07 October 2021
Nesta, The National Gallery and King’s College London launch open call to address climate change and household emissions
A collaboration between Nesta and National Gallery X (NGX, a project by The National Gallery and King’s College London) has been launched to offer a unique Creative R&D opportunity with the aim to develop an experience that helps catalyse a net zero carbon future, inspired by one of the greatest collections of art in the world.
Nesta’s Sustainable Future mission aims to significantly reduce the amount of pollution from homes in the UK. To help achieve that mission, an open call for a unique creative R&D opportunity has been launched, seeking to work with creative / artistic teams who demonstrate a passionate commitment to creating work which helps to effect transformative environmental and social change, and who place their target audiences at the heart of their creative process.
We're delighted to partner with King's College London and the National Gallery. Home-Zero offers an exciting collaborative opportunity to explore how the arts can help to inform public debate, shift perceptions, change behaviour and catalyse the urgency of change required to reduce UK household carbon emissions.
Deborah Fox, Head of Creative Innovation, Nesta
Based around the National Gallery’s collection and stories, the call invites ideas for a compelling experience designed to go beyond the Gallery’s walls and ignite wider media and public interest in climate change and household emissions, contributing to a popular movement to create cleaner, greener homes.
There is growing interest in the ways arts and culture can help mitigate the climate crisis. We’re delighted to be working with National Gallery X and Nesta to connect leading climate researchers at King’s with artists and the cultural sector. We aim to catalyse new understanding of the deep culture change and imagination needed to find more sustainable ways to live.
Beatrice Pembroke, Executive Director Culture, King’s College London
Creative teams are invited to explore what the what the NGX experience might be, the technology it might utilise and the potential connections to King’s College London’s research. The experience should engage visitors in these issues in a meaningful and compelling way and generate wider media interest to ignite the issues for the public on a mass scale.
Creative decisions should be grounded in an understanding of climate research. As part of the development process, the commissioned team will be able to collaborate with researchers, curators and co-design experts from the National Gallery, King’s College London and Nesta and also gain insights about National Gallery audiences.
Art, creativity and imagination can be powerful catalysts of change, especially when grounded in knowledge and new understanding. We’re excited to be partnering with Nesta and King’s College London, as part of National Gallery X, on this creative commission and contribute to a movement to reimagine how we live in our homes and reduce our climate impact.
Emma McFarland, Innovation Programme Lead at The National Gallery
The commission will enable a successful team, who is driven by a desire to catalyse change, to develop an experience that is creatively ambitious and grounded in science, and which utilises the Gallery’s collection and stories appropriately and is co-designed with target audiences.
NGX is an ambitious project at the forefront of digital innovation. Working in partnership with King's College London, the project is set out to create the sorts of new museum experiences technology could make possible in ten years' time. The challenge for NGX is to create these experiences today. With a strong commitment to artistic, educational, and curatorial expertise at the National Gallery, NGX provides a space for residencies and short-term interventions from artists and thinkers to explore how technological inventions can inform new kinds of cultural experiences.
