The Heart of the Matter: inspiring climate action through culture and art

Date: 23 March 2021

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Host:

New Development Bank

Co-Hosts: The Local Chapters of the four Arctic Nations:

  • Chapter Zero Canada, hosted by the Institute of Corporate Directors
  • Boards Impact Forum (The Nordic Chapter of Climate Governance Initiative)
  • Climate Governance Initiative Russia
  • National Association of Corporate Directors, US Chapter host

Panellists:

  • Lera Auerbach – Composer, Artist, Poet, Thought Leader, WEF Young Global Leader
  • Leon Botstein – Global Board Member, Open Society Foundations; Chairperson of the Board, Central European University; President, Bard College
  • Cristina Vollmer de Burelli – Founder, SOS Orinoco; Founding Co-Chair, The Global Leaders Program; Founding Executive Director V5 Initiative
  • Olafur Eliasson – Artist; Thought Leader; UN Goodwill Ambassador on climate action; WEF Young Global Leader
  • Miranda Massie – Director, The Climate Museum Moderator:
  • Katya Gorbatiouk – Board Member, The Global Leaders Program; Trustee, London Music Fund; Advisory Council, London Symphony Orchestra
Watch the recording: The Heart of the Matter: inspiring climate action through culture and art – YouTube

“If you can’t see a problem it becomes abstract and difficult to broach – that is the biggest challenge of climate change.” That was the view put forward at the Climate Governance Initiative’s Global Summit March 2021 by Cristina Vollmer de Burelli, founder of Venuezelan climate advocacy group, SOS Orinoco. Climate change may be the biggest humanitarian crisis today, but it’s still an intangible issue for many of us living in the global north. So, how can we make it a more concrete concern?

The answer may well lie within the art world. Art is concerned with connecting our individual imaginations to the experience of others, and it’s this juxtaposition that panelists discussed. Experts from across the art and finance worlds argued that culture and commerce can and should come together to inspire communities in more ways than one.

With no language barrier, messages on climate responsibility are arguably easier to convey through sound and image than written or spoken theses. Composer Lera Auerbach’s work, the symphony Artica is one such example. The Young Global Leader’s music represents both the people of the arctic and the urgency needed to stop the caps from melting at its currently terrifying rate.

More of a visual learner? Artist Olafur Eliasson brought ice from Greenland to London for people to touch, see and smell a soon-to-be extinct resource. For Eliasson, climate is too abstract for many to grasp; offering a sensory experience conveys a message without the need for clever slogans or common language.

From the other side of the world, we saw satellite images of Venezuela, where gold mining has caused ecocide in parts of the country. Vollmer de Burelli used these pictures to show how we, as consumers, can play a role in combating the climate emergency. By understanding the origins of the products we buy, we have a choice to exacerbate the issue or not, and she argued that art – like those images from South America – can motivate a change in that buying behaviour.

Museums and galleries, of course, also have a crucial role to play. Miranda Massie, director of The Climate Project Museum, spoke of museums’ ability to increase awareness and influence behaviour as trusted institutions. She spoke of the ‘hunger’ with which the public has engaged with a lot of her museum’s work, and the desire to engage in civic action.  But art and curators can’t work alone; the art world must work with science and technology to affect change.