🔗 Share this article

Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last major projects. Recognized for pioneering auto-destructive art, Metzger had dedicated his life to responding to global challenges from nuclear disarmament to vegetarianism. Via a concise video message, he issued a call for a global day of action to celebrate the natural world.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this global appeal for a day of action to commemorate our planet on November 4th, 2015,” he stated, encouraging cultural workers to oppose the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our task is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore territories that are inherently creative.”

The Inception of Environmental Reflection

Thus the environmental art day was established, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the escalating planetary emergency. An organizer, who cared for Metzger in his later life, recalls his sense of urgency. “He had a strong sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I just said – don’t delay. Let’s not wait for funding or for anyone to green light this. Take action immediately.”

After Ten Years

Ten years later, the project did not triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its influence can still be observed in movements like Culture Declares and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the eco-friendliness of their work. This is the reason she is reviving it to celebrate its ten-year mark. Included in the featured creators involved this time are Yu-Chen Wang and other notable figures. Each has designed posters, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be presented on 4 November 2025.

Sowing Change

Interviewing the artist, she is working outdoors in a rural area, helping plant apple trees that will create a coiled garden. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and somewhat instructive. She describes, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about maths (calculating the planting intervals), genetics (discussing the genetic makeup), and origins (tracing the journeys of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that releases red juice

“A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Every one carries stories behind them. The historical cultivar was brought over by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that fell from a tree and hit the scientist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more consciously engaged of the natural world and the control we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, on their next shopping trip, to look on the bag and see their names and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Cultural Projects Nationwide

Within the city, one artist’s work about extinction will engage visitors exploring an art institution on a journey to find the ice masses that have been disappeared in recent years. All formations will be drawn on the museum surfaces using invisible ink. When located, a alert will occur and a recitation will be conducted to remember that specific ice mass.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, a creative will be putting on a free exhibition about our disconnection from the land, as well as organizing a community dinner, cooked from organic, local produce. In another city, an artist is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which regional performers embark on a mission to use music to heal flora in a local park.

Young Insights

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is planning to decorate a cultural venue in kids’ letters and drawings that express their aspirations and concerns for the years ahead. “Children’s words and images are compelling because they’re not as restricted as grown-ups’,” she says in her recorded message. “Young people’s input to the world is something quite unique and hopefully it will stimulate a awareness of obligation from each person. Kids are unbiased. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about fear – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Another artist’s work also appeals to children. With a background in performance, his feathered initiative involves sketching winged creatures and then performing as birds – and for the event he is intending to represent Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also conducting a itinerant journey of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his long-term work over the recent decades. This endeavor commenced following he experienced multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since grown to include incidents shared by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

He picked the pansy not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day is to sow flowers at additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has honored before, all the while discussing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his recollections. “We’ve seen quite a few following earlier installations,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and