Environmental activists have long drawn on scientific data to help make their case, but they also recognise the power of art to transform public opinion and inspire the kind of transformational change needed to fight climate change. Several conservation organisations are collaborating with artists, including WWF and Greenpeace. Art Works For Change is a collaboration of artists, organisations and institutions to inspire a collective force for change. One of their recent exhibitions, Survival Architecture and the Art of Resilience, called on science, technology, architecture and art to imagine buildings that address the challenges of excess heat, droughts, flooding, and food insecurity. Among them is a striking white structure that resembles a large conch shell, but is a modular edible insect farm made from plastic containers.
“Artists are the blazing moral voices of a society,” says Lauren Groff, founder of Greenpeace’s Climate Visionaries Artists’ Project. “If our artists are focused mainly on the urgencies of 30 years ago, they are abdicating their moral responsibilities. All of us collectively need to act; all of us individually need to act. Yes, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. We say: to make art, to write an essay, to draw, to take a photograph, to engage in a real and thoughtful way with climate change, is one way we can all move forward.”
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