🔗 Share this article

In 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate important works. Famed for creating self-destructive creations, Metzger had devoted his career to responding to global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to plant-based living. Via a concise video message, he requested support for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this worldwide call for a day of action to commemorate our planet on the fourth of November, 2015,” he stated, encouraging makers and thinkers to oppose the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our task is to make audiences aware of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Birth of Nature Remembrance

Thus the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country created responses to the unfolding climate catastrophe. Jo Joelson, who cared for Metzger in his final years, remembers his drive for action. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “I urged him – we must act now. No need to pause for financial support or for anyone to approve this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

A decade on, the initiative did not sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be observed in initiatives like cultural advocacy groups and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their practices. For this purpose she is reviving it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Among the featured creators involved this time are A Man Called Adam and other notable figures. They have all designed posters, shared messages, and produced installations set to be presented on 4 November 2025.

Sowing Change

In conversation with one participant, she is on site in the countryside, assisting with planting apple trees that will grow to form a circular grove. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and half educational workshop. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), science (discussing the genetic makeup), and history (mapping the journeys of how various cultivars came to the UK).

Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Each has background narratives. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on the physicist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more actively aware of the environment and the control we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to check the packaging and see what they’re called and the source. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Artistic Responses Throughout Britain

At the capital, one artist’s Book of Loss will include attendees exploring an art institution on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been lost in recent years. Each glacier will be drawn on the museum surfaces using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a alert will occur and a recitation will be performed to remember that particular glacier.

Elsewhere, up in another location, Maddi Nicholson will be putting on a free exhibition about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, made using regional food. Further north, a participant is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a green space.

Young Insights

Like Gallaccio, a featured creator will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is planning to fill a cultural venue in kids’ letters and drawings that express their dreams and worries for the years ahead. “Children’s words and images are impactful because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her recorded message. “The contributions of youth to the world is something quite unique and it may provoke a awareness of obligation from us all. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But it isn’t meant to be about worry – it should be about optimism and us ensuring that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

A participant’s work also connects with children. As a former drag queen, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for the initiative he is intending to represent Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a walking tour of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his Pansy Project over the last two decades. This endeavor began when he faced multiple occurrences of prejudice on a particular day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the location of every incident and document it – the project has since spiralled to incorporate experiences reported by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

He picked the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The plan on the event day is to sow flowers at new locations and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while talking to those on the guided walk about the events and his recollections. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

The artist wishes his work – and