As a B Corp certified company, we balance people and planet with profit. One of the ways we do this is by using our Climate Neutral Certified digital platform to bring positive change through ethical storytelling and supporting causes we care about. Why? Because we believe creativity can be used as a force for good.

Our collaborator the contemporary art institution, Serpentine Galleries, has an Ecology department that pushes the boundaries between art and activism led by curator Lucia Petriousti and Hans Olrich Obrist, one of the world’s most famous contemporary art curators.

Besides the global pandemic’s threat to human health, an increasing number of natural disasters - from wildfires in Australia, ocean warming and the collapse of Himalayan glaciers - continued to take place throughout 2020 across the globe, threatening the world as we know it.

While we see the climate crisis rise in the political agenda ahead of COP26, Groundwork asks whether artists have a role to play in highlighting how it's affecting cultures around the world in different ways, and whether these artistic interpretations can inspire people to act. With museums, galleries and cafes closed, our digital platform showcased the ecological visions of 5 global artists while enabling people to donate to 5 climate-related charities chosen by the artists.

From January until June 2021, Serpentine Galleries and our editorial platform come together to present Groundwork: a series of five digital multimedia compilations exploring the inspiration and research behind 5 artists’ new work for Back to Earth, the Serpentine’s multi-year project focused on instigating change in response to the climate crisis.

The artists participating include Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Baalen, Vivienne Westwood, Himali Singh Soin, Karrabing Film Collective, Tabita Rezaire. Each artist comes from a different part of the world - UK, Belgium, India, French Guiana, Australia - presenting diverse perspectives on the climate crisis.

Groundwork aims to bring greater awareness to the global climate crisis through a compelling presentation of artistic research and expression. Inspiring readers to act on the artist’s ecological vision by enabling donations to their chosen climate charity via our digital platform. To encourage participation, our platform pledged to double all donations up to €30,000.

Delving into their creative process, we asked each artist to share their research and inspiration for their Back To Earth work. From visual references to written excerpts, we turned this material into digital multimedia compilations encompassing imagery, film, soundscapes and animations, which tell the story of their environmental campaign. Groundwork’s visual identity combined the simplicity of Wikipedia encyclopaedias with the activist connotations of graffiti spray paint to present a unique online series giving each artist the opportunity to share their vision with a large global audience of 4M monthly site visitors made up of Film, Music, PR and Marketing Creatives in an innovative way.

We enabled crowd philanthropy to the 5 artist-chosen charities by creating wallpaper backdrops for the charities to display on our digital platform. Our 70 million monthly users in 190 countries could donate by clicking on the wallpaper to a landing page or via the editorial feature.

To create the 5 editorial features, artist wallpaper and charity wallpaper backdrops, our creative studio used a mixture of archival material and previews of the artworks presented by the artists in Groundwork. These included animations, photographs, film material and in some cases immersive soundscapes that would trigger when a user hovers over certain icons on the page.

The graffiti elements were animated to give it that spray paint aesthetic, and the archival material was placed in grey boxes as if they’re taken from Wikipedia. A series of animated keywords relating to the specific artists were presented as text breaks throughout each editorial feature.

Artist releases:

First artist launch: 28th January

Second artist launch: 23rd February

Third artist launch: 26th March

Fourth artist launch: 22nd April

Fifth artist launch: 3rd June

Placement: our editorial site for the five artist features, and our digital platform for the wallpaper backdrops.

Groundwork has enabled these artists to continue sharing their work about the urgency for climate action during the pandemic while Serpentine has been closed to the public. Our digital platform’s reach - Groundwork has so far had over 1m site visitors spending an average 4 minutes on site. Meaning that these artists’ environmental campaigns are being shared with a much larger audience than would have ever visited the galleries.

By enabling ‘crowd philanthropy’ on our digital platform, we enable ‘the little guy’ to participate in raising funds to help combat the climate crisis during an unprecedented year where people have spent the majority of their time at home. Out of the two artist campaigns that have launched so far, over 20,000 euros have been raised. This will help support climate activists on the frontline, halt deforestation in the Amazon and sustain communities in Australia and the Himalayas.