One year on from Greenpeace activist, Gustav Martner, announcing “no awards on a dead planet”, and two years on from Extinction Rebellion crashing the festival urging the industry to act, Creatives for Climate, hit la Croisette with a clear message – creativity for good must be clean.
Creatives for Climate is a network of thousands of professionals working to become change agents through the power of storytelling. The NGO offers courses, community and certification to become a recognised Creative for Climate. As part of its mission to drive creativity for good (for real) the NGO focusses on upskilling climate communicators to tackle potentially misleading green work. It also does activations to raise awareness of greenwashing and drive conversation on the topic. On June 20, Creatives for Climate “agents” issued dozens of anti-greenwashing toolkits to empower attendees to identify, name, and call out sustainability lying or misinformation at the festival. The tool builds on research by think tank planet tracker on the growing sophistication of greenwashing into a paint swatch.
The NGO also partnered with agencies, The Humblebrag and archtype, along with videographer, Naomi VDS, to launch the Greenwash Watch 2023 Cannes Lions Recap, which follows the NGOs release in 2022 Cannes of a satirical baywatch style video also aimed to mainstreaming knowledge of greenwashing.
And Creatives for Climate partnered with Clean Creatives to host the Next Level Climate Summit with the Embassy of Dutch Creativity, the biggest meeting of creative activism conversations at Cannes Lions to date.
Building on research shows that 63% of young creatives are uncomfortable working on high-carbon clients, Creatives for Climate brought a fresh perspective driving a panel discussion on “solving the talent crisis is solving the climate crisis”. The discussion, hosted by Creatives for Climate chairwoman, Lucy von Sturmer, featuring Thomas Kolster from Goodvertising, Harriet Kingaby from ACT Climate Labs, and Josh Akapo from archtype creative house, explored whether reskilling creatives for the climate can lead to better creative agencies, concluding that the talent crisis is also a crisis in meaning and alignment of values at work. Enviral, FanClub PR, and Gail Partners spoke about high employee retention and longlist of creatives applying for opportunities to do sustainable work.
Watch the full recording here. www.creativesforclimate.community
Director, Lucy von Sturmer, stated, “Creatives for Climate is a network of thousands of professionals working to become change agents through the power of storytelling. We are pioneers, and our message is clear: we want to use our craft and creativity to drive real change, which means part of this involves navigating “green briefs” and campaigns which may be greenwashing.”
Video Credits:
Creatives for Climate Present: Creativity For Good MUST BE CLEAN
A Humblebrag and archtype production
Creative Strategist: Lucy von Sturmer
Creative Director: Zoë Red
Production Partner: archtype
Executive Producer: Josh Akapo
PR Partner: The Humblebrag
Director of Photography: Naomi VDS
Editor: Naomi VDS
Agents: Lucy von Sturmer, Zoë Red, Josh Akapo
