Climate Policy Action Network [CPAN]

Museums have long served as gatekeepers to collective knowledge, with a tension between institutional narratives and limited visitor participation in curatorial frameworks. The Climate Policy Action Network (CPAN) redefines museums as a public resource, where the nature of content is reassigned to citizens.

CPAN generates public thought on climate change and green futures, through user documentation and public policy across scales. This interactive museum experience is a place for publics to share materials and narratives. Through a two-pronged approach, visitors learn about the carbon footprint of contributed everyday objects; they can then take action, in the form of letter writing to the legislative bodies responsible for climate-related policies. Participants are empowered to recover from climate guilt and doomism, and emboldened to instigate change via this exchange of object-for-knowledge and knowledge-to-action.

Through this interaction, CPAN supports change through the mechanisms of governmental policy rather than through personal behaviour modification. Here, the museum’s role is redefined to reveal how global infrastructures contribute to climate change, while serving as a conduit for publics to contribute to the act of policy making. Involving the individual, and creating opportunities for their unique encounters with climate change to be shared, brings us closer to a greener future.

Project Team

Hanna Mesraty, Gabriel Fries-Briggs, Libby Ellwood, additional support provided by Cheyenne Gurule + Jason Rebillot

Project Name

Climate Policy Action Network [CPAN]

Team Location

United States, Los Angeles and Albuquerque

Category

Community, activism & engagement