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In 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his last significant endeavors. Recognized for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting global challenges from peace activism to ethical eating. Via a concise video message, he requested support for a worldwide initiative to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on the fourth of November, 2015,” he stated, inviting makers and thinkers to stand against the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our task is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are inherently creative.”

The Birth of Nature Remembrance

And so the Nature Remembrance initiative came into being, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain produced pieces to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, notes his drive for action. “He had a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – don’t delay. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to approve this. Take action immediately.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the project did not incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be seen in initiatives like cultural advocacy groups and environmental protests, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their methods. That’s why she is reviving it to mark its ten-year mark. Among the 18 lead artists involved this time are A Man Called Adam and Anya Gallaccio. All participants have designed posters, shared messages, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on November 4, 2025.

Sowing Change

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in the countryside, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a coiled garden. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and part learning experience. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already included learning about maths (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), biology (exploring the apple’s DNA), and geography (researching the journeys of how distinct varieties arrived in Britain).

Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that releases red juice

“A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. They all have histories attached. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that dropped off a tree and hit the scientist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the environment and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was prompting them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see their names and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Throughout Britain

In London, one artist’s project on disappearance will involve participants looking through a major gallery on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been disappeared in the past decade. Every ice sheet will be drawn on the gallery’s windows and walls using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a performance will be performed to commemorate that individual formation.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, an artist will be hosting a open display about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a communal feast, cooked from organic, local produce. Further north, Uta Kögelsberger is broadcasting her musical project, in which community vocalists undertake a task to sing plants back to health in a green space.

Children’s Voices

Following this approach, Cornelia Parker will be engaging schoolchildren – on the day itself she is planning to fill a cultural venue in children’s artwork that capture their dreams and worries for the future. “Youthful expressions are powerful because they’re not as trammelled as mature perspectives,” she says in her recorded message. “What children have to offer to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can stimulate a awareness of obligation from each person. Children are innocent. They have fears about the future. But let’s not make it about worry – it should be about positivity and us ensuring that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also appeals to children. As a former drag queen, his feathered initiative involves illustrating avians and then dressing up as them – and for the initiative he is planning to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the last two decades. The project commenced following he experienced three incidents of homophobic abuse on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the spot where it happened and photograph it – the project has since expanded to cover events shared by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “It seems pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

He picked the pansy not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day is to sow flowers at new locations and also refresh the memorials in places he has honored before, all the while discussing with those on the walking tour about the incidents and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says mournfully.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and