Encouraging Climate Literacy through the Visual Arts

How can art help us imagine how to reinvent a sustainable world? At its core, art is an act of hope—the act of creation is an absolute belief in the future. This certainty guides my work as the Senior Curator at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where I’ve been integrating a curatorial model that centers climate literacy through the visual arts. It’s a journey shaped by the coursework in MCAD’s MA in Creative Leadership program—through the guidance of past and present faculty including with a special nod to these courses: Kiley Arroyo’s Leading Transformational Change; Manoj Fenelon’s Life Quest; and Adel El-Huni’s Design-Informed Approaches to Address Complex Challenges—as well as tools like the Ikigai model, the Social Business Model Canvas (SBMC), and the Social Impact Innovation Flow (SIFF).

These experiences have deepened my commitment to using exhibitions not just to reflect the questions raised by the current climate crisis, but to actively inspire and educate audiences. I believe the visual arts can be a powerful medium for helping people move from climate anxiety to climate agency—toward a sense of purpose, possibility, and activism.

Shifting from Anxiety to Agency

At Appalachian State University, there’s growing recognition of the mental health toll the climate crisis takes on students. As Dr. Britt Wray, author and last year’s invited speaker to campus as part of the climate resilience efforts, writes in Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Eco-Anxiety (Vintage Canada, 2023) eco-anxiety is real—but so is the potential for purpose. Our work as educators and curators must create pathways that help students and visitors alike feel empowered, not paralyzed. 

One way we do this is through the language we use. Susan Joy Hassol, writing for Scientific American, reminds us that words matter: “To inspire people, we need to tell a story not of sacrifice and deprivation but of opportunity and improvement.” Especially on a university campus, the words we use in classrooms, exhibits, and public programming can either alienate or activate. At the Turchin Center, I think about how our exhibitions can instill hope, as well as awareness, and help people imagine meaningful action in their lives and communities.

Policies and Practices: Moving from Values to Action

Climate justice demands that we center historically excluded voices. That includes making our spaces, materials, and hiring practices more accessible and inclusive. Until recently, the Turchin Center had not explicitly focused on disability justice. That’s changing.

We are revising our policy manual to include disability etiquette practices from the Job Accommodation Network and drawing from Naomi Ortiz’s definition of Disability Justice as a framework that values access, self-determination, and an expectation of difference. Marginalized communities, including those with disabilities, are often those most impacted by climate change. Integrating accessibility into our design and operations is not just ethical; it’s essential.

On a more personal note, I’m also reflecting on how our team can move beyond performative empathy. One of our staff members has a child with special needs, and while this has brought a certain sensitivity, we have work to do embedding these values into our systems. I still haven’t learned sign language like I promised myself I would. That gap between intention and action is one I want to close.

Distributed Leadership in the Exhibitions Team

As part of building a more inclusive and creative team culture, I’ve begun implementing group norms with our core exhibitions team. We’re working to create a shared bibliography and have started weekly team discussions, with everyone rotating responsibility for leading and choosing readings. This distributed leadership approach has been moderately well received and is strengthening psychological safety, especially important during a period of ongoing transition at the center.

While I’m not sure this approach will scale to the larger arts center staff, I see potential in introducing shared tools like the Work Shouldn’t Suck user manual to generate dialogue. Sometimes the simplest starting point—inviting people to talk about themselves and what they want in an ideal work environment—can catalyze change as well as lead to renewed enthusiasm for the work that goes into exhibition and educational programming for the visual arts in an academic setting. 

Curating for Climate Justice

In 2022, I rewrote the Turchin Center’s curatorial mission to reflect our evolving focus:

The curatorial emphasis at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts encourages exhibitions that address the ongoing climate emergency. We welcome creative responses to local, regional, and global climate change and the impact that the decline of natural resources and civility have on all life on the planet. Our goal is to provide insight into artists’ creative concerns, wildest ideas, inspired hopes, and waking dreams for the immediate present and for the future.

We place a high priority on intersectionality, inclusion, and representation—considering race, ethnicity, gender, age, language, sexuality, dis/ability, and socio-economic status in selecting artists. We also prioritize artists from systemically underrepresented communities, knowing that our success depends on whose voices we amplify.

That said, we have a long way to go. The degree to which we are successful depends on who you ask on the staff. We are, however, united in our commitment to working toward these goals. Our biggest challenge is reaching artists working from the margins and encouraging them to submit work. Building a truly inclusive curatorial practice is ongoing and it requires sustained outreach, not just open calls.

The Work Ahead

From the policy manual to the gallery floor, from hiring practices to group norms, I’m learning how the principles of creative leadership can help build a more equitable, regenerative arts institution. This work is urgent and it’s far from finished.

At its best, art helps us make sense of what’s happening while pointing to what’s possible. My hope is that the Turchin Center becomes a place where visitors don’t just reflect on the world as it is, but also begin to imagine and build the world as it could be.

Sources and Further Reading

• Wray, B. Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Eco-Anxiety.
• Jahren, H. The Story of More.
• Roy, R. “Decolonising Climate Action.” ODI.
• Blasingame, S. “Decolonizing the Climate Change Conversation.” ECOSIA.
• Whyte, K. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies.” Michigan State University.
• Hassol, S. J. “The Right Words are Crucial to Solving Climate Change.” Scientific American.
• Ortiz, N. “What is Disability Justice?” Disability & Philanthropy Forum.
• Appalachian Regional Commission 
• Job Accommodation Network