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Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate important works. Famed for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. In a brief video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this global appeal for a day of action to reflect on the environment on 4 November 2015,” he declared, inviting makers and thinkers to resist the ongoing loss of flora and fauna. “The mission is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are inherently creative.”

The Inception of Environmental Reflection

In this way the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who supported Metzger in his final years, remembers his feeling of immediacy. “He had a profound sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I urged him – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for funding or for anyone to approve this. We should proceed.”

After Ten Years

After ten years, the project hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but supporters think its legacy can still be seen in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how makers handle the sustainability of their methods. This is the reason she is reviving it to mark its 10-year anniversary. Among the key participants taking part currently are A Man Called Adam and prominent artists. All participants have produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be revealed on 4 November 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

Interviewing one participant, she is on site in a rural area, helping plant apple trees that will create a spiral-shaped orchard. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. She describes, the preparation and sowing sessions have already included learning about measurements (calculating the planting intervals), genetics (studying the genetic makeup), and geography (mapping the stories of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

Several the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that produces crimson liquid

“Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Every one carries stories behind them. The historical cultivar was imported by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and struck Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the natural world and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to read the label and see their names and where they were grown. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Across the Country

In London, a participant’s Book of Loss will include attendees searching a major gallery on a mission to find the frozen formations that have been lost in modern times. All formations will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using ultraviolet markers. Each discovery, a bell will ring and a recitation will be conducted to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Meanwhile, up in another location, a creative will be presenting a public show about our disconnection from the land, as well as hosting a community dinner, prepared with organic, local produce. In another city, an artist is streaming her environmental performance, in which community vocalists undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a green space.

Young Insights

Following this approach, another participant will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is planning to decorate an art space in youth creations that capture their dreams and worries for the years ahead. “Kids’ art are impactful because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “What children have to offer to the world is something distinctive and perhaps it can inspire a awareness of obligation from each person. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they get a future.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. As a former drag queen, his avian project involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for the event he is aiming to address an iconic figure. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the last two decades. The project started after he endured several events of discrimination on a one occasion. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to cover events reported by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the flower not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a slur – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The intention on Remember Nature day is to sow flowers at new locations and also renew the tributes in places he has marked earlier, all the while talking to those on the itinerant journey about the occurrences and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

Harfleet hopes his work – and