Citizen Artist Salon: The People's EPA: Art as a Strategy for Climate Justice

We’re excited to announce the launch of the People’s Bureau of Energy, Power, and Art (otherwise known as the EPA!)—and invite you to join a kick-off Citizen Artist Salon. Watch the recording below!

The EPA is dedicated to pursuing climate and environmental justice through creativity and community arts. We know that artists have a special role to play in confronting the big crisis that is social, spiritual, moral, economic, and political at the same time; cultural work helps knit together these different layers of our experience in service of sustainable solutions. We’re launching the EPA in the lead-up to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco next month, where leaders from across the U.S. and the world will come together to discuss climate solutions.

We’ll get ready for the Global Climate Action Summit by hearing from leaders of three projects centering art to build power and confront the climate crisis—and we’ll discuss ways that we can all step up our creative action.

  • Yudith Nieto of Another Gulf Is Possible will report back on the central role art plays at L’eau Es la Vie, a people’s camp in the line of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, which threatens the sacred lands of the United Houma People, Gulf South Wetlands, and the water of the entire region.

  • Orion Camero and Bean Crane will talk about the California Allegory Fellowship, activating a cohort of California frontline youth leaders to use art and cultural organizing to shift real-world narratives in the lead up to the Global Climate Action Summit.

  • Layel Carmargo and Sonia Guinansaca (CultureStrike) and Sandra Ramirez will share about their community arts and video work in the Central Valley and San Fernando Valley of California to build for RISE for Climate, Jobs and Justice, an international day of action on the occasion of the Global Climate Action Summit.

Moderated by Rachel Schragis, artist, cultural organizer and EPA Bureau Chief!