How can cities be designed with communities and our planet in mind?

Adapt Transform was an interdisciplinary exhibition exploring urban design and creativity, on display across two sites – Modern Art Oxford and The Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University from August to September 2022.

The exhibition looked at community experiences of urban design that impact the transformation of places over time. It brought together a range of lived experiences to explore how the planning and design of cities affects the way we live. 

The artworks in Adapt Transform featured creative works and ideas including maps, data and documentation, painting and performance, public sculpture, modelling and prototypes.

The exhibition was collaboratively curated by a group of volunteers from Modern Art Oxford, and the work on display is by artists and creatives who responded to a county-wide call out in Spring 2022.

Green Arts Oxfordshire Network were successful applicants, exhibiting 12 banners made by you, Oxfordshire’s creative community!

On 5th April 2022 Green Arts Oxfordshire Network hosted a day to kick off Marmalade at the Old Fire Station, bringing together Oxfordshire’s cultural organisations, artists and anybody wanting to respond creatively to the climate crisis. Participants collectively reimagined how we produce creative projects in response to the climate and ecological crisis. Together, we explored how to move from anxiety and denial to optimism and activism.

Activist, designer and artist Siân Klein hosted a banner making workshop during the session using recycled plastic bags that participants had been asked to bring with them beforehand. The banners displayed in Adapt Transform are a creative response to words and phrases from the conversations that took place, imagining the ways that art could save the world.

Below, a young activist shares her response to Adapt Transform:

“I like interactive artwork because you can make the decision in it. How you interact with the artwork changes the way you see the work.

I liked the house (artwork by Deborah Pill) I spent time looking at it – because the text was hard to read because the words were split between the panels. The sandbags looked like cushions and I wanted to climb inside it. If I was asked to name the chief benefits of the house, I would say the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to daydream in peace.

I am a daydreamer, I dream about a lot of things that I’ve done before and my plans on what I’m going to do. I sometimes dream about the planet – I want everyone to have a happy life.”

Selected creatives in Adapt Transform are: Alexander Stavrou, Ash Goller, Atkins Urban Nature Lab, David Gasca, Deborah Pill, Green Arts Oxfordshire Network, Jan-Hendrik Höhnk, Jimi Cullen, Katrin Wilhelm & Sterling Mackinnon, Makespace, Mark James, Muesli Collective, Nor Greenhalgh, and Thomas Nicolaou.

Adapt Transform is co-curated by: Alan Edgington, Antony Mikallou, Dominika Jankowska, Hamideh Rimaz, Helen Frankland,  Ignacia Heredia Contreras, Jason Wong, Karen Herring, Katya Mora, Lauren Waller, Lucy Jacobs, Neil Rendell, Roland Gallivo, Shamim Rehman, and Stu Allsopp with guests architect Wongani Mwanza (Transition by Design) and Georgia Watson, Professor of Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University.

Art Can Save The World

What role does art play in the climate crisis?

Why should we as artists and cultural organisations take action, as a generally underfunded sector with a smaller carbon emissions impact than other sectors like transport or agriculture? We have other issues to address, why should it be us?

Because… it all intersects. We can’t have climate justice without social justice and racial justice, and vice versa. We ALL need to start thinking about our carbon emissions. We ALL need to change. A huge, cultural shift needs to happen if we’re going to prevent further irreversible climate breakdown. And there’s a keyword there – culture.

Who drives culture? We do! The artists, the musicians, the museums, the film makers, the theatres, the festivals and so on.

Cultural leaders have a huge part to play in advocating for climate, social and racial justice. We can lead the way through the work that we create, as well as how we create it. We can influence cultural change and with that, policy change.

As Hidden Spire Creative Collective writer Lucy said, ‘people can’t be told, they need to feel.’ Art makes people feel. Art has the power to save the world.

On 5th April 2022, Green Arts Oxfordshire Network hosted a day to kick off ‘Marmalade‘ at the Old Fire Station, bringing together Oxfordshire’s cultural organisations, artists and anybody wanting to respond creatively to the climate crisis. 

In a session called ‘Art Can Save The World’, participants collectively reimagined how we produce creative projects in response to the climate and ecological crisis. Together, we explored how to move from anxiety and denial to optimism and activism.

During the session, participants imagined creative projects that respond to categories of the Green Arts Charter, a 10 point pledge and guide on how to collectively work towards climate justice and a zero-carbon future.

The #WindowGalleries is an exciting project that creates innovative exhibitions in windows along Friars Entry in Oxford. It is a collaboration between Fusion Arts and the Randolph Hotel by Graduate Hotels that aims to connect and support Oxford’s communities, creating a lively space for the public to experience inspiring work by local artists. Rejuvenating the area in this manner helps bring vibrancy and intrigue to the otherwise empty windows that so many people pass by each day – now a fun way to engage with new art!

In the spirit of recycling and uplifting voices on climate action, we exhibited the banners created for a third time at Modern Art Oxford and Oxford Brookes University’s Glass Tank gallery, as part of Adapt Transform.

The Adapt Transform exhibition looks at community experiences of urban design that impact the transformation of places over time. It brings together a range of lived experiences to explore how the planning and design of cities affects the way we live. It’s another great example of how art can advocate for a better world, and we are very proud to have been a part of it.

We’ll leave you with the takeaways people shared at the end of the Art Can Save The World session in April. Here’s some of the things you said when we asked…

What will you do differently? What do you need?

Join the Green Arts Oxfordshire Network by signing the charter to play your part in tackling the climate crisis.

About the artist:

Siân Klein is a BA Fine Art and Film Studies graduate from Oxford Brookes University, currently studying MA Graphic Design at Brighton University. She is a freelance Graphic Designer and active Creatives Coordinator of XR Brighton, where she creates protest artwork and coordinates creative events. Siân uses recycled or second-hand materials and rubbish in her work, which is often text based and influenced by collective action to implement change.