HOW IT’S MADE: A Creative Climate Call for Action

Five artists will be paired with science, engineering, and manufacturing experts in North County Dublin. Each artist learns how one of five (5) everyday objects is made: a t-shirt, a hamburger, a mobile phone, a car, or Lego blocks. The artist then creates an artful manifestation of the manufacturing process, focusing primarily on the very first stage where the raw materials are extracted from the earth and transformed. When people hear the term ‘manufacturing’ they generally think of a factory, not realising that nearly every product originated as natural resource in some form. The artists will then hold an exhibition, along with workshops during the month of September to engage the public. The HOW IT’S MADE project aims to educate art practitioners and the general population on how things are actually made. Some radical solutions will be discussed and proposed to engage and make aware the public of how to shift our culture from extraction and waste to circular models that mimic the regenerative model of nature. This is possible by opening up the debate on climate change through the arts that are called to reinterpret the extractivism and production phases. The focus is to open a discussion on how arts, culture, science, (tourism) and climate change priorities can align/work together and how this collaboration can inform future policy.