Sustainability Toolkit update: April 2025
Inspiring Projects, Platforms, and Resources
PUBLIC CALL for ecologists at risk in LATIN AMERICA and AFRICA, by ECOLOGISTS AT RISK (ER).
Ecologists at Risk (ER) is an at-risk-residency platform at the intersection of ecology and culture. ER supports eco-defenders at high risk, whose life and/or work is to sustain, protect or defend natural ecosystems through their cultural or artistic practices.
The Ecologists at Risk (ER) initiative was launched by Perpetuum Mobile (PM) in 2019 as part of its Artists at Risk (AR) platform. Since 2013 AR has geographically relocated and given material support to over 850 high-risk cultural professionals in cooperation with over 300 residency-network hosts worldwide.
Ecologists at Risk (ER) announced their first public call for ecologists at risk living in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. These are artists, activists or cultural figures with significant threats to their freedom of expression and activities, or who face risk to life and limb due to their ecological engagement.
Applications should address significant current risks to work at the intersection of ecology with art and culture.
Perpetuum Mobilε (PM) is an international NGO that brings together art, engaged practice, and inquiry. It serves as a conduit and engine to re-imagine historical, theoretical, and practical paradigms across fields which often operate within separate institutional frameworks and territories.
Objects as Temporal Entities, by Sustainablecurating.ca
One of the key points of tension in building a more sustainable institution is that between the duty of care museums have towards artworks, artifacts, and belongings in their collections, and the energy and materials required to preserve those collections. Building on the work of groups such as Ki Culture, Gallery Climate Coalition, and STiCH to encourage more passive environmental controls and the use of sustainable, non-toxic materials in museum storage, this project understands art objects (in the words of curator and historian Marina Valle Noronha), as “temporal entities” that will inevitably degrade and decay over time.
The team behind Objects as Temporary Entities tackled this challenge from multiple angles, creating a series of interconnected guides, artworks, flowcharts, and a solar-powered archive to help others understand what happens to artworks and objects after the process of making is complete.
Readings & Podcasts List
Blackout: A Manifesto: This essay by Dehlia Hannah explores electricity as a metaphor and as a material infrastructure, investigating the cultural, environmental and philosophical implications of our dependence on energy and the grid. It criticizes modern techno-solutionism and offers speculative, ironic and radical proposals for rethinking energy use.
e-flux Architecture, September 2024
Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through
This article explores the exhibition Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through. Curated by the Synthetic Collective, the exhibition emerged from a scientific study aimed at tracking plastic pellet pollution on the strandlines of beaches of the Great Lakes. This lake system crosses the border of the United States and Canada and contains more than 20% of the world’s surface freshwater reserves. Utilizing this study as a starting point, Plastic Heart also examined the role of plastics in the art world, the challenges of conserving plastics in museum collections, and the potential for art-science collaboration. Importantly, Plastic Heart also aimed for a minimal carbon impact, driving decisions throughout the process to mitigate the energy footprint and waste generated during curation. Using Plastic Heart as a case study, the authors address the strengths and weaknesses of the curatorial approach employed in the exhibition and argue for curatorial strategies grounded in complexity as a method of addressing environmental issues.
Article by Kirsty Robertson (Western University) , Heather Davis (Eugene Lang College, New School), Kelly Wood (Western University, CA), Tegan Moore (independent artist), Kelly Jazvac (Studio Arts, Concordia University, CA), Published on Open Library of Humanities Journal, October 13, 2023.
The Art of Social Change Podcast with Candice Hopkins, from Forge Project. In this episode, we speak with Candice Hopkins, executive director and chief curator of Forge Projects, whose work as a citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation centers on decolonizing institutions and integrating Indigenous knowledge within and beyond exhibition spaces. Drawing from a worldview where art, land, water, and culture are inseparable, Candice reflects on how Indigenous communities perceive art as part of a broader ecosystem rather than a segregated discipline. This conversation was recorded in collaboration with CIMAM during their 56th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, where Candice spoke on “Sustainable Communities: Indigenous Perspectives and Worldviews.”
Conversations on Creative Climate Leadership Podcast: A new podcast from Julie’s Bicycle centring stories from our global community of Creative Climate Leaders who champion the role of culture in climate activism. Over six episodes, our hosts musician and zoologist Louis VI and JB’s Climate Justice Lead Farah Ahmed talk with some of our Creative Climate Leadership alumni who have generously shared their personal insights on navigating the climate crisis and creatively leading transformative change.