Signals

Over 500 UK museums are collaborating on The Wild Escape, a project launched by the UK’s leading arts charity, Art Fund, to engage schoolchildren in thinking about nature and climate change. The UK’s largest-ever museum collaboration takes place from January to July 2023. Participating institutions will host a range of nature-based art activities both in person and online. The project will encourage 7–11-year-olds to visit museums with their families and through school to seek out wildlife-inspired art. They’ll be prompted to create their own artworks, which will form part of a huge-scale display to be unveiled on Earth Day 2023. Leading artists, including Es Devlin, Rana Begum and Yinka Shonibare, will also create works inspired by animals in the museums’ collections. The project is inspired by Wild Isles, a BBC series hosted by David Attenborough.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reports that England is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with a quarter of its mammals and almost a fifth of UK plants facing the threat of extinction. ‘Young people are key to shaping the nature of the natural world,’ says Rosalind Mist, director of education and youth management at WWF.

While The Zalpha Generation have a deeper relationship with the planet than previous generations, projects like The Wild Escape allow them to personalise their sense of responsibility towards it.