Are you an artist? Working in the arts? Time to join in, and use your voice?
Culture Declares is a growing movement of individuals and organisations involved in arts and culture who are declaring a climate and ecological emergency. This means truth-telling, care-taking, and change-making.
This is why you are invited to declare.
Here is my artist declaration:
Social justice. Earth Justice. Climate Justice.
A focus and commitment to connecting the climate crisis to both the current and historic power structures and extractive toxic systems that have created this situation.
To be an advocate for equity and justice in the climate crisis.
To use my ancestors in the story and the work.
To build and stitch across community in the place where I live – Frome, Somerset – and to connect it continually to the global, to the already affected, to history, and to migration and movement.
To use my energy and skills to join people together through stories, events and actions in the climate crisis, including focusing on adaptation and the future.
Art as a means of enquiry, as a way of communicating and caring, seeing and listening, witnessing, changing and relating.
Building global connections as sparks of life forces.
Gardening, growing food and flowers in the lifecycle.
Artists who declare align with Culture Declares in their vision, mission and values
Declaration
We declare that the Earth’s life-supporting systems are in collapse, threatening biodiversity and human societies everywhere.
Alive to the beauty of our planet, we unite to challenge the dominant global power structures that fail to protect us as they disregard scientific consensus, silence marginalised voices and perpetuate ecocide.
As Declarers, we take action to harness the power of arts and culture to express heartfelt truths and address deep-rooted injustices, to care for and create adaptive, resilient and joyful communities, and to influence the urgent and necessary transformation of harmful global systems.
Vision
That the cultural sector is a leading contributor to the transformation of social and economic systems to create a regenerative world in which biodiverse life is protected and the livelihoods of people are sustained with equality.
Mission
To support and mobilise a global movement of declarers in the cultural sector to take action and inspire others.
Values
Our values are underpinned by truth-telling, care-taking, and change-making.
- Declarers commit to telling truths by understanding and communicating how the Earth crisis has arisen from historic and deeply rooted injustices, the impacts of this on human and biodiverse communities, and how transformative solutions must be driven by justice and honour the perspectives of those most affected.
- Declarers commit to taking care in all we do to eliminate all forms of oppression from all aspects of our work and seek to create an environment where we dismantle attitudes and biases that hinder positive relationships and progress.
- Declarers commit to transforming harmful systems and, in doing so, value the diversity of all lived experiences and cultural perspectives, including those of more-than-human beings. Our change-making strategies and actions must draw on indigenous wisdom and biodiverse living systems.
Sue Palmer - artist, maker, producer 