collectively craft a national public art policy platform grounded in principles of justice, health, and human dignity for Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. Our third Change Lab Research Fellow, Paula Castillo, is focusing on climate resilience in public art. Her Change Lab research aims to pave the way for a climate-resilient future.

About This Fellowship

04

Community-Based Art Project Grant Program

New Jersey Arts Council, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

A federally-funded grant program to foster engagement between New Jersey organizations, artists, and their communities around issues of climate resilience and risk. The program, funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), capitalizes on the unique ability of artists and art to connect communities around complex issues of high priority, and to create strategic action.

logos for New Jersey's dept of environmental protection, coastal management program, and state arts council
Explore This Grant Program

05

5 Climate Tech Tools to Build Community Resilience

APA Planning Magazine

Ready to inform and improve climate change planning? Get familiar with these five climate change and resilience datasets and tools. APA's Technology Division outlines the purpose of each tool, resource formats, cost, and if coding skills are required (spoiler: only one tool requires coding skills). Help your community prepare for future and present threats.

Browse Climate Datasets + Tools

06

Dream Job—An Artist

Benny Starr

Benny Starr, inaugural One Water Artist-in-Residence at the US Water Alliance, offers this Dream Job based on the prompt to suggest a model of how an artist might work in support of climate issues. We love that the job he proposes is to be an artist, with no need for a new title.

His Dream Job makes the case for guaranteed income for artists at a time when artists, leaders, and communities across the US are seeing a growing appeal for programs where artists are paid regularly.

Imagine This Dream Job

07

Seedlings Coloring Book

The Heat Response team (Eve Mosher, Jenna Robb, José Ortiz-Pagán) and Trust for Public Land

The Heat Response team produced several tools to engage people in conversations about urban heat and how heat and other climate change effects disproportionately impact Black, Latino/a/x/e, and immigrant neighborhoods that experience many other inequities. This coloring book is one of those tools. Use it to start conversations in your communities.

Let's Color!

08

Emerging Governance Structures for Climate Resilience

A Climate Adaptation Forum hosted by the Sustainable Solutions Lab and the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC) June 2, 2023

State and local governments across the country are grappling with turning climate adaptation plans into action. These plans often involve expensive and large-scale capital projects on both public and private property. This undertaking requires innovative thinking on governance, from creating new county and statewide resilience authorities to empowering existing local boards and commissions. Join the Climate Adaptation Forum to hear how communities across the country are approaching this challenge and about emerging models for governance and implementation. Speakers: Louanne Cooley, Legal Research Fellow, Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA); Senator Sarah K. Elfreth, Maryland, District 30, Anne Arundel County; Suzanne Smith, Executive Director, Regional Climate Protection Agency

Find Presentations + Agenda

09

The Power of Arts and Culture: One Water Partnerships for Change

US Water Alliance

USWA launched the Water, Arts, and Culture Accelerator in 2020 as a community of practice for water leaders and artists to collaborate and learn how to work together. As their thinking and perspectives evolved, utilities and artists began to implement new solutions in real time to enhance community engagement, improve project design, and reshape innovation processes. We hope the stories of these four inaugural Accelerator partnerships ignite courage and inspiration in water leaders across the country to think outside the box and try something new.

USWA report cover for The Power of Arts and Culture: one water partnerships for change
Browse USWA Report

10

Aqua Marooned!

One of two anchoring art projects of Lenapehoking~Watershed: a place for water, art, and culture — an initiative of the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River

Aqua Marooned! is an interactive card game created for the Alliance for Watershed Education that stimulates dialogue between players and the natural world as they stroll along a designated route at one of AWE's 23 centers. Aqua Marooned! playfully invites its participants to mine their own understanding of the Delaware River watershed, learn more about the people and sites that advocate on its behalf, and examine past experiences with nature that have had meaningful impact on their lives to create a holistic, personal connection to the complex tapestry of water, land, flora, and fauna that surround them.

colorful card deck and sample cards featuring animals and environment
Discover This Walking Game

11

Creative Climate Leadership Training

Creative Climate Leadership

An international training and transformation program to empower artists and cultural professionals to take action on the climate and ecological crisis with impact, creativity, and resilience.

Welcome to Creative Climate Leadership

12

Making It Public

Forecast Public Art

Equip artists and administrators in your community with the skills to create and facilitate public art. Forecast offers a dual-track virtual training series to expand both local artist and administrator capacity.

Find More on Forecast Trainings

13

Living Climate-Impact Framework for the Arts

Research in Residence: Arts' Civic Impact

Created by Emma Bugg at Dalhousie University through a partnership with CreativePEI.

This qualitative arts framework provides indicators to measure arts impact in environmental sustainability. The study fosters transformation toward climate action and adaptation by using forward-thinking to create a useful arts impact assessment framework.

Explore the Framework

14

Gallery Climate Coalition

Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) is an international community of arts organizations working to reduce our sector’s environmental impacts.

GCC’s primary goal is to facilitate a reduction of the sector’s CO₂ emissions by a minimum of 50% by 2030, as well as promoting zero waste.

Creating an environmentally responsible art world

Become a Member | Calculate Emissions | Take Action

15

Artist Circle on Climate Displacement

Artists: Lizania Cruz, Jayeesha Dutta, Alia Farid, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, puck lo, Michael Premo & Rachel Falcone; Speakers: Elsadig Elsheikh, Yumna Kamel, Hamza Hamouchene; Project Directors: Evan Bissell, Mina Girgis.

Over six months, we met as artists. We shared our work, critiques, and stories. In the process, we generated new understandings, questions, and approaches to making art and telling stories that can address the complexity of climate displacement.

Add Your Metaphor | Learn More

16

Peoples Ocean Energy Management (POEM)

Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative

In September 2015, ArtPlace commissioned independent researcher Danya Sherman to lead an exploration of the intersection of arts, culture, and housing outcomes. POEM explores the practices of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and envisions alternative methodologies of ocean energy management that are more just, sustainable, and regenerative.

Add Your Voice to the POEM &/or BOEM Public Record

17

Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District: Shop One Catalytic Projects

Findings & Recommendations from Creative Collaboration Advisors

Business as usual will not protect public health and the environment from today’s complex water challenges. A new approach is needed that expands the traditional operating model of a wastewater utility by engaging the community to assist in these water stewardship efforts. To that end, the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District recruited and engaged a group of Madison, Wisconsin-area professional artists and community organizers to serve as Creative Collaboration Advisors.

CreationINcommon logo
Browse the Advisors' Report

18

WaterMarks: An Atlas of Water for the City of Milwaukee

a City as Living Laboratory Project

WaterMarks is a multilayered framework that consists of a series of illuminated WaterMarkers in neighborhoods across the city — to create a conceptual Atlas of Water that can be implemented over time. The goal is to engage residents throughout Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s many neighborhoods and invite interested individuals to support the seven principles of our Water Centric City — through the arts.

a city marshland with canal of water receding into the distance
About WaterMarks

19

Climate Solutions Series

The Great Northern January 2023

A series of discussions at American Swedish Institute engaging diverse perspectives on climate solutions, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, Project Drawdown, Change Narrative, Green Minneapolis, EarthPercent, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Native Sun, New Standard Institute, Minnesota Design Center, University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership, Salmela Architect, Recompose, Bell Museum, Minnesota Humanities Center, and more.

a grid of 42 headshots
Browse the Series

20

Public Art Review energy + environment content

Forecast Public Art A curated selection from Forecast's legacy print magazine.

The world is awakening to the human impacts on climate change and to our urgent need for clean energy. Learn how artists and designers are helping communities respond to and prepare for extreme weather—and reweave human connections to the planet.

Explore Curated Content

21

Climate Refugees: The Climate Crisis and Rights Denied

By Hossein Ayazi and Elsadig Elsheikh; Other & Belonging Institute

The burning of fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions have been transforming the earth's climate and putting the world's most vulnerable communities at risk. This report argues that a comprehensive framework for climate-induced displaced persons forced to cross international borders to be considered "climate refugees" is necessary.

a report cover featuring south america, africa, and part of europe and north america marked with symbols for floods heat fire and other climate disasters
About This Report

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FORWARD: Issue #6

Climate

© COPYRIGHT 2023 - FORECAST PUBLIC ART ISSN 2768-4113