Creative Practices for Environmental Awareness

Environmental issues, such as climate change have been addressed by scientists and politics many times, using different medias to spread awareness on how much a radical ecological change is needed. But addressing these kinds of problems only from a political/scientific point of view is limiting; as an Environmental Humanities graduate, I’ve learned that a multidisciplinary approach can be more effective than a unilateral one. That’s why creative practices are important, they provide a different approach to environmental awareness outside the mainstream ones. Because when we talk about a radical change, every attempt to enact it, is important and should be considered as such. There are many different ways in which it is possible to spread awareness on climate issues. Many creative people are using art as a medium to convey their messages on environmental issues. Art such as paintings and sculptures are the most common and most used to do that. Music is starting to become always more present in this scope, we will see as an example The ClimateMusic project, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that uses music as medium. As a local case study we will see the project of “Hot as Crochet”, a small reality based in Padova that through the use of crochet workshops engages people on the topic of climate change. In fact, the idea of the project is to show people who participate in the workshop how temperature changes through the months and then through the years, particularly in the city of Padova. Also a field research has been conducted trough the use of semi-structured interviews with three founders of projects that convey environmental awareness' messages trough the use of arts and creative practices as a mean. The aim of this thesis is to show how different ways of spreading awareness can actually have an impact on people behavior, and also to investigate the projects that with creative practices can raise awareness on environmental problems.