CLIMATE AGENCY OF ARTIST UNIONS

The document outlines three strategic approaches for artist unions to address the climate crisis: integrating climate action into core union work, building and sustaining networks, and fostering a 'climate utopia' through radical imagination. It provides a framework for categorising actions as 'dutiful', 'disruptive', or 'dangerous' and includes a toolkit of workshop exercises and a mapping of existing and needed capacities for artist organisations.

• The document proposes three primary strategic approaches for artist unions: integrating climate action into core union functions, building and sustaining networks, and pursuing a 'climate utopia' that uses artistic imagination to envision alternative sustainable systems.
• Artist unions can integrate climate action into their core work by including climate commitments in strategy plans, promoting sustainable work cultures, and incorporating climate justice into best-practice contracts and collective agreements.
• The guide suggests that unions should monitor how government policies, such as the green transition, affect artistic labour conditions and negotiate roles in co-creating the criteria for climate reporting.
• To increase influence, artist unions are encouraged to mobilise existing networks with municipalities and cultural institutions, and build new alliances with environmental organisations and labour unions across the artistic value chain (e.g., shipping and manufacturing).
• Artist unions can act as accountability partners for museums and exhibition venues that have made climate pledges, ensuring that accountability criteria focus on climate justice rather than just carbon calculators.
• The document adopts a classification system for climate action: 'dutiful' (working within current systems), 'disruptive' (critiquing and changing the system), and 'dangerous' (driven by a vision of new futures).
• The workshops identified specific capacities artist unions possess, such as the ability to challenge normative narratives and access to 'fagpolitiske midler' (ear-marked funding for political activity), while noting a need for more specialist knowledge on climate economics and waste management.

APA

Klimakultur (n.d.). CLIMATE AGENCY OF ARTIST UNIONS. https://www.klimakultur.no/media/cohpif1u/uks-climate-agency-of-artist-unions-feb-2024.pdf

Chicago

Klimakultur. CLIMATE AGENCY OF ARTIST UNIONS. n.d. https://www.klimakultur.no/media/cohpif1u/uks-climate-agency-of-artist-unions-feb-2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Klimakultur |title=CLIMATE AGENCY OF ARTIST UNIONS |url=https://www.klimakultur.no/media/cohpif1u/uks-climate-agency-of-artist-unions-feb-2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{klimakulturndclimate, author = {{Klimakultur}}, title = {{CLIMATE AGENCY OF ARTIST UNIONS}}, institution = {Klimakultur}, url = {https://www.klimakultur.no/media/cohpif1u/uks-climate-agency-of-artist-unions-feb-2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }