CCL in Action: Elizabeth Valenzuela

Art and Nature: an approach to imitate, create, and preserve – Elizabeth Valenzuela, Fondo Acción, Colombia

Elizabeth Valenzuela, Fondo Acción (CO) worked as a biologist for many years, and helped to establish a specific fund for arts and cultural approaches to environmental stewardship and climate action during her time as Climate Change Coordinator at non-profit foundation Fondo Acción.

Through a CCL in Action project, Elizabeth hoped to further develop and refine her ideas and approaches to:

• Continue supporting arts and creative projects as part of Fondo Acción’s activities and make the case for the impact and value of such artistic interventions
• Help foster collaborations and projects at the intersection of arts and environment in Colombia.

A key part of the project was a study and exchange visit to the UK, to share her insights from working on the ground with communities in Colombia with organisations in London and Oxford, and in turn take successful models and ideas back to South America. During her week in the UK, Elizabeth met with representatives from organisations including ONCA Gallery, Brighton; Artsadmin, London; Modern Art Oxford; the BPI (representative body for the British recorded music industry); the V&A Museum; Kew Gardens; and Universal Music.

Since then, she has designed a fourth edition of the Fondo Acción contest on art and climate change CambiARTE, modifying the prizes for a grant of artistic creation and increasing the value contributed by the donor.

She further curated and moderated a talk on art and climate change at the World Convergence Forum focused on the Sustainable Development Goals held in Bogotá, Colombia, November 2018.

She also designed and produced a creative intervention in the national climate finance event, based on the music of “Recreating Vivaldi, because your change sounds” (that she originally produced with Fondo Accion in 2015). The piece uses Vivaldi’s sonnets as the foundation of an exploration of art and climate change.

Alongside this. Elizabeth has continued to research the role of art to connect environmental issues and climate change to people’s life in order to develop further programmes. She was promoted to Technical Director at Fondo Acción in 2019.

Elizabeth Valenzuela Guest Blog: Art and nature: An approach to imitate, create and preserve https://www.creativeclimateleadership.com/artnature-imitatecreatepreserve-2019/