What does it mean to care for the Earth when ecological health, social inequality and human wellbeing are so deeply connected?
Across Eastern Australia, four activities approach this question through cinema, literature, experimental art and creative workshops. Each offers a different setting for sharing knowledge, questioning current conditions and imagining ways of living together.
In Australia, conversations about environmental responsibility unfold on a landscape shaped by colonisation, dispossession and unequal access to land and resources. First Nations communities have cared for the Country for tens of thousands of years, developing knowledge and practices that remain essential to understanding ecological reality in our times. Climate justice therefore raises questions of sovereignty and self-determination, and implies a recognition of whose knowledge informs decisions about land and the future.
Spotlight: Environmental Film Festival '26
In Melbourne, Environmental Film Festival ’26, presented by Environmental Films Australia, runs until 8 November. Now in its twentieth year, the festival brings together more than 20 films, including 17 premieres, under the theme Who Cares? Screenings take place at Palace Kino, Trocadero Projects, Queen Victoria Women’s Centre and Champagne Video Bar. The programme spans documentary, short and experimental cinema, with films on community resistance, conservation, responsibility, grief and custodianship. Talks, public events and an annual litter-pick extend the festival beyond the screen. It offers a meeting place for different ways of understanding our relationship with the more-than-human world, at a time when environmental concerns compete with economic pressure and political polarisation. Learn more →
A Climate Justice Lab for Artists and Activists
Also in Melbourne’s west, pvi collective, together with Creative Climate and The Substation, is developing a Climate Justice Lab. The initiative brings artists, activists and climate-justice campaigners together to exchange skills, examine the link between environmental harm and inequality, and shape possibilities for collective action. For more than 25 years, pvi collective has made participatory artworks through performance, technology, play and public interventions. The lab extends this approach into a space where cultural practice and grassroots organising can collaborate. [Date and session details to be confirmed.] Learn more →
A Novel Comes to the Neighbourhood
Further north, in Watson, Canberra, author Simone Abbot is preparing a conversation with her neighbours about her debut novel, Eudaimania: Happiness Disease. Set in Parliament House, the novel follows a speechwriter facing the political costs of integrity, and brings questions of ethics, political responsibility and human compassion into a community gathering. The initiative also links literature with practical support: part of the book’s proceeds will go to Cafe Stepping Stone, a social enterprise offering hospitality training and employment to migrant and refugee women. Its work connects economic inclusion with community infrastructure and everyday care. Learn more →
A film festival, a novel and a climate justice lab are three ways to come together, and each one puts power in our hands. Step in, share what you know, ask the questions that matter and imagine the world differently. Across Eastern Australia, care for the Earth is taking shape in rooms full of people, ideas and energy, and there is a place in it for you.
You can join in too
Put yourself on the map, share your art, or list your November event. Free practical guides are on the Global Artivism website. Tomorrow the relay moves further west across Australia.
