On the 3rd of May WTS will be taking part in the Climate Strike.
We strongly encourage all other arts organisations and independent artists across the country to join us in solidarity. Add your name to the document here and strike this coming Friday 3rd May.
We, the undersigned artists and arts workers, offer our support and stand together with striking students to call for immediate political action to address climate change and add our voices to the call for climate justice.
On May 3, 2019, artists across Australia strike in solidarity with the global climate strike led by young people across over 100 countries. We recognise that this third major climate strike must be bolstered by a general strike of all members of our global communities, and so we come together as an artists’ and arts workers’ contingent (although we are also teachers, students, parents, carers, hospitality workers, among many other things).
We recognise that the precarity, inequality, alienation and co-option of art and artists by neoliberal capitalism are interconnected with the political forces that have driven us to this urgent moment of worsening climate impacts. We are subjected to the same dehumanising systems and corrupt leadership that have prioritised corporate greed over public good. Artists join the call for an urgent realignment of policy and action to create a safe, healthy and just future for all.
We recognise the role of both artists and young people in creating bold new imaginaries - of imagining new futures into existence. We come together at the Student Strike 4 Climate to acknowledge that climate damage is affecting all of us right now; and we support the call for a general strike that reflects the urgency and vastness of the climate crisis.
We echo students' demands in the lead up to the 2019 climate election:
- All parties commit to stop digging, burning and exporting coal.
- 100% transition to solar and wind energy by 2030 at the latest.
- Stop the Adani coal mine.
We also demand an end to and refuse to partake in artwashing - the unethical instrumentalisation of the arts by companies that support the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.