Arts can play a key role in awakening people to the perils of climate change

W

hether to engage in debate or change opinion and behaviour, arts can play a key role in the cultural awakening of the masses to the perils of climate change.

Andrew Sims writes in the Guardian: “If anything, the willingness to accept high-profile sponsorship from fossil fuel companies suggests that the art establishment has been worse than indifferent, and actively obstructive to the challenge of tackling climate upheaval.

“The social licence to operate, and normalisation that such cultural relationships gift to oil companies, can dissipate the urgency for action and sponsorship can seek to directly influence the climate debate.”

However, “That is all now changing,” he writes. “Uncomfortable light is being shone on sponsorship deals by campaigns like Liberate Tate, more artists are engaging with the issue, and the Guardian, for example, chose to couple its Keep it in the Ground campaign on fossil fuels with poems curated by Carol Ann Duffy. But the question will remain and grow about whether art is there to help us see something, engage with it or change it. Should, and can, art be part of a campaigning agenda to change opinion and behaviour?”

Read his story - “Why climate action needs the arts”.