Creating Art to Understand and Promote Climate and Environmental Justice
Email Feedback
Why it Matters to You
- Students should explore a variety of ways that art can amplify their understanding of climate science and just responses to climate and environmental crises.
- Educators can use art and STEAM pedagogies to both support student understanding of scientific knowledge and spark emotional connections that can motivate them to take action.
- Artists can collaborate with educators to provide ways for students to connect with climate issues emotionally and creatively, while also laying out a framework for learning in, with, and through art.
What Is The Issue?
Climate Justice Education calls for approaches that balance personal reflection with a deep sense of collective responsibility. The arts provide a unique and powerful medium for processing emotions, sharing lived experiences, and envisioning creative responses to the climate crisis. Through artmaking, learners can explore diverse perspectives, risks, and possibilities—particularly those shaped by histories of racial, economic, and gender injustice. Learners’ hopes, fears, and visions for the future become essential foundations for developing meaningful and just responses to climate challenges. Art pedagogy is a powerful way to expand climate literacy.
Authors:
Nancy Price & Philip Bell | NOVEMBER 2025
Artwork is “Life is a window of vulnerability” by Nancy Price
Reflection Questions
- How can art make the abstract or overwhelming aspects of climate change feel more personal, emotional, or urgent?
- Which art medium (visual arts, performance, film, etc.) is most effective in communicating climate issues, and why?
- How can art balance the urgency of the crisis with hope and inspiration for change?
Things To Consider
- Although it is difficult to pinpoint a specific instance when climate change art began, its presence has grown steadily in recent years. Today, it appears in many forms—visual storytelling, maps, paintings and sculptures, performance and theater, film and media, street art, and large-scale installations—each contributing to a richer cultural dialogue about climate, environment, and justice.
- Creating art supports young people in feeling more engaged, empowered, and prepared to respond to the challenges of a changing world. Art in this context should go beyond simple shock value. Its role is to help expand our sense of time, cultivate empathy, and encourage visions of a hopeful, thriving future.
- At the heart of this work is the goal of helping individuals cultivate a personal stance that enables them to face climate realities with their best self. Because climate change is inseparable from issues of social and ecological justice, the work requires both personal engagement and relational ways of interacting.
Attending to Equity
- Art can highlight how climate change affects low-income and vulnerable communities as a tool for raising awareness and building power. It can carry the stories of people most affected.
- Art from global artists can recognize diverse cultural contributions to climate art and amplify those voices.
- Art can make environmental and climate science easier to understand, helping more people connect with climate issues.
- Art in public spaces can make knowledge more accessible. Students can look for art on climate justice made by local artists.
- When artists, scientists & activists team up, art projects can bridge divides and spark conversation across communities.
- Climate art projects can be powerful teaching experiences, especially when access to climate education is limited.
- Creative projects that engage youth and community members help them build confidence and power, making sure their voices are heard in climate conversations.
Recommended Actions You Can Take
Students can create and share climate art:
- Take walks in nature to connect to the place and foster emotional connection by using art to evoke empathy and connection with nature
- Explore possibilities of hope and regeneration to find inspiration for art
- Translate scientific findings into compelling visuals and accessible formats to reach wider audiences
- Use art as a platform to initiate conversations and deepen understanding across diverse groups
Teachers can showcase powerful climate art and support art-making:
- Help students integrate environmental themes into art
- Support students in organizing collaborative projects in the classroom and their community
- Highlight inspiring examples that demonstrate how art can envision sustainable futures and raise climate awareness
- Help students find multiple ways of making art. For example: Found Object Collages, Storytelling, Sketching, Photography, Music, or Dance
Educational leaders can support transformative STEAM education:
- Help classrooms use art as a tool for advocacy, pushing for sustainable practices and policy change
- Support teachers in educating about environmental advocacy
- Support students and teachers in the creation of art that mobilizes communities during marches, protests, or campaigns
ALSO SEE STEM TEACHING TOOLS
- #10 Indigenous Rights & STEM Ed
- #61 Socio-Ecological Caring
- #80 Reframing Eco-Anxiety
- #87 Environmental Justice Phenomena
STEM Teaching Tools content copyright 2014-22 UW Institute for Science + Math Education. All rights reserved.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1920249 (previously through Awards #1238253 and #1854059). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Others may adapt with attribution. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.