This year’s Earth Day theme is ‘Restore Our Earth,’ encouraging us all to learn, support and share the natural processes, green technologies, and innovative thinking that can help restore our ecosystem.
As we continue to explore the links between visual arts and climate change action and awareness, we’ve put together some quick tips towards a more creative Earth Day 2021.
1. Explore creativity and the environment with a free online event
Watch: How can we use the past to understand the future?
Artists, curators, activists and epidemiologists come together to respond to this essential and timely question in a thought-provoking and lively discussion. Featuring: Jeremy Deller, Miranda Lowe, Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining), Anne Johnson and Jes Fernie. Visit the Invisible Dust Forecast page to browse more events.
Explore exciting events: The Season For Change Is Now | April-July 2021
Season for Change has launched a nationwide programme of creative projects inspiring inclusive climate action. Workshops, performances, exhibitions, talks, and film screenings will take place across the country from April-July 2021. Explore our selected highlights below. You can browse the full programme, here.
Attend a virtual film screening: Earth Day: Sharna Pax Film Screening | Somerset House Studios
Three short films curated by film collective Sharna Paxan on the occasion of Earth Day each attentively observing a different environment – forest, sky, and river.
From Thursday 22 April, 6.30pm and available until Sunday 25 April. Visit the event page.
Join the conversation: Season for Ex-Change Two
An 8-week programme of free online events exploring how to embed climate action and climate justice in artistic and creative work. Starts on 29 April. Explore the events.
2. Visit your local woods and maybe even make an artwork
Why not make your own soundscape by recording the nature near you? Get inspired by Wythamscapes, a sound installation that brings together a 24-hour cycle (twice around the clock face) of the sounds of Wytham Woods in Oxford, juxtaposed with discrete episodes of sound and music, exploring relationships between people, sound, place and nature.
Or take some time to observe how the natural world around you develops over time. For the last three years, local artist Lillian Tranborg has been recording the decay of an organic sculpture in Wytham Woods, and celebrates this evolution in her work. Watch her short film below and read more about the project, here.
3. Explore your relationship with the air around you
Re-visit Breathing Worlds, a fascinating online discussion about the political, personal and environmental worlds we breathe in.
Breathing Worlds accompanied Breathworks a participatory digital project exploring everyone’s unique experiences of breathing. People were invited to share experiences of breathing via an image and sound recording. The result is a fascinating and timely collection of personal stories that shed light on how we all experience breathing. Explore Breathworks.
4. Share a message to the Earth
For Earth Day, artist Yoko Ono’s artwork is appearing on billboards in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow as a reminder to care for our endangered planet. Serpentine Galleries have partnered with ClearChannel to display I LOVE YOU EARTH across the country for two weeks in April. Find a billboard near you and share the message #ILoveYouEarth.
Unicef: Thought Starters for Climate Changemakers
Made in collaboration with Letters to the Earth, Unicef share a useful resource to help inspire young climate changemakers to connect with their feelings about the Earth and the climate and ecological crisis, and to consider how we can make change. Find out more.