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Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last important works. Famed for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting societal issues from nuclear disarmament to plant-based living. Via a concise video message, he issued a call for a international event to remember nature.

“I call upon you for your involvement in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on the fourth of November, 2015,” he declared, encouraging artists and creatives to stand against the steady eradication of species. “The mission is to remind people of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Birth of Environmental Reflection

In this way the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country developed works to the unfolding climate catastrophe. One of the curators, who cared for Metzger in his last days, notes his sense of urgency. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “My advice was – we must act now. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to green light this. Let’s just do it.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the initiative did not triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be observed in movements like cultural advocacy groups and climate activism networks, as well as in how creatives consider the eco-friendliness of their work. This is the reason she is restaging it to mark its ten-year mark. Included in the key participants taking part currently are Yu-Chen Wang and other notable figures. They have all produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on the fourth of November next year.

Planting Hope

When speaking to one participant, she is on site in a rural area, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already involved learning about measurements (calculating the gaps in the orchard), biology (studying the apple’s DNA), and history (researching the backgrounds of how different apples arrived in Britain).

Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that releases crimson liquid

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that produces red juice. They all have background narratives. The decio apple was brought over by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that dropped off a tree and hit the physicist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more consciously engaged of nature and the influence we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, on their next shopping trip, to look on the bag and see what they’re called and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Throughout Britain

Within the city, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will include attendees looking through an art institution on a mission to find the frozen formations that have been lost in the past decade. Every ice sheet will be depicted on the exhibition spaces using special pens. Whenever one is found, a alert will occur and a performance will be held to remember that individual formation.

At the same time, up in Barrow-in-Furness, a creative will be presenting a open display about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, prepared with organic, local produce. Over in Newcastle, an artist is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers begin a project to sing plants back to health in a green space.

Children’s Voices

Following this approach, another participant will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is aiming to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in kids’ letters and drawings that express their dreams and worries for the future. “Children’s words and images are compelling because they’re not as inhibited as grown-ups’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something distinctive and hopefully it will stimulate a sense of responsibility from us all. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But this shouldn’t be about fear – it should be about optimism and making sure that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

Paul Harfleet’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his Birds Can Fly involves sketching winged creatures and then dressing up as them – and for the initiative he is aiming to represent a local symbol. He is also organizing a guided walk of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his Pansy Project over the past twenty years. The project began when he faced multiple occurrences of prejudice on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since expanded to cover events experienced by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly birds consume them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

He picked the flower not just for the clear connection – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The intention on the event day is to place blooms at new locations and also renew the tributes in places he has previously memorialised, all the while discussing with those on the guided walk about the occurrences and his memories of them. “We’ve seen quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

Harfleet hopes his work – and