Bringing together artists, researchers, campaigners, and communities in rural and urban regions across the Kingdom of the Netherlands, JUST ART – Creating Common Grounds for Climate Justice Through Artistic Research – seeks to cultivate diverse strategies for climate justice through artistic research and creative practice. JUST ART is a six-year project (2026–2031) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and led by the University of Groningen.
In collaboration with civil society partners, the project departs from the recognition that the complexity and scale of the climate crisis can often feel overwhelming individuals and communities. We believe that artistic practice and artistic research can open up new ways of understanding the intersectional dimensions of this crisis, enabling people to feel empowered to act—wherever they are. This grounded and place-based approach is central to JUST ART.
From Aruba to Brabant, from the Wadden Islands to Twente, and from the polders to Curaçao, JUST ART promotes climate justice in contexts where the crisis is most acutely experienced and where action is most urgently needed. Over six years, JUST ART will unfold through multiple collaborative research projects delivered by partners across the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The project is structured around five core research themes, alongside a dedicated strand focused on governance and synthesis. For more, click here
*
Within the broader theme of artistic research and climate justice, the project Performing Multispecies Justice in the Dutch Caribbean investigates visions of multi-species justice in/through theatre and performance practices. With the term ‘multispecies justice’ we mean to take the interests of nonhumans – including animals, plants, forests, rivers and ecological systems – seriously in claims for justice. This means reshaping society, politics and legal systems to consider nonhuman interests when making decisions. For institutions, implementing a multispecies justice framework means attending to nonhuman lives in a way that goes beyond charity or generosity.
The project seeks to ethnographically examine practices in and of decolonial, multispecies theatre in the Dutch Caribbean, where islands are severely affected by rising sea levels and, consequently, by coastal land and biodiversity loss. The aim is to identify and articulate artistic research avenues that respond to and reflect on the islands’ ecological urgencies, for the critical reimagination of other-than-human subjectivities. This can include applied theatre or other devised performance-based methodologies.
Together with our cooperation partners, such as Teatro KadaKen a.o., the project seeks to develop artistic strategies and modalities that go beyond climate justice as a subject or theme. This will involve examining the politics of production and representation and expanding the performance space into a playground for critical engagement with multispecies imaginaries.
