Canopy
Canopy is Wellcome’s citizen art and science festival and network, bringing health to the heart of climate action.
Canopy: a tent or tree cover; a place of exchange, of shade, and of shelter, and, on our heating planet, important for protecting life.
We're launching Canopy in September 2024 at the American Museum of Natural History and on Governors Island, home of The New York Climate Exchange. The launch will accompany the first-ever health theme at Climate Week NYC.
Canopy addresses the need for joyful cultural work to shift attitudes and policies when it comes to climate and health. Canopy’s aim is to democratize public conversations about climate through the lens of health, and create a large, open and inclusive atmosphere where everyone is welcome to have a say. It celebrates equitable approaches to adaptation and mitigation.
What is Canopy?
Canopy is hosted by Wellcome and Climate Group, and developed in collaboration with City University of New York. It involves an extraordinary group of researchers, artists, policymakers, designers, youth leaders and advocates who are:
- seeking to better understand the health impacts of climate change
- advocating for a health perspective in climate change conversations
- developing evidence-based solutions to protect health
- building and nurturing international collaboration
Canopy welcomes everyone from powerful decision-makers to the general public to have their say on climate and health – sharing knowledge, creating rapport and accelerating policy change. It includes exhibitions, artwork by youth leaders, public programming, walks, and a publication exploring the challenges and opportunities for health and climate action.
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Find out more about Canopy, Wellcome’s citizen art and science festival and network.
As climate change reshapes our lives, what stories of transformation and dreams of a healthier future do you carry with you? Introducing Canopy.
A canopy is a tent or tree cover, a place of exchange, of shade and of shelter and on our heating planet, important for protecting life.
It's also our broad and encompassing call to work together towards the collective health of humans and the planet in a changing climate.
Canopy is Wellcome's citizen art and science festival and network, bringing health to the heart of climate action.
We're launching Canopy in September 2024 at the American Museum of Natural History and on Governor's Island, home of the New York Climate Exchange. The launch will accompany the first ever health theme at Climate Week NYC. Canopy addresses the need for joyful cultural work to shift attitudes and policies when it comes to climate and health.
It's aim is to democratize public conversations about climate to the lens of health and create an open and inclusive atmosphere. And, it involves an extraordinary group of researchers artists, policy makers, designers, and youth leaders who are advocating for a health perspective in climate change conversations.
Canopy welcomes everyone to have their say on climate and health, sharing knowledge, creating rapport, and accelerating policy change
Healthier futures for everyone
In developing this programme, we have worked with an extraordinary group of researchers, artists, policymakers, designers, youth leaders and advocates who are leading the way with their generosity, humility, and determination.
We have also had the pleasure and privilege of working closely with Canopy’s writer-in-residence, Priya Basil.
To mark the first time that health has been a theme at Climate Week NYC, we have collaborated with Priya to assemble a publication featuring conversations with some of the people who have informed and inspired us.
The following question animates this publication, and our collective work: “As climate change reshapes our lives, what stories of transformation and dreams of a healthier future do you carry with you?”
Canopy is informed and inspired by our Climate and Health programme.
Canopy has been developed by Wellcome in collaboration with:
Priya Basil, Canopy writer-in-residence
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[Text on screen reads: CANOPY is Wellcome's citizen art and science festival and network, bringing health to the heart of climate action]
Priya Basil, writer-in-residence, CANOPY: You have a canopy when the branches of different trees meet, and in the canopy publication we have the branches of different people's knowledge, experiences, stories, all coming together to form a forest of perspectives and ideas and visions for the future of how we can live together in happier, healthier ways.
Aishwara Machani, UN Advocacy Co-Lead, ISWE Foundation: Climate change is such a vast and difficult subject to understand whereas everyone can understand health. Like, whether it's their personal health, health of their communities or the people around them, and so I think health is a really interesting lens through which to understand climate change.
Rebecca Jacobs, New York Lead, CANOPY: Bringing people together because it is climate week, some people from New York who've been doing this incredible work locally with people from all over the world, especially highlighting the work of young people and how health is a way to make the conversation around climate legible, personal, galvanizing and also a more democratic conversation.
[Text on screen reads: CANOPY launched at Climate Week NYC 2024. Events were held at the American Museum of Natural History and on Governors Island, new home of The New York Climate Exchange]
Adam Lake, Head of Communications, North America, Climate Group: What was really important for us, is it is not for us to say what climate and health means, it's for us to go to as many events as possible and to explore with very different people and listen from them what they believe climate and health means, so it's been a great week of talk talking, but it's been a great week of listening as well.
Lucinda Jarrett, Artistic Director, Rosetta Life: If we look after the planet then we look after ourselves. If we look after the rivers and the seas and the oceans, we're looking after ourselves because we are water, water is us.
Tima Kioumgi, Youth Leader, Place4Hope: So the film is about water.
[Text on screen reads: A short film by youth leaders from Place4hope as part of CANOPY]
Tima Kioumgi continues: and it's about how every country struggles with water, so some countries have water shortages, others have floods, how different people view water in their own culture.
Fleur Newman, Unit Lead - Gender, Action for climate empowerment at UNFCCC: Climate change is an economic and social issue that has an environmental impact. It is about people. It's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If it wasn't for people, we wouldn't have climate change.
[Text on screen reads: On Governors Island, we organized a walkshop with Melting Metropolis and CUNY Community Sensor Lab, and a panel discussion about democratizing climate conversations through the lens of health]
Kara Schlichting, co-investigator, melting metropolis: Melting metropolis is a research project that looks at the ways that climate and environment shape everyday experience of health in cities across the Northern Hemisphere from Paris, London, and New York. And the question of health we're interested in is how extreme heat is shaping health outcomes as well as social experiences of summer in the city.
Kendra Krueger, founding director, CUNY community sensor lab: I think with us at the community sensor lab we're really looking at ways where we can help mobilise local communities to be scientists that are actively collecting their own data and understanding and analysing that data, making the connections even between environmental data, health data, and being able to tell those stories by also including their own personal experiences.
Daniel Cumming, postdoctoral research associate, melting metropolis: We need to kind of think of what larger issues of freedom and liberation look like for people who have long been, you know, subject to some of the most toxic externalities or environmental burdens heaped upon them and in their backyards.
Kimberly Ong, senior director, natural resources defence council: We really believe that change starts from the bottom up, and that in order to respect communities and to work on their behalf, it's extremely important to value and understand that they have this incredible wealth of expertise of their lived experiences.
[Text on screen reads: We worked with the American Museum of Natural History on a range of programs. JR's Inside Out Project invited community input on climate and health. The "Tomorrow Party" workshop imagine shared futures. Experts discussed healthier futures with the museum's president.]
Ana Luz Porzecanski, Director, Center for biodiversity and conservation, American Museum of Natural History: It was wonderful to have an opportunity to imagine what the museum could accomplish with a lot of ambition in one year, three years and six years. And it was also helpful to me to understand certain areas I had trouble imagining actually, and that I'd like to spend more time exploring.
Damariz Damken, project manager, inside out project: They were super engaged, super responsive, we were outside for three days and as the days progressed we just had more and more and more people line up from before we even opened, like, waiting to get their portrait taken.
Lisa Grocott, director, Wonderlab: I feel like the tomorrow parties are always supposed to have different people coming together, but this time I was talking to lawyers. and then people from the cultural sector, Science Museum, choreographers, like these really different people that just brought such different perspectives and wisdoms into the conversations.
[Text on screen reads: CANOPY commissioned Wonderlab to lead a Tomorrow Party at the American Museum of Natural History. The Tomorrow Party is a co-creative futures method for policymaking and systems change]
Rich Wilson, CEO, ISWE Foundation: When I thought about the present, or indeed the future, I was feeling both the kind of brokenness and the opportunity that we face right now.
Micaela Martinez, Director of Environmental Health, We act for environmental justice: What we're trying to say is, how do you actually put value on the things that really matter for humanity, for well-being, not only for humans but also all earth's ecosystems.
Canopy events
Expand the event title for the time, location and event description.
Date: Saturday, 21 September 2024
Time: 11:00 – 12:30 and 14:00 – 15:30 EDT (1.5 hours each)
Location: Governors Island, New York
Led by Melting Metropolis historian Dr Kara Schlichting and Kendra Krueger from the Community Sensor Lab at CUNY, this is a playful, embodied, mark-making experience that explores our sensory experience of summer in the city.
Discover how, why, when and where heat moves through the city, how our bodies are impacted by it, and how this is tracked and engaged with by the scientific and local community.
Please note that this is an outdoor activity suitable for 14yrs+ who are comfortable walking/standing for up to one hour at a time. Walkshop starts at the Soisson's Arch, Governors Island ferry landing.
Get tickets for the Environmental Walkshop
Date: 23 to 30 September 2024
Location: American Museum of Natural History, on the Donor Wall in the Gilder Center, New York
This exhibition is on display at the American Museum of Natural History, in the Ellen V Futter Gallery, Richard Gilder Center. It captures the portraits and voices of people all over the world, including scientific researchers, policymakers, students, Indigenous Land Stewards and museum visitors.
This Inside Out Action and exhibition, organised by AMNH and Wellcome, asks people to share their stories and dreams of a healthier future in the face of climate change.
The Inside Out Project is a global art platform created by French artist JR that helps communities around the world stand up for what they believe in and spark global change by taking local action. Since the Project’s creation in 2011, over 560,000 people have participated in 152 countries and territories.
Date: Wednesday 25th September 2024
Location: American Museum of Natural History, Richard Gilder Center, New York
The Tomorrow Party is a co-creative futures method for policymaking and systems change. The playful, convivial event generates policy insights grounded in people’s first-hand experiences and shaped by their hopes for the future. The Canopy Tomorrow Party will be an opportunity to time travel together to COP30 - and beyond - to imagine what playful, collaborative and participatory approaches to creating a healthier future for all could look and feel like.
Date: Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Time: 19:00 – 20:00 EDT
Location: American Museum of Natural History, Richard Gilder Center, New York
Climate action rooted in science empowers us to create a resilient future, where cultural strategies and policy change transform challenges into opportunities for a healthier and more equitable world.
Join us this Climate Week for a conversation that will explore innovative perspectives and approaches that help us live as part of natural ecosystems, and address the pressing global challenge of climate change on health.
Museum President Sean Decatur will moderate this conversation, investigating the pivotal roles of scientific research, policy initiatives, and cultural strategies in creating actionable solutions that aim to create a more sustainable and healthier future for all.
Panelists: Dave A. Chokshi, Jainey K. Bavishi, Priya Basil, Tolullah Oni.
Get tickets for the panel event
Date: Thursday, 26 September 2024
Time: 18:30 - 20:30 EDT
Location: Our Lady Star of the Sea (white church on Gov Island), New York
A short film screening, music, and discussion on how to democratize conversations about climate through the lens of health, bridging divides across communities and bringing together arts, policy and research.
This event will feature youth leaders from Place4Hope, an online programme driven by a global community of young leaders who come together to co-create art works that address the urgent themes of planetary health and climate justice.
Moderator: Rebecca Hayes Jacobs (CUNY)
Panelists: Aish Machani (Global Citizens’ Assembly Network), Kimberly Ong (National Resources Defense Council), Leyla Hasanova (Youth Climate Champion for COP29 Azerbaijan) and Micaela Martinez (WE ACT for Environmental Justice).
Find more events about climate and health at the Climate Week NYC events calendar.
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