Liberal Arts student sets up digital art showcase

Final-year Liberal Arts student, Ceara Webster, is currently organising a digital showcase focused on climate change and sustainability.

The Digital Environmental Art Project aims to highlight “the artistic talent across the West Midlands and Warwickshire, develop sustainability literacy outside of academia, and build community connections between artists and art enthusiasts”.

The project is designed to be an alternative approach to addressing the climate crisis. It encourages you to produce your own response to the climate crisis or to analyse how art and sustainability intersect. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on your engagement with nature and assess your role in the creation of and responses to the climate crisis. You can read more about the motivation behind the project here.

The project has three segments:

An online platform – This is a space for artists to meet each other and members of the community, creating the opportunity for discussion of artistic ideas.
The event day - This will be when the art pieces are showcased. If you'd like to get involved, you will have a choice as to what digital art piece you wish to make. It could be a soundscape, illustration, poem, photograph, video, projection, or something else from the manifold options.
Online exhibition - The exhibition is designed to urge those who encounter it to stop and reflect on what its creation means to society at large and to them personally.

Hear from Ceara

What has inspired the project?

"I first became interested in art as a tool for facilitating social change after studying Art and Revolution in my first year. Art was a medium that included everybody - anyone can create art but also everyone can engage with it in their own way and, as we often hear about policy or scientific information on climate change I wanted to provide an alternate way to address the climate crisis.

"Another module that influenced the development of the project was Community Engagement. During that module I volunteered with an organisation called Achieving Results in Communities. They set up programmes to help people in the local community reconnect to nature and connect to one another through nature. The results of their programmes were really transformative and it inspired me to want to provide an avenue for people to experience nature connection without having to necessarily get to a woodland which may not be accessible for everybody.

"The project was also linked to some of my studies in Germany, where I studied some sustainability-related modules and met some very politically active people. Warwick Enterprise have encouraged me to pursue the establishment of this project. I hope it can act as a testament to the creative and digital innovation that exists, especially in the local Warwick, Coventry, and Leamington Spa communities that Warwick Enterprise have worked so hard to engage with."

What are your hopes for the project?

"I just want people to have fun with it. If they are able to convey and influence people through their art that’s amazing, but if they just want to use this as an opportunity to make some digital art about the environment as a step back from everyday life, that’s perfectly valid too.

"The main thing I wanted to provide was an awareness of the climate situation and how our negative relationships with the natural world are what leads to environmental degradation of all kinds. I hope people engage with that in their own ways, cultivate and develop their artistic skills, and that we can all share in and celebrate the pieces that are produced together."

Get involved

Submissions are due by Thursday 25 June and there will be an online showcase of all the artworks from Tuesday 30 June, 08:00-20:00 (BST). Register now.