ITAC Impact: CLIMATE

ITAC IMPACT Climate is an initiative of the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) that uses participatory art to address the climate crisis. It commissions teaching artists globally to create community-based projects that raise awareness, shift behaviors, and promote climate justice through creative engagement. The initiative supports artists and communities by providing resources, international opportunities, and a collaborative network to foster hope and drive action through the power of art.

“Unmasking Climate Injustices: Voices from the Past, Present, and Emerging Generations”

“Unmasking Climate Injustices: Voices from the Past, Present, and Emerging Generations” combined community research, focus group discussions, fieldwork, and policy lobbying into a collaborative public art initiative.

The project engaged diverse stakeholders-women farmers, community potters, students, teachers, and local residents—in creating a collective installation that celebrated shared resilience and creativity. A central highlight was the participation of terracotta mask makers, who explored new ways of working with their craft while embedding stories of climate justice into their creations.

Supported by a year-long grant of €10,000, with an additional €6,000 to expand research and artistic processes, the project provided both artistic visibility and policy relevance.

The work culminated in its presentation at the ITAC

Conference in Oslo, Norway (2022), showcasing how local narratives and creative practices can contribute to global dialogues on climate justice.

Women workshop participants have been equipped to learn doing survey interviews and conduct Focus Group Discussions. They have planted rice crops to determine the effect of climate change in the locality.

*The key results of the one year cross-collaboration workshops, art activism, and co-learning from different stakeholders.*

asgg — The Baryo Balangaw Creative Initiatives was given the national award for their artivism work in the rural community and inspiring a new direction to collective community campaign for climate resiliency.

*Baryo Balangaw Creative Initiatives was invited to present at the local council about the climate artivism workshops and social entrepreneur projects that helps sustain the activities of the women.*

*Baryo Balangaw Teens were empowered to become youth leaders in the school and community. They led the One Billion Rising dance campaign to rise for freedom.*

Major climate school campaigns were held in different campuses and a collective dance festivity with thousands of students became an energetic rupture that reverberated the ground and brought out the compassionate rage to claim a future of peace and sustainability.

Kalikasang Mahiwaga: Climate Action Artist Residency Exhibition

The UP Vargas Museum, in collaboration with Cultural Vistas, presents the exhibition “Kalikasang Mahiwaga” (Mystical Nature), featuring works by artists of the Climate Action Residency organized by Cultural Vistas. They are Nathalie Dagmang, Grace Nono, and Raz Salvarita from the Philippines, Lisa Rave and Clara Suokyung Jo from Germany, Apolonia Tamata and Ratu Ropate Rakuita Wailutu Kama from Fiji, and Salauimatagi Anneliese Tuiletufuga Tilo from Samoa. Also included in the exhibition are new works by Filipino photographer Johann Guasch and a film performance by Choulay and Sereyrath Mech from Cambodia.

The phrase comes from a conversation between artist Nathalie Dagmang and her research partners, who are residents tending vegetable patches along the Marikina River. Their reflections, which the artist documents in a video, are a form of knowledge that yields to the rhythms and cycles of nature. They say that nature is a force not easily fathomed, but that it knows how to keep the fragile balance of existence. The exhibition takes its cue from the wisdom of the natural world, through projects that commune with the land, the seas, the stars, through the human imagination and congruent action. The Climate Action Residency addresses climate change by bridging scientific findings with artistic practices. “Kalikasang Mahiwaga” (Mystical Nature) is part of a series of exhibitions hosted by the UP Vargas Museum addressing critical issues of climate and environmental crises. Such exhibitions complement the museum’s social practice project, Gardens and Homesteads, which promotes the idea of gardening as a form of assembly and as a practice of gathering and communing.

The exhibition’s opening reception will be on Friday, 3 October 2025. Climate Action Artist Residencies is developed under Cultural Vistas and funded by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Climate Transcendence: Memory and Ritual in Performance is an embodied exploration of how ecological grief, ancestral memory, and ritual gesture converge in the body as a living archive. I draw upon the concept of climate metempsychosis—the transmigration of memory and experience across bodies, generations, and landscapes—to suggest that the traumas and wisdom of the climate crisis do not vanish, but instead move through us, reshaping our cellular memory and our collective rituals of renewed courage. I

n performance, I work with materials, movements, and sonic textures that echo both disaster and renewal: the shimmer of emergency blankets, the shimmer of waterlines, the reflective signal of retroreflective ribbons written with text from climate-related memories. These become portals through which the body enters states of transformation, embodying both. vulnerability and resilience.

This work is not merely about witnessing loss, but about invoking continuity—how climate memory transcends the individual, becoming a ritual passage where grief, care, and adaptability migrate into new forms of life, performance, and community.