COP to the Truth of the Arts and Climate
By Eric Booth, Founder of the International Teaching Artist Collaborative
COP26 has increased attention to the Code Red climate crisis. At least for the moment, and maybe long enough to create significant political movement.
I’ve been investigating the ways that the arts and artists have responded to the crescendo of the climate emergency. Arts organizations have been taking modest steps in the right direction over many years, reducing their carbon footprints a little, speaking out—you’ve probably seen the waterless urinals at intermission and noticed new single-use plastic reduction plans. All fine and reasonable things to do, but, effectively, applying a garden hose to the forest fire. The main contribution of these organizations may be the increase in producing and presenting more artworks with environmental messages. This is based in the widespread assumption within the arts that good artworks with environmental themes change what people think and do. Rethink that assumption.
True to their historic role, the arts have been early-warners about the climate crisis. Cassandra creators, artists have been communicating about environmental problems since scientists began forecasting danger. As the crisis worsens, and the consequences of distraction and delay increasingly impact daily lives and government budgets, artists have responded with greater urgency. The daily news often covers climate disasters and political gamesmanship, far more than it makes visible the quieter devastation of climate migration in desperate countries, food supply disruptions, species extinctions, relentlessly slow health damage, and always disproportionate impact on the poor and people of color. Artists report the news in their artworks, with passion and skill. As William Carlos Williams wrote: “It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ but men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.”
I find that artists’ responses seem to fall into three categories: artworks “about” environmental issues, artworks that communicate scientific information in alternative ways, and art work infused in political action. All good, all worth doing.
That first category, making artworks with environmental themes, can be passionate and potent. The simple act of dedicating ones efforts to these issues, and generating more discussion about the issues, is positive. But I have my doubts about the impact of many of these contributions, partly because their pathway to action is so indirect and easily distracted, and partly because their audience is limited, mostly made for and presented to the Art Club, the privileged percentage who genuinely care about the high arts—but who represent a small slice of any population. The Art Club has a long, self-satisfying history of mistaking powerful presentations for actual change. The word “transformative” is slapped onto almost all striking artworks about the climate, but I do wonder who is transformed by a film of ballerinas doing arabesques amid the trees of a forest. I do wonder if a new orchestral composition built around the sounds of a glacier melting transforms anyone’s understandings of the crisis. A spectacular, expensive film of a concert grand piano being played on a floating ice chunk in the Arctic is exquisitely beautiful, but I wonder if this is what Code Red demands? There are good stories of individuals who experienced genuine change in response to powerful artworks, but widescale “transformative” impact? No.
That second category of contributions, when artists apply themselves as facilitating communicators of scientific data, is one the scientists love and request—for example, photographic depictions of floods and elegant podcasts that bring hard facts and personal stories together. It is hard to create impact with the statistics that shout the crisis—data don’t activate emotions, and emotions fuel social change. News images of historic storms and deaths from heat waves grab attention (and earn advertising income), but they fade. The relentless trendlines of global temperature rise tell the story, but it takes artists to communicate it as a horror story. Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth may be the apex of arts medium having transformative impact—and it was mostly a slide show of scientific facts. This is valuable work; it reaches outside the bubble of the Art Club. We need these visceral, visual, narrative ways to grasp the brutal reality of what’s underway. But given human nature, it’s additive for sure, but the evidence suggests it is not transformative, except maybe the Gore film. People are not changing their actions, not demanding policy changes, nearly enough to answer the need. People are moved, even inspired, but for whatever reasons, the impact of such experiences doesn’t lead to much change, doesn’t move the privileged beyond the limits of their convenience, not nearly at the level Code Red demands.
In the third category, artists get directly involved in political action to change policies and laws. There are protest songs, demonstration art like giant puppets, potent protest signs, murals, public performance events like tap dancing for the climate in Times Square, and the delights of two hundred ukulele players marching through a British town in support of closing a coal-powered power plant. All good, all contributing to awareness and the slow accrual of community support. It’s good when celebrities speak out on climate issues (thank you, Leonardo DiCaprio) and Global Citizen’s array of pop icons and points for taking climate actions, and it’s even better when they put some money into scientifically-determined solutions (thank you again, Leonard DiCaprio) and a thousand fundraising initiatives; it’s very good when Coldplay commits to reducing the carbon footprint 50% on their next tour. These actions have impact, and maybe some of that impact does do some transforming.
Stepping back from my grateful appreciation for these passion-driven, useful, often savvy and exquisite contributions, I see these categories on a continuum of impact. Are they really delivering what needs to be done? I don’t think so. They do contribute to the general public awareness and add some alternative energy to the far-too-slow processes of change. Let’s not hype the impact with the word “transformative.” We are contributing what we can, but we aren’t transforming much of anything.
Are we doing enough?
We are doing what we know how to do,
What we like to do—of course, we’re artists
So we have to do what we like to do,
But is it enough to answer the need?
Is it enough?
No, it’s not.
Are we doing everything we know how to do?
How can we do more?
I propose that teaching artists can add, and are now beginning to add, a fourth category. One that answers the demands of the climate emergency. Teaching artists (or let’s use the term used in the U.K.—participatory artists) work directly with people in communities and schools, and given enough time and support, they can change what people believe and what they do about climate issues. We need to add that kind of impact to our arts-and-climate continuum, and it takes the participatory artist workforce to achieve it. Actual change at the grassroots. With good partnering, the energy released by those grassroots changes can be guided to influence changes in policy and law. That’s the contribution the arts can add. That would be enough.
Teaching artists/participatory artists (also called social practice artists, civic artists, citizen artists, and more) know how to engage and focus the creative energies of people in a community. They tap the innate artistry that every person has by birthright. This can be channeled into projects that address local climate issues. Note the distinctive elements of this work: teaching artists can engage everyone (not just the Art Club or the privileged); they can design and facilitate projects that activate participants to create in ways that foster actual change; and they can make it fun, joyful, satisfying all along the way. This fourth category of impact responds to the demands of the Code Red.
The International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) is the first global network of participatory artists who work in communities and schools. Its ITAC Impact: Climate initiative has focused the distinctive skill set of participatory artists on climate response.
ITAC has five commissioned projects underway—with the support of the visionary Community Arts Network. Each of the five uses a different artform, to achieve a different kind of measurable change, in a different part of the world. A community in West Sydney Australia addresses heat issues, using a range of art forms culminating in a community heat festival through which people intend to influence/force the hand of local policy decision makers; a dance company in Belgrade Serbia focuses on the drastic elimination of trees in the city to change government policies for industrial development; communities of farmers and fishers in rural Philippines are creating public artworks and educating neighbors on the climate realities that threaten their survival; a town in Brazil is having an imagination festival of their nine-year-old school students, preparing them to educate the adults around the town; and a youth spoken word ensemble in South Africa is making a film of their environmental concerns and touring it as a way to spark community conversations and demand on policy-makers. In addition, a Climate Collective has sprung up—dozens of climate-committed teaching artists who meet monthly and undertake projects to build the field.
We envision even bolder projects for ITAC Climate in its next round—this will make the fourth category in arts-for-climate more prominent. The changes in beliefs and behaviors at the grassroots that participatory artists can deliver will be directly connected to public actions that demand local regulatory and legal change. To do this, ITAC will partner with climate activist organizations so that our distinctive skills set can empower their essential goals. Demonstration projects that put these pieces together will provide a compelling new tool for activism.
The teaching artist workforce is uniquely prepared to deliver the “transformative” impact that Code Red demands. Teaching artistry as a professional field (some forty years old) is pretty disorganized. That’s because funders (especially in Western countries) have widely supported programs and projects that depend on their skills but have rarely invested in developing of the field. There are teaching artists in every country, but only in the last decade have they made connections through ITAC that allow them to share learning and create some visibility.
Meantime, Code Red demands that we all do whatever we can to minimize the now-certain, already-underway ravages to humans and other species. Teaching artists are stepping up. They bring something other artists can’t offer: the capacity to fuse artistic engagement with activist energy in community. That’s a radically potent fusion that can lead to genuine transformation.
Find out more about ITAC here: https://www.itac-collaborative.com/about/about-itac
Find out more about ITAC IMPACT: Climate here: https://www.itac-collaborative.com/projects/itac-impact-climate