Three grants of £10,000 will be awarded as part of a brand new open call for UK-based artists and activists launched by Greenpeace UK.
Bad Taste is a project that sits at the intersection of art and activism to foster imaginative strategies that create change. It marks the first time Greenpeace UK has fully opened its action design process to external collaborators.
Through the project, Greenpeace aims to support and collaborate with three artists and/or activists inspired to create works that disrupt public, political or corporate narratives around the industrial food system.
The perspectives of artists and activists who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, people of colour and/or working class will be prioritised for the open call. This acknowledges that issues of race, geography and economics permeate our industrial food system. Its structural roots sit within a global economic model that fuels inequity and profits from systemic racism – including from the assault on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in forest areas.
Alongside the grant, recipients will have access to a suite of Greenpeace UK’s resources as well as a separate production budget and a box of ash from burnt Amazon rainforest. The ash embodies the damage and violence caused by the industrial meat and dairy industry in Brazil as climate-critical forests are burnt for the expansion of animal agriculture – displacing and destroying Indigenous Peoples’ lives.
Hannah Davey, project co-lead for Bad Taste at Greenpeace UK, said:
“Artists and activists are great systems thinkers. By working together, we’re hoping to find a sweet spot for making impactful work which really pushes creative boundaries and supports art activism as a growing field.
Exploring the role of industrial food in the climate crisis with creative people, whose lived experience may put them in the best position to identify points of intervention, will both strengthen and radicalise actions design. Letting go of control like this is a big deal for Greenpeace, we have literally no idea what will come out of the project and that is what is so exciting about it. We’ll be campaigning in ways we can’t yet imagine.”
London-based artist and writer, Harun Morrison is embedded in the project development as an Associate Artist. Internationally renowned, Cuban-born artist and activist Tania Bruguera is also supporting the project and will review proposals following a paid workshop for up to 10 shortlisted applicants. Tania has decades of experience challenging power structures and employing art as a tool for political and social action.
Harun Morrison said:
“This is a timely invitation to collectively channel new energies, ways-of-doing and experiments. I hope the exchange and collision of ideas is as fruitful as any public interventions.”
Without significantly reducing industrial meat and dairy production, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C. Greenpeace is campaigning for a 70% reduction in industrial meat and dairy by 2030.
Bad Taste is open for submissions until 15 January 2023 at www.greenpeace.org.uk/bad-taste
