JUST ART: Creating Common Grounds for Climate Justice Through Artistic Research is a six year project (2026-2031) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and led by the University of Groningen.
Bringing together artists, researchers, campaigners and communities in rural and urban regions across the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the project aims to cultivate diverse strategies of climate justice through artistic research and creative practice.
The complexity and scale of the climate crisis can feel overwhelming. Artistic practice and artistic research can open up new ways of understanding the intersectional dimensions of this crisis so that people feel empowered to act, wherever they are. This grounded approach is central to the JUST ART project. From Aruba to Brabant, from the Wadden Islands to Twente, and from the polders to Curaçao, JUST ART will promote climate justice in contexts where the crisis is most acutely felt, and where action is most urgently needed.
As part of this project I am leading a work package at the University of Amsterdam on “Centring Climate and Multispecies Justice in the Visual and Performing Arts“. This strand of the project aims to nurture a sustained commitment to climate just approaches in creative practices, with a particular focus on curating and theatre making. Through grounded research with societal partners, this research will cultivate new spaces, institutions, and practices that enable more-than-human communities to learn and create together, sharing artistic research and knowledge in the pursuit of climate justice. This research pays particular attention to responsive methods that move beyond representation to build new frameworks and modes of engagement between science and art in and beyond institutional contexts.
Colin Sterling 