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In 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate important works. Known for introducing self-destructive creations, Metzger had spent a lifetime to responding to global challenges from peace activism to plant-based living. In a brief video message, he requested support for a international event to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on the fourth of November, 2015,” he declared, inviting cultural workers to stand against the continuing disappearance of species. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore territories that are naturally imaginative.”

The Creation of Remember Nature

In this way the environmental art day was born, a day when artists across the country developed works to the escalating planetary emergency. One of the curators, who supported Metzger in his last days, notes his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “I urged him – let’s not mess around. No need to pause for sponsorship or for anyone to approve this. Let’s just do it.”

Ten Years On

Ten years later, the initiative may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be seen in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and climate activism networks, as well as in how creatives consider the environmental impact of their work. This is the reason she is relaunching it to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Among the featured creators taking part currently are Cornelia Parker and other notable figures. All participants have produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be revealed on November 4, 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is on site in Kent, cultivating apple trees that will create a circular grove. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. According to her, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (spacing the gaps in the orchard), genetics (discussing the apple’s DNA), and geography (mapping the journeys of how different apples were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice. Each has histories attached. The historical cultivar was imported by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the environment and the influence we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was prompting them, on their next shopping trip, to check the packaging and see what they’re called and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Cultural Projects Nationwide

At the capital, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will engage visitors looking through a major gallery on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been vanished in modern times. Each glacier will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using special pens. When located, a chime will sound and a reading will be conducted to honor that individual formation.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, Maddi Nicholson will be hosting a open display about our disconnection from the land, as well as organizing a community dinner, made using organic, local produce. In another city, Uta Kögelsberger is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Like Gallaccio, a featured creator will be working with schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is hoping to decorate an art space in kids’ letters and drawings that express their dreams and worries for the years ahead. “Youthful expressions are compelling because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and perhaps it can provoke a awareness of obligation from each person. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But it isn’t meant to be about fear – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they have a tomorrow.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. As a former drag queen, his feathered initiative involves illustrating avians and then performing as birds – and for Remember Nature day he is intending to address a local symbol. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his Pansy Project over the last two decades. This endeavor began when he endured three incidents of discrimination on a single day. In response, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the spot where it happened and record it – the project has since grown to include incidents reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the clear connection – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The intention on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at new locations and also renew the tributes in places he has honored before, all the while conversing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his memories of them. “We’ve seen quite a few after my previous work,” he says with regret.

Advancing Positively

Harfleet hopes his work – and