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During 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last significant endeavors. Famed for pioneering auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to addressing societal issues from peace activism to plant-based living. Through a short video message, he issued a call for a worldwide initiative to honor the environment.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on 4 November 2015,” he announced, urging makers and thinkers to resist the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our task is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into domains that are inherently creative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

Thus the Nature Remembrance initiative was established, a day when creatives nationwide created responses to the unfolding climate catastrophe. Jo Joelson, who supported Metzger in his final years, remembers his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I urged him – don’t delay. We shouldn’t hold back for financial support or for anyone to authorize this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

Ten years later, the project hasn’t quite triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but supporters think its influence can still be seen in initiatives like Culture Declares and environmental protests, as well as in how artists approach the environmental impact of their methods. For this purpose she is reviving it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Among the 18 lead artists participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and prominent artists. Each has created visual art, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be unveiled on 4 November 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

When speaking to one participant, she is on site in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will create a circular grove. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. According to her, the design and cultivation sessions have already included learning about measurements (calculating the planting intervals), genetics (exploring the hereditary traits), and geography (tracing the stories of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid

“A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that produces scarlet-colored sap. Each has histories attached. The decio apple was brought over by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that descended from a tree and hit Isaac Newton’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more thoughtfully connected of nature and the influence we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was prompting them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see their names and the source. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

At the capital, Youngsook Choi’s work about extinction will involve participants exploring a major gallery on a quest to find the ice masses that have been lost in recent years. All formations will be depicted on the exhibition spaces using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a recitation will be performed to commemorate that individual formation.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, an artist will be putting on a open display about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, made using regional food. Over in Newcastle, a participant is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers undertake a task to sing plants back to health in a green space.

Children’s Voices

Following this approach, a featured creator will be working with schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is hoping to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in children’s artwork that document their hopes and fears for the years ahead. “Youthful expressions are powerful because they’re not as trammelled as grown-ups’,” she says in her recorded message. “What children have to offer to the world is something distinctive and it may provoke a feeling of duty from each person. Youth is pure. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about fear – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also appeals to children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves sketching winged creatures and then performing as birds – and for the initiative he is intending to tackle an iconic figure. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his ongoing series over the last two decades. This endeavor commenced following he experienced several events of discrimination on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the spot where it happened and record it – the project has since expanded to incorporate experiences reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Apparently birds consume them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

The artist selected the pansy not just for the clear connection – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The intention on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at fresh spots and also refresh the memorials in places he has previously memorialised, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the incidents and his memories of them. “We’ve seen quite a few following earlier installations,” he says mournfully.

Advancing Positively

Harfleet hopes his work – and