Art as a Catalyst for Climate Action

Cara Kuuskvere, M.E.M. ’25

Climate change presents a complex and deeply unsettling reality that, for many, evokes feelings of anxiety, grief and powerlessness about our collective future and individual agency. These feelings can be particularly acute in children and teens who increasingly report feeling “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change.

A Bass Connections project team, Climate Hope: Action Rooted in Visual Arts + Nature Education, has been examining this uptick in climate anxiety and considering how arts education and artistic practices can be used as a coping method to create feelings of agency and hope in young people encountering the current climate emergency. Through photography, storytelling and community engagement, the team seeks to transform despair into action and encourage others to recognize the value of the environment and their power to create change.

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The team uses photography and the arts to connect children with nature. Motivated to overcome uneven and often insufficient climate education in public schools, the project team uses a teaching methodology known as Literacy Through Photography (LTP) to help local second graders actively engage with nature in their communities. Katie Hyde, LTP director at the Center for Documentary Studies and Lecturing Fellow in the Program of Education, led project team members in LTP community engagement efforts. Through LTP, students use photography and writing as expressive tools for exploring themselves and the larger world. Students look closely at the environment and deliberately observe the natural aspects of their community – noticing birds, plants and their own role within nature.

This engagement extends to all ages in the team’s exhibition Climate Hope: Photographic Works from the Nasher Collection. Project team members selected photographic works and wrote personal responses to catalyze consideration of where hope and action can be found in settings that may traditionally spur feelings of climate anxiety. Inspiring agency and hope, the project team hopes to inspire reflection and dialogue on the intersection of art, nature and climate action, empowering audiences to find their own pathways toward environmental engagement.

Empowering Young Audiences Through Art and Education

Through hands-on workshops, curriculum development and community outreach, the team empowers educators and students alike to become active participants in the fight against climate change. Following teacher workshops that engaged over 20 educators from schools across Durham County, the team is working on a toolkit of lesson plans and resources to educate students about climate change. Informed by teacher surveys and engagement, the team has brought Literacy Through Photography and other arts-based activities to classroom and community events to invite children to engage with the natural world.

Rakan DiarBakerli, K-12 and Family Programs Educator at the Nasher Museum of Art, emphasizes, “We are not just teaching about climate change; we are teaching the next generation to believe in their power to make a difference.”

One of the lessons, “Operation Spark Birds,” taught second graders at Club Boulevard Elementary School about local birds, their habitats, and their songs. Students engaged with these topics through nature photography and spectrogram illustrations of bird calls.

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“With cameras and magnifying glasses in hand, power is returned to [each kid],” says team member Yueqi Dou. The activity helps students see their connection to the natural world rather than feeling detached from their environment. As Dou notes, “By instilling a sense of agency and hope, we believe these kids will learn to care about the planet and take action to protect its future.”

After a successful pilot, the team will expand Operation Spark Birds to the rest of the second grade at Club Boulevard Elementary. The project will also continue to collaborate with the Nasher Museum of Art, Durham Public Schools and community partners, such as the Museum of Life and Science and Letters Bookshop, to engage people of all ages in climate action.

Curating A More Hopeful Climate Narrative

The student-curated exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art –Climate Hope: Photographic Works from the Nasher Collection– challenges viewers to reframe their understanding of environmental change, not as a source of despair, but as a call to action and hope. Through the gallery, which is on view now until June 8, the team continues the conversation begun with last fall’s Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene exhibition.

The project team paired selected works from the Nasher’s permanent collection with personal writings, reflecting the students’ life experiences and academic work at Duke. Through imagery coupled with personal reflections, Climate Hope invites viewers to shift their perspective – from asking, “What can be hopeful about this?” to “How can I contribute to positive change?”

For Artivista Karlin, a sophomore in International Comparative Studies, the arts helped spur her climate justice activism. At 14, she photographed a major “Fridays for the Future” environmental justice protest in her hometown of Miami and saw firsthand how imagery can empower. Inspired by climate hope, Karlin shared, “We still have a lot on Earth left to protect. We must keep fighting for the life on this planet that we call home.”

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For Bren Vienrich-Felling, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Experimental and Documentary Arts, the gallery inspires viewers to look closely and observe elements of our environment we may not typically notice. The photographic and text selections invite gallery viewers to pause and look closely at the images to consider “not only the challenges we face but the possibilities that lie ahead.”

The climate crisis presents an urgent need for action, but as Hyde describes, “anxiety about it isn’t helping. It’s paralyzing.” Instead, for audiences of all ages, “both making art and looking at art catalyze conversations about the environment to inspire action and combat the feeling of despair.”

Learn More

• Explore current and previous Bass Connections teams.
• Learn about the project team experience through stories from students.
• Check out these highlights from the Bass Connections Showcase in April 2025.

_{Header image: Drawing by a second grader at Club Boulevard Elementary School (Courtesy of Katie Hyde)}