I'm currently in the process of starting up an environmental arts community engagement organisation. Initially the focus will be on engaging and enabling youth to create artistic outputs that respond to current environmental challenges that will be shared with decision-makers with the aim to facilitate more meaningful and empathetic decision-making. My first environmental youth art project focussed on the state and future of our global oceans. The project was a great success - hundreds of primary aged children participated, the outputs were amazing and were warmly received and shared by the department of climate change, energy, the environment, and water, as well as by many environmental and ocean based organisations, including the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Ocean Youth, Wildlife Reach Productions, The Great Southern Reef Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute and many more. A summary of the Ocean Art Youth Action project follows.
Ocean Art Youth Action Project
Project overview
In Autumn 2025 I initiated an ocean art action project for a local primary school on witnessing children overwhelmed after seeing David Attenborough's latest documentary 'Oceans'. The aim of the project was to engage children on the importance of our oceans in supporting all life on Earth, and ultimately to move children away from eco-anxiety toward eco-empowered. With the support of the principal and all teachers I was able to facilitate eleven ocean action sessions across all years - from kinder to yr 6.
Each class learnt about the importance of our oceans in supporting life on Earth. A particular fact that all classes enjoyed learning is that our Oceans give us more oxygen than all the trees on our planet! We learnt about current challenges facing our oceans and discussed ways we can help – significant ones being forming and nurturing a deeper relationship with the waters that surround us, and sharing our voices for sustainable ocean futures with decision makers. Each class created artworks of different ocean wildlife and wrote/recorded messages calling on world leaders to protect our oceans. The main messages included ‘ban deep-sea trawling’, ‘stop unsustainable fishing practices’, and very importantly to ‘ratify the High Seas Treaty’. A selection of artworks (individual and collaborative) can be viewed below. The art and voices have been collated into a film - please see below.
More information on this project is provided below the film and artworks.
In Autumn 2025 I initiated an ocean art action project for a local primary school on witnessing children overwhelmed after seeing David Attenborough's latest documentary 'Oceans'. The aim of the project was to engage children on the importance of our oceans in supporting all life on Earth, and ultimately to move children away from eco-anxiety toward eco-empowered. With the support of the principal and all teachers I was able to facilitate eleven ocean action sessions across all years - from kinder to yr 6.
Each class learnt about the importance of our oceans in supporting life on Earth. A particular fact that all classes enjoyed learning is that our Oceans give us more oxygen than all the trees on our planet! We learnt about current challenges facing our oceans and discussed ways we can help – significant ones being forming and nurturing a deeper relationship with the waters that surround us, and sharing our voices for sustainable ocean futures with decision makers. Each class created artworks of different ocean wildlife and wrote/recorded messages calling on world leaders to protect our oceans. The main messages included ‘ban deep-sea trawling’, ‘stop unsustainable fishing practices’, and very importantly to ‘ratify the High Seas Treaty’. A selection of artworks (individual and collaborative) can be viewed below. The art and voices have been collated into a film - please see below.
More information on this project is provided below the film and artworks.
Project reach
The outputs of this project have been shared widely and have received interest from leading environmental organisations, including The Jane Goodall Institute, The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the Sea Change Project, Ocean Youth, The Australian Marine Conservation Society, the Great Southern Reef Foundation, Wildlife Reach Productions, amongst others. One of the initial aims of the project was to get the film played at this years United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3). Unfortunately Australia didn't have a booth at this conference so there was no opportunity for this however, the art and messages were received by Australian Ambassadors who attended the conference.
Next steps
Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and Water, recently promised that he would introduce legislation this Spring to enable ratification of the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty. In the lead up to this I have been sharing the outputs of this project with as many relevant organisations and people as possible. The aim is to enable the children’s work to contribute to the building up of public pressure on the Australian government to ratify the High Seas Treaty. Additional aims include inspiring greater commit to genuine protection of our Oceans, and ultimately to motivate and enable greater youth ocean action. If Australia ratifies the treaty my hope is that the children involved in this project will feel part of this great achievement and be inspired and empowered to act on other environmental challenges, rather than feel overwhelmed by them.
To date (July 2025), 50 countries have ratified the treaty - we need 10 more for the treaty to become international law. The High Seas make up 64% of our global ocean and are currently not protected at all. David Attenborough identifies the High Seas as the most important place on Earth to protect. Having the High Seas Treaty become law would be an enormous win for our Oceans and our Planet.
More information / Future projects
If you would like to learn more about this project, or to get involved / collaborate on future projects, please feel welcome to contact me direct on [email protected] or through @animals.and.botanicals (my wildlife conservation instagram account).
The outputs of this project have been shared widely and have received interest from leading environmental organisations, including The Jane Goodall Institute, The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the Sea Change Project, Ocean Youth, The Australian Marine Conservation Society, the Great Southern Reef Foundation, Wildlife Reach Productions, amongst others. One of the initial aims of the project was to get the film played at this years United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3). Unfortunately Australia didn't have a booth at this conference so there was no opportunity for this however, the art and messages were received by Australian Ambassadors who attended the conference.
Next steps
Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and Water, recently promised that he would introduce legislation this Spring to enable ratification of the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty. In the lead up to this I have been sharing the outputs of this project with as many relevant organisations and people as possible. The aim is to enable the children’s work to contribute to the building up of public pressure on the Australian government to ratify the High Seas Treaty. Additional aims include inspiring greater commit to genuine protection of our Oceans, and ultimately to motivate and enable greater youth ocean action. If Australia ratifies the treaty my hope is that the children involved in this project will feel part of this great achievement and be inspired and empowered to act on other environmental challenges, rather than feel overwhelmed by them.
To date (July 2025), 50 countries have ratified the treaty - we need 10 more for the treaty to become international law. The High Seas make up 64% of our global ocean and are currently not protected at all. David Attenborough identifies the High Seas as the most important place on Earth to protect. Having the High Seas Treaty become law would be an enormous win for our Oceans and our Planet.
More information / Future projects
If you would like to learn more about this project, or to get involved / collaborate on future projects, please feel welcome to contact me direct on [email protected] or through @animals.and.botanicals (my wildlife conservation instagram account).