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Modern Family
The depiction of a gay couple on Modern Family helped shift the conversation around gay rights. Photograph: Photo Studio
The depiction of a gay couple on Modern Family helped shift the conversation around gay rights. Photograph: Photo Studio

Communicating climate change: lessons from art and Modern Family

This article is more than 9 years old
Erik Rasmussen
From Modern Family's depiction of a gay couple, to artists turning rivers green, art has the power to engage wider audience and change the conversation

Our disconnect between knowledge and actions has been alarming for years. We know there is a need for cutting emissions and protecting natural resources, but on the other hand, the adoption of sustainable lifestyles is too slow.

The signs are clear: the important message of climate change is not resonating with audiences at large. On the contrary, the pace of climate changes and whether or not they are man-made have appealed to the extremes of the political spectrum.

The result is heated rhetoric that ejects the vast majority of people from the conversation. With extreme opinions dominating, the prime target groups of the current climate change communication unintentionally become either a concerned advocate group that is more than aware of the importance, or a group that is never going to acknowledge the importance. And this leaves the current communications unable to connect with whom this really concerns: you.

This is why one of the single greatest dangers to our planet is our poor conversation about climate change. It is about time we invite the people of the planet back into the conversation. And we do this best by giving them a new language to speak up.

To bridge the important message with a larger global audience, there is a need for a new kind of player to enter the scene bringing new tools and ideas for how to create impact. It is time to set loose the creative forces on sustainability.

One artist who has already experimented with the impact of art in sustainability is the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. With his solar lantern Little Sun, Eliasson didn't just apply his artistic abilities to the status quo of solar light. By presenting the work to audiences around the word as a piece of art that opens multiple options for light experiences, Little Sun was never just a sustainable source of light for off-grid residents. It is a playful experience to all.

Art's ability to make new connections became apparent in Olafur Eliasson's project Green River. In a series of events from Stockholm to Tokyo, Eliasson poured powder into rivers running through the urban centres colouring the water green. When something we take for granted suddenly changes shape or colour, we react. And so did the citizens of the cities that underwent the experiment. Eliasson gave back a space to connect with our surroundings and to reflect over the things in our everyday life we have come to think of as stagnant and permanent.

New creative forces can create an individual space of reflections for each of us, where we can connect with new impressions, feelings of change and imagery. More importantly, they can create a personal and tangible connection to topics that seem abstract.

It is important, however, that the message doesn't become too narrow or elitist. A strong climate change message should appeal to a broad audience using many kinds of tools and effects. To achieve this, different change makers will need to come together: designers, artists, performers, filmmakers, scriptwriters, innovators, branding experts etc.

Consider the movement for gay rights. Here the conversation has shifted drastically. Over the course of relatively few decades, homosexuality has gone from being associated with abnormality to being a subject in the popular US TV show (and Barack Obama's favourite show) Modern Family which depicts three families, one of them a gay couple and their adopted child. A March 2013 ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 58% of Americans support marriage equality, the highest ever seen in a mainstream national poll. This support followed a record year with LGBT characters representing 4.4% of characters on broadcast TV. According to a survey by The Hollywood Reporter, 23% of Americans indicated that they were more open to same sex marriage, because they had seen it on television.

This is not an argument that one development automatically causes a given effect. This huge conversation change is not due to a couple of TV shows. But after entering the cultural sphere, the connotation of gay rights has gone from politically sensitive to cultural entertainment, and the conversation is including a new and broader audience. Though it is impossible to copy the game changers of the gay rights movement and apply directly to climate change communications, this case makes our mission clear. It proves that the broader public related to same sex equality after the cultural sphere started gaining interest in the dramas and narratives related to the topic and its history. It tells us that even the most controversial topics can be discussed and brought to a broad audience.

To complicate the mission a little, we are on a tight deadline. On 2 November in Copenhagen, the chair of the UN panel on climate change, IPCC, will present the much-anticipated fifth assessment report that outlines the scope and pace of climate change. From the leaks and news around the report, we already know that the report will have critical findings.

If we don't create a compelling and clear language, the message and the necessary actions and solutions will not last more than one press cycle. We must report on the importance of safeguarding resources with the same appeal as a TV show. To craft, tell and visualise a compelling narrative, good artisans and narrators are needed.

Erik Rasmussen is CEO of Monday Morning and founder of Sustainia

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