Cultural Currents is an audio series that highlights cultural responses to the climate crisis, through conversations with people and communities who organise large-scale land and water regeneration, cultural revitalisation, experimental art and critical thinking to bring us into right relationship within the ecologies we inhabit. We look at how our worldviews and ways of working together can have immense impact in our climate responses. Relational technologies can tap into vast networks of deep knowledge and systems, providing embodied, interconnected, and complex ways to address the struggles we face together.

We are witnessing a moment in time where each year reported is the hottest year on record, and though global climate legislative processes have been occurring since 1988, we are failing to see the systemic shifts at the scale we need. Many ‘solutions’ that form popular climate responses such as recycling, offsetting, or carbon capture and storage allow polluting industries to expand. Many transition strategies do not address the underpinning ideologies of systems and ways of living that are wasteful, disconnected from their environments, and counter to the health of all living things.

The series will give examples to artists about how their cultural work and skills can respond to the ecological crisis, as well as examples to those working in environmental campaigning about how art and culture can play key roles in environmental movements that need vital refreshing and innovative thinking. 

More broadly, Cultural Currents works to reframe climate discourse as having roots in cultural worldviews, practices and frameworks, and steers listeners towards a wider understanding of what climate response can look like, legitimising culture as a key component of climate work, extending ongoing campaigns for inclusion of culture at the UN Climate Conference (COP31).

Cultural Currents is hosted by A Climate For Art (ACFA). ACFA is a collaboration between Eliki Reade and Lana Nguyen that unifies the arts around the issue of our changing climate through divestment practices, climate literacy and community building with arts organisations and arts workers.

Produced by Eliki Reade, Lana Nguyen, Miyuki Jokiranta and Jon Tjhia. Sound composed by Mara Schwertfeger. Graphic Designs by Muff Hewitt.

This series is made possible through the generous support of the British Council Australia and Community Broadcasting Foundation.