EMBED ARTS & CULTURE IN RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
The issue
Petition to Minister Tony Burke (Arts), Minister Chris Bowen (Climate Change & Energy), Minister Murray Watt (Environment & Water), Minister Anika Wells (Communication) and the Australian Government
A call for culture, art and community to be incorporated in Australia’s climate action plans and COP31 negotiations
And climate as a pressing cross-pillar issue in the revision of the REVIVE National Cultural Policy
Climate change is changing our world. Art and Culture shapes how we respond.
We are calling on the Australian Government to recognise art and culture as essential to climate action. This would ensure that First Nations cultural leaders, artists, cultural practitioners and community-engaged creative practice have a meaningful place in Australia’s climate response and global negotiations including COP31.
The Climate and ecological crisis is not only an environmental, scientific and economic challenge.
It is a human and cultural challenge.
It asks us to reconsider how we live, what we value, how we care for Country and the natural world, how we respond to change, and what kind of future we want to create together.
These questions cannot be answered by policy and technology alone.
They require people’s creativity
They require community action
They require cultural change
Our call to the Australian Government
We call on Ministers Burke, Bowen, Watt, Wells and the Australian Government to:
1. Enable arts and culture to help lead climate action.
Formally recognise culture and creativity, in the revised REVIVE Cultural Policy, centring community participation, as essential to urgently needed climate, preparedness, adaptation, community resilience and plans for transition.
2. Give culture a leading role at COP31.
Ensure meaningful cultural representation within Australia’s engagement with COP and other international climate processes, including artists, First Nations cultural leaders and community-engaged cultural practitioners. Identify an Australian Minister to join the influential Group of Friends for Culture-Based Climate Action to help raise awareness of the specific challenges of people living in Australia Pacific region, with strong First Nations leadership.
3. Connect global commitments with Australian communities.
Invest directly in artists with creative approaches that enable people and communities across Australia to understand, participate in and shape climate responses in the places where they live, to create resilient connected communities .
Culture should not sit at the edge of climate policy after decisions have been made.
Culture and creative practices can help shape the decisions themselves—and enable people to participate in the transformation that follows.
Why culture?
Culture is one of the ways we make meaning together.
Through stories, music, performance, visual art, design, festivals, ceremony and community cultural practice, we explore who we are, what matters to us, and what might be possible.
Artists and cultural practitioners can make complex issues human and tangible. Their processes can create spaces for difficult conversations, connect knowledge with lived experience and help communities imagine and rehearse different futures.
Across Australia, many artists and cultural development practitioners work within communities over time—building relationships, creating opportunities for participation and bringing people together across differences of age, culture, geography and experience.
This relational cultural infrastructure matters.
When communities face disruption, these networks of connection, trust, belonging and local knowledge can become part of their capacity to respond, adapt and recover.
Climate resilience is not built for communities. It is built with them.
Culture provides powerful ways for people to participate in that process.
Culture belongs at the climate table
Around the world, recognition of culture within climate action is growing.
First Nations cultural knowledge and leadership is grounded in tens of thousands of years of relationship with and responsibility for Country.
Australia has an opportunity to be part of this movement and to demonstrate leadership by connecting our international climate commitments with the knowledge, creativity and lived experience of communities at home.
As the world gathers through the COP process, Australia should ensure that culture is represented alongside science, economics, technology and policy.
The contribution of artists, cultural organisations and community-engaged creative practitioners are already helping Australians to understand environmental change, respond to disasters, strengthen community connection and mindful of resources, imagine more regenerative ways of living.
Please sign…
If you are an artist, cultural worker, community practitioner, cultural organisation, educator, climate advocate—or simply someone who believes we need a more human and participatory response to climate change—we invite you to add your name.
Your signature says:
Arts and culture are essential in our society as we grapple with accelerating Climate and Ecological Crises.
First Nations cultural knowledge and leadership are central to a stable climate future.
Climate action is about people as well as targets.
Artists and cultural practitioners have knowledge and capabilities that all Australians need.
Communities must be participants in change, not simply recipients of it.
Culture belongs at the climate table.
Add your name.
Help us demonstrate that there is a growing constituency across Australia calling for culture to be recognised as part of our national and international climate response.
Sign the campaign and share it through your networks.
GO FURTHER: ADD YOUR CREATIVE VOICE
Signing is the first and most important action.
But if you would like to go further, we invite you to contribute your own voice to Culture at the Centre of Climate.
Make a short 30–60 second video, provide a photograph and written statement, or respond creatively to one of these questions:
“Why does culture belong at the climate table?”
“What can culture and community do that policy and technology cannot do alone?”
“What future do you want creativity to help us imagine?”
We will bring these contributions together as a growing chorus of creative and community voices in the lead-up to COP.
Different artforms.
Different places.
Different communities.
Different perspectives.
One shared call:
PUT ARTS & CULTURE AT THE CENTRE OF CLIMATE TRANSITION
Because changing our climate future means changing how we live—and culture is how we imagine, make and share that change.
#Culture4Climate | #CultureAtCOP | #CutureMatters
210
The issue
Petition to Minister Tony Burke (Arts), Minister Chris Bowen (Climate Change & Energy), Minister Murray Watt (Environment & Water), Minister Anika Wells (Communication) and the Australian Government
A call for culture, art and community to be incorporated in Australia’s climate action plans and COP31 negotiations
And climate as a pressing cross-pillar issue in the revision of the REVIVE National Cultural Policy
Climate change is changing our world. Art and Culture shapes how we respond.
We are calling on the Australian Government to recognise art and culture as essential to climate action. This would ensure that First Nations cultural leaders, artists, cultural practitioners and community-engaged creative practice have a meaningful place in Australia’s climate response and global negotiations including COP31.
The Climate and ecological crisis is not only an environmental, scientific and economic challenge.
It is a human and cultural challenge.
It asks us to reconsider how we live, what we value, how we care for Country and the natural world, how we respond to change, and what kind of future we want to create together.
These questions cannot be answered by policy and technology alone.
They require people’s creativity
They require community action
They require cultural change
Our call to the Australian Government
We call on Ministers Burke, Bowen, Watt, Wells and the Australian Government to:
1. Enable arts and culture to help lead climate action.
Formally recognise culture and creativity, in the revised REVIVE Cultural Policy, centring community participation, as essential to urgently needed climate, preparedness, adaptation, community resilience and plans for transition.
2. Give culture a leading role at COP31.
Ensure meaningful cultural representation within Australia’s engagement with COP and other international climate processes, including artists, First Nations cultural leaders and community-engaged cultural practitioners. Identify an Australian Minister to join the influential Group of Friends for Culture-Based Climate Action to help raise awareness of the specific challenges of people living in Australia Pacific region, with strong First Nations leadership.
3. Connect global commitments with Australian communities.
Invest directly in artists with creative approaches that enable people and communities across Australia to understand, participate in and shape climate responses in the places where they live, to create resilient connected communities .
Culture should not sit at the edge of climate policy after decisions have been made.
Culture and creative practices can help shape the decisions themselves—and enable people to participate in the transformation that follows.
Why culture?
Culture is one of the ways we make meaning together.
Through stories, music, performance, visual art, design, festivals, ceremony and community cultural practice, we explore who we are, what matters to us, and what might be possible.
Artists and cultural practitioners can make complex issues human and tangible. Their processes can create spaces for difficult conversations, connect knowledge with lived experience and help communities imagine and rehearse different futures.
Across Australia, many artists and cultural development practitioners work within communities over time—building relationships, creating opportunities for participation and bringing people together across differences of age, culture, geography and experience.
This relational cultural infrastructure matters.
When communities face disruption, these networks of connection, trust, belonging and local knowledge can become part of their capacity to respond, adapt and recover.
Climate resilience is not built for communities. It is built with them.
Culture provides powerful ways for people to participate in that process.
Culture belongs at the climate table
Around the world, recognition of culture within climate action is growing.
First Nations cultural knowledge and leadership is grounded in tens of thousands of years of relationship with and responsibility for Country.
Australia has an opportunity to be part of this movement and to demonstrate leadership by connecting our international climate commitments with the knowledge, creativity and lived experience of communities at home.
As the world gathers through the COP process, Australia should ensure that culture is represented alongside science, economics, technology and policy.
The contribution of artists, cultural organisations and community-engaged creative practitioners are already helping Australians to understand environmental change, respond to disasters, strengthen community connection and mindful of resources, imagine more regenerative ways of living.
Please sign…
If you are an artist, cultural worker, community practitioner, cultural organisation, educator, climate advocate—or simply someone who believes we need a more human and participatory response to climate change—we invite you to add your name.
Your signature says:
Arts and culture are essential in our society as we grapple with accelerating Climate and Ecological Crises.
First Nations cultural knowledge and leadership are central to a stable climate future.
Climate action is about people as well as targets.
Artists and cultural practitioners have knowledge and capabilities that all Australians need.
Communities must be participants in change, not simply recipients of it.
Culture belongs at the climate table.
Add your name.
Help us demonstrate that there is a growing constituency across Australia calling for culture to be recognised as part of our national and international climate response.
Sign the campaign and share it through your networks.
GO FURTHER: ADD YOUR CREATIVE VOICE
Signing is the first and most important action.
But if you would like to go further, we invite you to contribute your own voice to Culture at the Centre of Climate.
Make a short 30–60 second video, provide a photograph and written statement, or respond creatively to one of these questions:
“Why does culture belong at the climate table?”
“What can culture and community do that policy and technology cannot do alone?”
“What future do you want creativity to help us imagine?”
We will bring these contributions together as a growing chorus of creative and community voices in the lead-up to COP.
Different artforms.
Different places.
Different communities.
Different perspectives.
One shared call:
PUT ARTS & CULTURE AT THE CENTRE OF CLIMATE TRANSITION
Because changing our climate future means changing how we live—and culture is how we imagine, make and share that change.
#Culture4Climate | #CultureAtCOP | #CutureMatters
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Petition created on 27 August 2026