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During 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last important works. Famed for introducing self-destructive creations, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. In a brief video message, he requested support for a worldwide initiative to celebrate the natural world.

“This is my appeal for your engagement in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, urging artists and creatives to oppose the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our task is to help the public recall of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into territories that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Inception of Environmental Reflection

In this way the Nature Remembrance initiative was established, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the unfolding climate catastrophe. One of the curators, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, notes his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “My advice was – let’s not mess around. We shouldn’t hold back for funding or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

A decade on, the project hasn’t quite sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but Joelson believes its impact can still be observed in campaigns like Culture Declares and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their methods. That’s why she is restaging it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Included in the key participants taking part currently are A Man Called Adam and other notable figures. Each has designed posters, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be presented on November 4, 2025.

Sowing Change

Interviewing the artist, she is out in a field in Kent, cultivating apple trees that will create a coiled garden. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and part learning experience. As she explains, the design and cultivation sessions have already involved learning about mathematics (measuring out the distances between trees), science (studying the apple’s DNA), and history (researching the stories of how distinct varieties arrived in Britain).

Several the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces scarcolored sap

“A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that produces red juice. Every one carries histories attached. The ancient variety was introduced by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that descended from a tree and landed on the physicist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected of nature and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was urging them, next time they were out, to read the label and see their names and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Across the Country

In London, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will involve participants exploring a major gallery on a quest to find the ice masses that have been vanished in recent years. Every ice sheet will be drawn on the museum surfaces using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a chime will sound and a recitation will be conducted to remember that specific ice mass.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, Maddi Nicholson will be putting on a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as organizing a communal feast, made using sustainable ingredients. Over in Newcastle, an artist is streaming her musical project, in which regional performers begin a project to sing plants back to health in a green space.

Youth Perspectives

Similar to other artists, another participant will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is hoping to cover an art space in youth creations that document their hopes and fears for the tomorrow. “Kids’ art are powerful because they’re not as restricted as mature perspectives,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and hopefully it will inspire a sense of responsibility from us all. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But it isn’t meant to be about worry – it should be about hope and making sure that they get a future.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also appeals to children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves illustrating avians and then dressing up as them – and for the event he is intending to address an iconic figure. He is also conducting a walking tour of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his long-term work over the last two decades. That ongoing series started after he endured three incidents of prejudice on a one occasion. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the location of every incident and document it – the project has since grown to cover events experienced by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “It seems pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

The artist selected the bloom not just for the direct association – 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 bad quality,” he says.

The project on 4 November is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also renew the tributes in places he has marked earlier, all the while conversing with those on the itinerant journey about the events and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few after my previous work,” he says mournfully.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and