Jameel Arts & Health Lab presents link between art, health and climate crisis at COP28
The Jameel Arts & Health Lab, a collaboration between Community Jameel, the World Health Organisation (WHO), NYU Steinhardt and CULTURUNNERS, presents COP28 Healing Arts Week from 1-3 December in Dubai, to promote the role of the arts on human and environmental health. The platform includes the 'Arts, climate & health' high-level panel in the Green Zone.
Cléa Daridan, senior curator at Community Jameel, says: “We are interested in connecting the arts and health with climate change because obviously the climate crisis is a health crisis. There’s no doubt that now the question is to understand whether or not the arts might be able to offer answers to these crises. At COP28 we were trying to explore the intersection between arts, health and climate change from a research and a policy perspective because it is through the implementation of policy that change can happen.”
Stephen Stapleton, co-director of the lab says: “The Jameel Arts & Health Lab has been at COP advocating for the important role of the arts in telling the story of the climate crisis as a health crisis. In so doing to inspire the behavioral change, on both a personal and societal level, which is so urgently needed … through arts therapies and self-expression, the arts can also help those most vulnerable to cope with the psychological impact of the perceived and real changes which are already affecting millions of people around the world.”
In February the Jameel Arts & Health Lab was established to show how the arts have the power to help tackle climate change and the global health crisis.
From Dec. 1-3, the lab presented COP28 Healing Arts Week, a platform to promote the role of the arts at the intersection of health and climate. Included was a high-level panel in the COP28 Green Zone titled “Arts, Health and Climate” moderated by Princess Mashael Saud Al-Shalan, co-founder of Aeon Collective.
A panel on “Safeguarding Our Planet: Biodiversity, Climate and One Health” was held at the Saudi Pavilion in the Blue Zone featuring Princess Mashael; Prince Sultan bin Fahad, chairman of the Saudi Water Sports and Diving Federation; Princess Hala bint Khaled, president of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; Raquel Peixoto, associate professor of microbiology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; Richard Bush, chief environment officer at NEOM; Christopher Bailey, founding Co-Director of Jameel Arts & Health Lab; and Catherine Cone environment and sustainability director at the Royal Commission for AlUla.