Why Care Must Sit at the Heart of Cultural Climate Work
By Karine Décorne, CDE National Coordinator
Nine months ago I joined Culture Declares as their new National Coordinator. It felt incredibly exciting, humbling, intimidating and like home all at once.
It’s been a challenging and inspiring time navigating the duality of standing on the shoulders of giants while trying to find clarity for the journey ahead, as the landscape has shifted since CDE was first launched seven years ago.
The passion and dedication of the people who have built CDE, and of its declarers, have been unwavering, and the work to address the Earth Crisis is more needed than ever. However, the worry and exhaustion among those working on the front lines at the intersection of the arts, culture, and the climate and nature emergencies, in the face of an increasingly difficult context, were also palpable.
I was also acutely aware that, like many organisations across the sector, CDE was operating within an increasingly difficult financial context.
My first instinct could have been to immediately “get on with the fundraising.” But I chose to resist that urge.
Instead, I believed it was essential to make space and time to fully understand where CDE is at internally, and the wider culture and climate emergency sector in which it operates; challenge and inform my own assumptions about what the next steps should be; and bring a fresh pair of eyes and perspective to help identify where CDE is most needed now, and what role it can uniquely play.
‘The times are urgent; let us slow down.’
Bayo Akomolafe’s reflection gave me reassurance about having chosen this approach. Over the many years I’ve worked in this field, I’ve learnt that resisting the urge to rush, and instead making space for curiosity, listening, analysis, and questioning assumptions, is essential. It enables us to identify gaps in provision and imagine meaningful strategic ways forward to drive the change that is needed.
I undertook a research and consultation phase to assess its activities, analyse the sector, and define where its work was most needed in response. It identified a clear gap in provision. Across the sector there is a strong offer of funding, resources, and training aimed at organisations. However, there is a clear gap in developmental support for individual practitioners, particularly freelancers and independent artists, that goes beyond information-sharing and instead helps them define, plan, deliver, and reflect on their work.
Artists and cultural practitioners working in climate, environmental and social justice contexts are producing some of the most necessary work of our time. Much of this work happens outside traditional institutions and funding structures, through socially engaged practice, community collaboration, research-led projects, and grassroots initiatives. This work also takes place under intensifying pressure: dwindling funding, the cost-of-living crisis, political instability, and the emotional weight of confronting the Earth Crisis daily. Across the creative workforce, rates of burnout are already higher than in many other sectors.
Without developmental infrastructure, promising work can stall, remain under-developed, or place unsustainable pressure on individuals.
Well-being support, now widely discussed in relation to organisational staff teams, is rarely extended to freelancers and self-employed practitioners. Yet their well-being is not a ‘nice to have’; it is fundamental to adaptation, resilience, and sustained impact. Without proactive support, we risk losing the vital skills, lived experience, cultural knowledge, and creative leadership that drive community empowerment and climate justice work.
At this point, it became apparent that CDE needs to place care-taking at the heart of everything it does.
Centring care is essential to how we adapt as an organisation and model regenerative cultural practice. When care-taking guides our work, it strengthens our ability to tell the truth with courage and compassion, and to make change that is regenerative, resilient, and just.
By grounding our organisation and movement in care, we enable practitioners and communities to adapt, thrive, and sustain the vital work of culture in climate action. Without care at the foundation, our impact across truth-telling and change-making would be diminished.
Building on the foundations and care developed over many years by CDE’s co-founders and coordinators, alongside the wonderful work developed by Tesni Clare through the Community Breakfasts, and drawing on my own long experience of supporting artist development and facilitating events, I developed the concept of a Support Programme aimed at individual practitioners working at the intersection of arts, culture and climate justice.
The aim of the programme is to respond directly to the identified gap in provision by supporting practitioners to move their work forward in concrete, purposeful ways. Just as practitioners uplift and empower communities, we must commit to supporting, sustaining, and empowering them, ensuring they have the well-being, connection, stability, and resilience they need to continue this essential work.
So, with a small cohort of individuals who agreed to trust the process, we embarked on a pilot journey over nine weeks in Spring 2026.
The Support Programme brings together two complementary, tested methodologies, each with a strong track record of supporting creative individuals to clarify goals, sustain momentum, and deliver meaningful work: Outcome Based Accountability (OBA), and creative prompts and reflective practice, drawn from the work of 64 Million Artists.
I approached this test with curiosity and humble ambitions, aware that I was navigating relatively new territory, and that time constraints meant we had to be realistic about what could be achieved.
What happened went way beyond anything I could have imagined. It confirmed that we had been right in identifying the type of support needed at this point in time. It was also rather incredible to witness the participants’ journeys and the significant and meaningful shifts it enabled them to make.
‘This feels like a very needed salve amongst what has been quite an overwhelming, isolating time whilst navigating a lot of different processes, questions that have unravelled a lot, and longings for projects and possibilities to be shaped.’
It’s hard to write a conclusion when this work is only just beginning. As I write these words, I remember those of Rhys Slade-Jones, an artist I accompanied throughout the Future Wales Fellowship Programme with the Arts Council of Wales. In response to a question about what was needed in response to the climate and nature emergencies, he said: “Care. Care. Care.”
We applied to the Arts Council of Wales for funding to deliver the Artist Support Programme – unfortunately, our application was unsuccessful. However, the need for this work is clear and we will continue to look for ways to fund and deliver the programme. Care is now at the centre of our ethos and approach as a movement.