106 SAFE PLANETBy Barbara Benish, Director, ArtMill / Art Dialogue, Czech Republic

Art Dialogue is a small non-profit organization based in the Czech Republic working closely with the United Nations Safe Planet Campaign to raise public awareness about hazardous chemicals and wastes. Since 2010, Art Dialogue has facilitated nine Arts and Outreach Initiatives for Safe Planet in Mexico, Canada, the USA and at the 5th Meeting of the Stockholm Convention’s Conference of the Parties in Geneva, Switzerland. It is our belief that culture –be it visual media, performing arts, music, etc.- can open the mind and soul of the public to complex issues in a way that other forms of communication cannot. In our experience, harnessing the arts as a vehicle for education is a non-threatening approach that can be persuasive by its unique ability to deeply affect the observer with beauty, intelligence, humour and raw content. This approach has proven particularly successful with youth.

Our success story took place on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Art Dialogue teamed up with 5 Gyres Institute to attend the 5th International Marine Debris Conference, organized by UNEP and NOAA in Honolulu, Hawai’i in March of 2011. We organized a public symposium, film night, state-wide art contest and an exhibition of international artists. Over a one-week period these events demonstrated the power of art to raise awareness and emotional intelligence about pressing environmental crisis, particularly focusing on plastic pollution in the oceans, POPs and the uptake in marine life.

The event at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa included the art exhibition The Architecture of Plastic Pollution, featuring artworks that look at the danger and history of marine trash from a conceptual basis via photography, sculpture, installation, film and spoken word. Further, these creative works illustrate the links between consumer waste, plastic production and chemical pollution from POPs. Hundreds attended the symposium Art & the Ocean focusing on native Hawaiian practices of land and sea stewardship introduced by Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio, a talk by Stiv Wilson of 5 Gyres on their recent expeditions to research the distribution of plastic pollution in the world’s oceanic gyres, and a keynote by Captain Charles Moore.

Thousands more heard about our events from the radio and newspaper press our activities generated. Many more gathered for a night of films at a downtown Honolulu gallery, featuring ocean rower and eco-warrior Roz Savage.

While the general public in Hawai’i was reading about what was happening at the Marine Debris Conference in Waikiki, they were not granted direct access. At Safe Planet’s events, local residents and international visitors alike had the opportunity to come and enjoy art, listen to the speakers, and participate in discussions.

107Youth Art Contest

The most moving success of all Art Dialogue’s activities in Hawai’i was the state-wide Art Contest, which in a short three months reached over 12,000 youth, challenging them to design a new, non-plastic bag and dispenser. Working with the Hawai’i State Department of Education and a network of academics and local environmental groups, we teamed up to spread the word on plastic pollution, bringing home the hypothesis that social change is possible through community and personal contact.

We were able to speak to the children about these topics as the contest was running, via skype conference discussions before our arrival, and then in person at the schools. Many teachers were able to incorporate the chemical hazards issues into their curriculum.

At Mid Pacific School in Honolulu, teacher Lucy Sanders’ 4th and 5th grade students spoke to me about traditional Polynesian tools and musical instruments that they had been learning about and how those materials were sustainable. The ethnographic history of bio-degradable tools easily transferred to our Art Contest proposal to make a sustainable shopping bag. This is but one way to utilize existing school curriculums globally for outreach to youth on issues of hazardous chemicals and wastes. Of the six contest winners, 5th grader Keawe Saizon is from one of the most economically deprived spots on the island of Oahu, Waiahole. His teachers reported that after learning he was a winner, he was a changed boy, full of life with an interest in the environment around him.

The Safe Planet events in Honolulu were commissioned by the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention, and additionally supported by in-kind contributions and dozens of donated hours of time from Art Dialogue, 5 Gyres, and the other Hawaiian NGOs.

© C

hris

Jord

an

Midway, by Chris Jordan

108Perhaps the more important result of the event is that Safe Planet established a permanent outreach network in Hawai’i. We are invited back in 2012, and working with dozens of NGOs, and scientists at the University hope to reach all 180,000 students through the Hawai’i State Department of Education. This has lasting implications in educating the public on changing the way we see and live in the world to protect it for the next generation.

The Honolulu events built upon the earlier successful art contest at the Technological University in Cancun, Mexico, also sponsored by the Stockholm Convention during UNFCCC COP16.

Conclusion

Through the arts, we can challenge our perceptions of the safety of certain chemicals and wastes and stimulate new thinking about how each individual can take responsibility for the protection of the environment and human health. Art Dialogue’s Safe Planet Art and Outreach activities have given us a confirmed example on how to affect communities around the world, via creative and personal connections to places and peoples. Our stories, if not personal, mean nothing. And our impact in each place should not be momentary, but lasting.

If Safe Planet’s events and exhibitions touch people in various countries in a meaningful way and leave infrastructures in place to continue that process, then we are creating positive change for the future. Art brings inspiration and hope, helps youth in problem-solving by expanding their imagination, and challenges out-moded ways of thinking and feeling about the environment.

© U

nive

rsity

of C

ancu

n, M

exico

Students learning about plastic marine debris ingestion at Safe Planet’s exhibition “What Will Be” at the Technological University of Cancun, Mexico, in December 2010 (for UNFCC COP16)