Active Cultures, Los Angeles
Active Cultures is a public arts nonprofit in Los Angeles that explores the intersection of art, food, and ecologies through artist-led projects and programs. Their mission is to nourish interdisciplinary and experimental practice, inspire curiosity, and feed empathy through artist-led, collective experiences and generative conversations. Throughout their programming, their purpose is to expand assumptions around foodways, making creative spaces for gathering and shared experience, and to enrich our political, cultural, and sensorial relationships to food. Since their founding in 2018, AC has supported interdisciplinary practices by artists who consider hospitality an empowering gesture; who privilege community-building; and who work to make visible the critical stakes of cultural production, representation, and consumption.
The Synthetic Collective, The Great Lakes Region
The Synthetic Collective is an interdisciplinary collaboration between visual artists, cultural workers and scientists. They work together to sample, map, understand, and visualize the complexities of plastics and micro-plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region. Crucial to their research methodology is the driving principle that artists and scientists conduct research together, from the outset of the inquiry. As such, they hope to better connect scientific knowledge with potential cultural imports, and enrich artistic production with informed science. Their inquiry is at the intersections of plastics pollution, geologic processes, and artistic production. Their intent is to follow plastics through from production and consumption to disposal and dis-aggregation.
Swallow-a-Bicycle, Calgary, Alberta
Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre’s mission is to create “productive discomfort” through art. “Productive” as in working in service of the health, wellbeing, and joy of artists, audiences, and communities. “Discomfort” as in: challenging the status quo of art and society; breaking down imposed boundaries; questioning what is considered “normal”; and sharing artistic work that doesn’t fit neatly into the silos of conventional disciplinary categories. They are committed to continually interrogating what we mean by “productive discomfort” in response to the shifting social and creative landscapes, as a means to subvert oppressive systems, and in service of our communities. They make art that leaves an impact, through processes that are nourishing, equitable, and community-engaged.
Centre for Sustainable Curating, Ontario
The Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC) is a hub for teaching, learning, and sharing information focused on museums and environmental and social justice. Located in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in Ontario, Canada, the CSC encourages research into waste, pollution, and climate crisis, and the development of low-waste/low-carbon exhibitions and artworks. Their focus is on outreach, sharing resources, and training the next generation of cultural workers. CSC research is available for cultural institutions of all sizes and can be found in the regularly updated Resource Guide, and in several toolkits in the Projects and Toolkits on their website. The CSC is Directed by Dr. Kirsty Robertson, and welcomes contact from students, artists, curators, conservators, and anyone else with an interest in creating a greener culture sector.
Feminist Center for Creative Work, Los Angeles
The Feminist Center for Creative Work nurtures an ever-evolving, intersectional, intergenerational, and joyful collaborative feminist praxis—modeling ways of working and living through art, programming, media, publishing, and the redistribution of resources, from Los Angeles, within the world. The process is the product. They offer their Core Values as guidelines for FCCW staff and anyone who engages with the FCCW community and space. They are a map of what they stand for and how they move internally and externally— connecting their intentions and actions from the smallest to the largest levels. This helps them stay accountable to themselves and to their community, as a reminder of who and what they are working for.
The Soil Factory, Ithaca
The Soil Factory is an evolving community where ideas are freely exchanged. These exchanges may take the form of lectures, performances, dinners, workshops, discussions, gardening, sewing circles, clothing swaps, and more. Experimentation and innovation are the primary criteria they share. Money is the only form of exchange that is excluded from their programming. By offering free entry, they welcome all members of the community, encouraging dialogue between artists, scientists, farmers, and activists who are local, known nationally, and renowned internationally. Such exchanges can occur within their large warehouse space, on the three acres of meadows and forest that surround it, in their four experimental gardens, within a guest residency building on site, in their alternative photography darkroom, or in their science laboratories where research on bio-circular economy and soil fertility is currently being conducted.
Arts & Climate Initiative, New York
The Arts & Climate Initiative (formerly the Arctic Cycle) uses storytelling and live performance to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, create an empowering vision of the future, and inspire people to take action. Operating on the principle that complex problems must be addressed through collaborative efforts, they work with artists across disciplines and geographic borders, solicit input from researchers in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, and actively seek community and educational partners. Since 2008, the Arts & Climate Initiative has been carving a unique place for themselves within the artistic and scientific communities, creating a much-needed disciplinary bridge, engaging with hundreds of artists and scientists, and inspiring as many audiences from all walks of life. Through their various initiatives, they have created a model for the field and beyond, inspired radical life changes among citizens, and shown how one can address pressing social and environmental issues in novel ways using art as a catalyst.
Exploring the Mycoverse, Los Angeles
Exploring the Mycoverse is a values-based community inspired by fungi. Their mission is to cultivate a vibrant, inclusive community dedicated to exploring the wonders of fungi through education, creativity, and relationship. They strive to inspire curiosity, foster ecological awareness, and promote intentional practices based on care by offering hands-on learning, artistic expression, and community building workshops that deepen their connection to fungi and their vital role in the world. The values they cultivate together include: relationship, hope, patience, acceptance, awareness, curiosity, adaptability, and reciprocity..
Art Switch, New York
Art Switch is a NYC/Amsterdam-based nonprofit in the field of Art and Climate Action. Accelerating climate-conscious shifts in the arts, Art Switch functions as an incubator and knowledge center through public programming, educational initiatives, and academic conferences organized between Europe and the US. Anika Schroter and Johanna Rietveld have been running Art Switch together since 2019. In this role, they have been organizing public programming, art interventions, and performances — curating ideas on the topic of art and sustainability while bringing together an inspired and active community of artists and art workers looking for collaborative action.
Field Meridians, New York
Field Meridians is planting seeds for a public food forest in central Brooklyn. With their neighbors in Crown Heights, they are braiding together art making practice, environmental justice, and collective visioning to build a resilient civic space—an edible ecosystem as classroom. They are an artist collective committed to creating tools for ecological resilience through social practice. Their work invests in facilitating space for people to connect with one another and to the neighborhood by nurturing their relationships with nature. With site-specific programming, publishing, and radio broadcast, Field Meridians engages the community to lay the foundations for food sovereignty and infrastructures of repair.
