Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation Program (CAST)

Waters Breathe, Too: An Anthology

Resources for Learning through Art and Science

The 'Walk of Water' | UNESCO
and I Remember Water (exhibition about the central role of freshwater over the course of history) -- UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme
 
The “Walk of Water” is an exhibition displayed at the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York. This exhibition “is an innovative project led by UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) that combines art, culture and science to share clear messages on the state of the world’s freshwater in the past, present and future. The WoW is conceived as a journey between the past, present and future that takes visitors on a fascinating journey through the most varied 'water worlds'. With this perspective, the exhibition highlights the current challenges related to freshwater management and governance in different regions of the world, as well as the more forward-looking solutions that can be implemented through new partnerships and strengthened cooperation.”
I AM WATER — SaveArtSpace
Our Humanity Matters and ecoartspace & SaveArtSpace

This exhibition, held during the week of June 21, 2021, “consists of a series of billboards sited in New York City that will address our relationship to water and our human understanding that we are water….Water is not a resource but an essential connection to life. The one-sidedness of modern consciousness and our disconnect from nature increasingly subjects water to pollution. If we do not change our behavior, we will run out of water. We humans cannot be healthy if our waters are not healthy. This exhibition is an opportunity to show water’s mystery and importance and to help reestablish, on a deep cellular level, the intimate relationship with water that we have lost in modern life.”
A Giant Inland Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for Humanity

New York Times
Insights into a stark future, with a focus on one local environment as an example: “Walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was like entering hell. All around was a desert devoid of life, aside from scrubby saxaul trees… In the nearby town of Muynak, black-and-white newsreels in the local museum and pictures in the family photo albums of residents tell of better times. During the Soviet era, fishing communities like Muynak ringed the sea, thriving off its bounty: sturgeon, flounder, caviar and other staples of Soviet dinner tables. “

Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis | Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University
Explore the exhibition at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute

“Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experience. They treat water not as a commodity to be exploited but as a cyclical, life-giving, life-dissolving, and inert but innately alive spiritual force—a view widely shared among Indigenous communities, especially in the Global South. The exhibition juxtaposes older, traditional paintings depicting myths with works by contemporary artists that evoke various aesthetic experiences of water in the age of climate crisis. Water Stories encourages viewers to appreciate the multivalent meaning of water and to contemplate their own relationship with it.”
How Climate Change Impacts Water Access – National Geographic

“Climate change impacts the water cycle by influencing when, where, and how much precipitation falls. It also leads to more severe weather events over time. Increasing global temperatures cause water to evaporate in larger amounts, which will lead to higher levels of atmospheric water vapor and more frequent, heavy, and intense rains in the coming years… As the ocean warms, freshwater glaciers around Earth begin to melt at an unsustainable rate, which results in rising sea levels. The freshwater from the melted glaciers eventually runs into the ocean. With the rising of sea levels, salt water can more easily contaminate underground freshwater-bearing rocks, called aquifers. A process called desalination removes salt from salt water, but it is a last-resort, energy-intensive, costly process for places where there are persistent droughts and freshwater is lacking.”