This is easy to answer.

• Without clean water artists would die. There would be no one to paint, sing, dance or tell stories.
• Without clean water, audiences would die. There would be no one to look at the art that someone might have already made.
• Maybe you have some water, but it’s scarce or polluted. If so, you survive, but you are too weak or sick to care one bit about art.
• Maybe you can get good water, but you must walk 3 hours to get it, and 3 hours to return. Have you ever carried a fish tank full of water? Think of carrying it for 3 hours. Think of carrying 3-5 times the amount of water, 3-5 times the weight – enough for your family – for 3 hours. After 6 hours, just to get water, you have to get and cook food. By the time you’re done, you’re exhausted. There is no energy left to even consider creating something new.

Art Here and Now has participated in Blog Action Day before, speaking about the Environment and Climate Change. Those are complex issues, with debate surrounding the causes and impacts on the future. But this one is simple.

Without clean water, people can’t live.
If water is available but scarce, a major part of your life is devoted just to getting it and surviving.
There is no time for something more.
This is already happening, right now, throughout the world.

As important as I believe art is to civilization, history and culture, some basic foundations must exist for art and invention to stand on. One part of that foundation is water for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

So that’s depressing.
The good news is, we know how to solve it. We need to get water to people without it.

What can you do?

• Get the facts. The more you know, the more you can help and get others involved. The videos on this page give a great overview. You can learn more from Charity:Water and water.org.
• Give money to get water to people who need it. We have started a campaign for people who love the arts and want to give water, Water from the Arts.
• Communicate. Make art about clean water. If you’re an artist, you are a communicator. Through your work, you can show people the importance of clean water, inspiring people to help. Send links to this story or other pages linked from here. Write your own post.
• Don’t pollute. If you’re an artist, follow our tips from a few years ago and create work in less toxic ways. Don’t use bottled water.
• Use less water. Take quicker showers. Plant plants which match your local climate (so that they can live completely from natural rain water).
• Choose products that take less water to produce. This is called the product’s Water Footprint.

This won’t happen overnight. But our efforts add up to big change.

If you know other ways to connect the arts to providing clean water, let us know and we’ll spread the word.

Related posts:

1. Art, Artists, & Climate Change, Resources and Inspiration – Blog Action Day 2009
2. We are Honored to be part of Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

This is a post for Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change.

A few years ago, I wrote a post for Blog Action Day presenting ideas for creating art in more environmentally friendly ways – Making Art Without Unmaking the Environment. Art supplies and other byproducts of our work is notoriously toxic. Just like businesses and construction are changing to be more green, artists must update their ways of working as well, to minimize their long term affects on our planet.

But artists are more than businesses manufacturing a product. We are cultural messengers. We are here to speak about and reflect things that are important to us and our cultures. One common message we have been signaling, regardless of our country or medium, is that we must pay more attention and care to our planet. The Earth’s climate is changing, and we must take action to stop or reverse it. According to the United Nations, “There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed.” The Earth is the only home we have, along with the millions of other species who share it with us.

If you disagree with the idea that the climate is changing, or that humans are causing it, I would only ask you to consider the odds and the consequences. Many scientists believe this is happening and it is caused by human action. But what if you’re right, and it was only a 50/50 chance we were responsible. Do you think humanity’s fate, and the fate of many other species, should be decided by the toss of a coin?

So what are artists doing to make a difference? Here are some stories about artists affecting our collective approach to climate change through their work. There are many great stories of well known musicians and filmmakers putting together concerts, films and other events to make a big difference. But I wanted to shine a light on people you might not have heard of.

• Portrait of an artist as a climate activist from Grist magazine. Senator Barbara Boxer held up a photograph by Subhankar Banerjee to the full floor of the Senate, to prove the Alaska refuge was not a “flat white nothingness.”
• Early artists key to Yellowstone Park’s preservation, helenair.com. The paintings of Thomas Moran and photographs of Henry Jackson were critical to the U.S. Congress creation of Yellowstone, the first national park.
• In 2005, Grist pleaded What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art and four years later, followed it up with Climate Art is Hot.
• SEED Magazine says The Arts Community is Responding to Climate Change, and Changing the Conversation in the Process.
• Green Theater Initiative talks about Addressing Climate Change One Theatre Artist at a Time.
• Here is an entire episode of the PBS series Art:21 devoted to Ecology and art.
• Climate Change Education has a great Media and Arts section, including great lists of artwork and artists broken down by discipline: painting, sculpture, video and new media, and more.

Now, how can you make a difference? Here are pointers to more information about grants and funding, exhibitions, shows and more. If you know of other resources, or other stories about artists making great work, post a comment below and I’ll continue to update this post.

Climate Change Art Resources

• Green Museum informs, inspires and connects people through environmental art and encourages the creation of new work that serves communities and ecosystems.
• Ars Natura, nature in art, art in nature.
• Strange Weather, a resource hub about climate change for artists, writers and activists.
• Landscape and Arts Network brings together landscape architects, engineers, architects, artists, educationalists and ecologists who feel passionate about improving and sustaining the quality of our urban and natural environment.
• Free Soil, an international hybrid collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners who take a participatory role in the transformation of our environment.
• Ear to the Earth heightens environmental awareness through sound, inspires engagement in environmental issues, and sustains engagement through ongoing activities. The website is a forum for composers, sound artists, and everyone interested in sound to listen and participate.
• RANE – Research in Art Nature and Environment actively seeks creative methods through which art can impact on our current environmental predicament. Using artistic practice the group aims to offer interpretations and models of thinking about the natural world that help to promote a sustainable future.
• Eco Arts Online brings together science, environmental, arts, indigenous, and other organizations to offer you a wide variety of events – performances, exhibits, talks, tours, films, fairs, and more.
• The Ashden Directory, bringing together environmentalism and the performing arts.

Climate Change Art Exhibitions, shows, festivals

• Participate or Die, Wooloo.org. Wooloo.org is organizing the people of Copenhagen to open their homes to thousands of environmental artists during the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December. By asking artists to develop happenings and reflections for a new life – and then request that thousands of participants implement them – Wooloo.org aims beyond the traditional art exhibition to become an active organizer of experiments in civic engagement and social empowerment.
• Lake, a journal which publishes contemporary art that engages with ecological issues.
• ecoartspace, promotes a diverse range of artworks that are participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary and uniquely educational. “Our philosophy embodies a broader concept of art in its relationship to the world and seeks to connect human beings aesthetically with the awareness of larger ecological systems.”

Climate Change Opportunities for Artists
Calls for Artists, Grants, Residencies, Commissions and more

• Green Museum, Calls for Artists
• Artists Project Earth Funding
• Artist as Citizen, connecting art students with donors to help them create projects on social issues.

Get the work of Thomas Moran, Henry Jackson and Subhankar Banerjee.

Related posts:

1. We are Honored to be part of Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change
2. What Does Clean Water Have to do with Art? Blog Action Day 2010
3. Environmental Knitting

Chuck Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, teamed up with musician David Tele to compose music specifically for tamarin monkeys. The music is based on the note patterns, dissonance and timing of tamarin vocalizations and the emotional states these vocalizations produce, much like some believe human music evolved from human vocalization. This monkey music doesn’t even sound like music to most people. But evidently human music doesn’t sound much like music to monkeys either.

During the experiment, many types of human music was played to the monkeys, with no reaction, good or bad – the monkeys simply didn’t care about the human music one way or the other. However, the monkey music created strong reactions in the monkeys, similar to the reactions people have to human music.

“Lots of primate research laboratories use radios to provide what is called ‘enrichment’ for their animals, but you can’t expect another species to be interested in our music just because we are human,” Snowdon said. “Why should a tamarin find our music comforting? I find the monkey music quite irritating,”

Read more and listen to samples of the tamarin monkey music at The Guardian UK:
Scientists create music that helps monkeys chill out
Monkey melodies inspired by the animals’ calls had a calming effect, hinting at how human music may have evolved
and
The University of Wisconsin-Madison News:
Monkeys get a groove on, but only to monkey music

Seed Magazine investigates the blind spots of science’s latest frontiers, and how the limits of scientific method and unbiased observation are holding us back.

…before we can unravel these mysteries, our sciences must get past their present limitations. How can we make this happen? My answer is simple: Science needs the arts. We need to find a place for the artist within the experimental process, to rediscover what Bohr observed when he looked at those cubist paintings. The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress.

Read more in Seed Magazine: To Answer Our Most Fundamental Questions, Science Needs to Find a Place for the Arts