As you know, we've partnered with Arts Help to give away $3.5m in grants to fund creative projects that help raise awareness of the fight against climate change.
We get it, though. It can be overwhelming to think about what kind of work you should be pitching for when the fight against climate change is growing increasingly more important and consuming, and also... well also when the amount of money on offer is so damn enormous. This is more than paying for your materials and software. This is individual grants with limitless amounts (well, as long as they're under $3.5m, but that's a big sum).
If you're struggling to get inspired, join us in enjoying 5 great examples of art against climate change. Is it Artivism? Is that a word now? Whatever it is, it's important, it's moving and it's going to help you get thinking of what you want to pitch. Lovely.
1. Totemy – Alicja Biała and Iwo Borkowicz – Poznań, Poland
These artists erected bold totems in Poland and Portugal to draw attention to how we're destroying the earth. Totem poles were originally used to signify the spiritual connection between humans and nature, and Biala and Borkowicz have poignantly used them to instead signfy humans' destruction of nature.
From Alicja's website: "The sculptures that make up the installation are hand-painted by Alicja Biała with patterns characteristic of her work. They create a three-dimensional image with an area of nearly 400 square meters. The individual colors and patterns reflect the results of research and statistics on the state of the environment. Thanks to this, you can easily visualize, for example, the scale of tree felling, air pollution, or exploitation of fisheries. The forms of giant totems in bright colors attract attention not only because of their aesthetics - they are supposed to encourage and provoke interactions by passers-by."
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Inspiration station: Could you create a large installment in a busy urban centre that highlights the environmental impact of cryptocurrency and NFT minting? Could you use data to inform your creative visuals, or something increasing in size as we predict the increased size that the damage to the planet will become, if Blockchain's carbon footprint continues the way it is?
2. Brooklyn's Putting Green, Williamsburg, New York
Yes, this is an 18 hole miniature golf course, but it's also an immersive art experience. Each hole of this golf course highlights a different way the planet will be impacted from the increasing temperatures and changes in our climate.
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Everything was created with sustainable, repurposed materials, and only native plant species were used. Issues addressed at the golf holes range from (golf pun for you there) rising water levels affecting loss of habitats and loss of cities, to a visceral representation of what happens when a whale dies and falls to the bottom of the ocean.
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Inspiration station: Could you take advantage of an activity that a large amount of people enjoy, and turn it into an immersive, educational experience? Could you create high definition videos of the impact of climate change, shown at galleries or cinemas in a way that L'Atleier des Lumieres has been around the world? Maybe you could incorporate art installations into treasure-hunts, street performances or sports complexes?
3. Agnes Denes, Wheatfield: A Confrontation (1982)
Now this is a big one. To create this piece, Denes cleared out two acres of unused land in Lower Manhattan before filling the whole space with soil and sowing a wheat field by hand. Truly in this for the long game, Dene watched the field grow and spring up contrasting natural textures that were a sharp difference to the towering skyscrapers of New York's financial district.
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Dene maintained the field for four months, before harvesting the grain and turning it into an art installation. She took the installation to 28 cities, and named it “The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger.” Viewers were encouraged to take seeds from the show and plant them.
Inspiration station: Could you transform an area into a natural space, where plants or crops grow? Could you install your art in a financial district, where office workers undoubtedly be clueing themselves up on the blockchain and maybe even already trading in environmentally damaging cryptocurrencies? Perhaps your art work could provide something practical to your audiences?
4. Jenny Kendler, Birds Watching
Kendler created a 40ft-long sculpture showing 100 individual eyes of birds who have now become endangered species due to climate change and the impact of human life on the planet. It shows audiences a collection of what we'll lose if the world continues to burn the way it currently is.
From Jenny's website: "Within the gaze of these many others, the work asks us to consider our own responsibility for climate change’s myriad effects on other beings. Have we allowed birds and other nonhumans—with their unique and wondrous lifeways—to become the sacrifice zones of extractive capitalism?"
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Inspiration station: Could you create work that predicts an image of the future that the continued use of environmentally irresponsible cryptocurrencies and minting could create? Could you powerfully show audiences what we stand to lose if we carry on trading crypto in such an unconscious way? The use of eyes in Kendler's work forces the viewer to almost have a dialog with the art piece - are there similarly confronting visuals you could use to make your statement all the more striking?
5. Olafur Eliasson, Ice Watch
This kind of thing is something you'd absolutely need some help to create. For this, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson used 30 blocks of ice which had already separated from bigger sheets, and was melting in the oceans off of Greenland. He worked with geologist Minik Rosing to bring the ice to London, and installed it in prominent city spaces.
The exhibitions were only there for a limited time as, of course, the ice was melting. The artist told Dezeen that he wanted to bring the issue of melting ice caps into our realities more prominently, and to emotionalise it for us.
"The ice is amazingly beautiful – you can smell it, you can kiss it, and essentially put your hands on it and touch Greenland," said Eliasson.
"It is a lot more physical; it suddenly gives a stronger sense of what it is they're talking about when they say the Greenland ice caps are melting."
Photo by Justin Sutcliffe
Inspiration station: Why don't you move a load of ice and bring it to your city? Ok, joking, but using a sustainable mode of transport to bring something that's physically far away from people who are having an environemtal impact by minting damaging NFTs and using unsustainable crypto could be incredible. What can you bring into the public focus to really highlight blockchain's carbon footprint, and remind us of the corporate impact and social responsibility we all have?
Good luck!
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Tell us what you think!