Art = Catalyst for Change

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.

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.

______________________________

Joan Sullivan is a renewable energy photographer based in Québec, Canada. Since 2009, Joan has focused her cameras (and more recently her drones) exclusively on solutions to climate change. She is convinced that the inevitable transition to a 100% clean energy economy will happen faster – and within our lifetimes – by creating positive images and stories that help us visualize and embrace what a post-carbon future will look like.  Joan collaborates frequently with filmmakers on documentary films that explore the human side of the energy transition. She is currently working on a photo book about the energy transition. Her renewable energy photos have been exhibited in group shows in Canada and the UK. You can find Joan on Twitter and Instagram.