Princeton Arts Alumni’s Arts X Fest brought together members of the Princeton University and local community to explore the role of the arts in climate advocacy at McCarter Theater on January 17, 2025, as part of “Arts X Climate.”  Panelists Rachael Z. DeLue, director of the Princeton Humanities Initiative and professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology, and Bethany Wiggin, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities, joined moderator Yassine Ait Ali, graduate student in the Department of French and Italian, to unpack this crucial topic.

Though climate scientists have explicitly defined the climate crisis and identified solutions to it, the lack of response has been defeating. As DeLue puts it, “They feel like they're screaming into the void.” Both DeLue and Wiggin are working to amplify the message from their respective fields in the visual and narrative arts.  Recognizing that the rift between the dread evoked by climate research and the action required to counter it has a debilitating effect, DeLue and Wiggin underscored the role of the arts in bridging that divide. They pointed to the power of emotional engagement to give voice to these urgent stories through mediums that people are better able to process—synthesizing emotion into action and consternation into hope. 

"It is really hard to wrap our heads around the scope and scale of climate change—we can see its effects, but because it is a planetary phenomenon, we can’t necessarily see the thing itself. My sense is that art, which has long been a profoundly effective medium of storytelling, can facilitate that kind of perception.”— Professor Rachael DeLue

For both DeLue and Wiggin, proof of the potency of experience to incite action is rooted in their own childhoods. Each grew up largely outdoors and tuned in to the natural world. Finding a way to tap into this core connection frames their climate advocacy. 

A key message Wiggin seeks to transmit is the immediacy of the climate crisis.  “Climate change is not apart from us—it's not out there, somewhere else, but it's shaping and reshaping our lives and our expectations of the future in the here and now,” she said. “Understanding this is, I think, is the most important starting point to build climate literacy.” 

On leave from her position as Professor in the Department of French and Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, Wiggin has evolved a story-telling program around the topic of climate change called My Climate Story. At Princeton in the fall 2024 semester, this took the form of the environmental studies and English cross-listed course  “Climate Storytelling for Climate Action.” Participants documented their personal climate stories; examined micronarratives, documentary films, and literature; and developed a set of stories documenting climate impacts among the Princeton community. Ultimately, they designed and piloted new climate writing workshops. 

 “Climate change is not apart from us—it's not out there, somewhere else, but it's shaping and reshaping our lives and our expectations of the future in the here and now,” she said. “Understanding this is, I think, is the most important starting point to build climate literacy.” 

— Professor Bethany Wiggin

“My goal was to help students ‘train their imagination’ through our writing workshops. And they were amazing!” said Wiggin. “Together, we're publishing the stories they wrote along with all the materials we co-created as a magazine. It's our hope that others will read the many Princeton stories and interviews and be inspired to consider their own climate story and to reflect on the climate education they need.”

Storytelling and emotional engagement take on a visceral immediacy when conveyed through visual media, says DeLue. 

“Right now I’m working with people from the Princeton University Art Museum and the High Meadows Environmental Institute to explore how we might mobilize the arts as a form of education and advocacy. It is really hard to wrap our heads around the scope and scale of climate change—we can see its effects, but because it is a planetary phenomenon, we can’t necessarily see the thing itself. My sense is that art, which has long been a profoundly effective medium of storytelling, can facilitate that kind of perception.”

The overwhelming scope of the climate change crisis demands an outsize response, says DeLue—in academic terms, one that is boundlessly interdisciplinary and collaborative. DeLue sees the humanities as an agile, multidimensional collective specially equipped to carry forward the urgent story of climate change, not only to paint a clear picture of where we are, but also engage active participation in where we’re headed. 

“But the arts, as with any discipline or field or practice, can’t do it alone," said DeLue. "Climate change is a big problem, one that requires big solutions, so what we need is a big room filled with people from all disciplines and walks of life working on these solutions together.”

“Artists and humanists have so much to bring to the conversation,” Wiggin agreed. “Climate change is a human-made problem, of course, and it will take serious imaginative innovation across the sciences and the arts to slow down global heating while we simultaneously imagine and envision--in the narrative and pictorial arts, in music, etc.--post-fossil worlds in which we all (and other species too) might flourish.”

 There’s so much incredible work happening in this space, and the panel reinforced how important art and design thinking are in shaping these conversations. I’m so glad I made the trip back to campus for it. 

A&A alumnus Elise Rise '15, a former student of DeLue’s, asked how we reconcile the sense of impending doom with the optimism needed to activate change. “It was clear from the panel discussion that a lot of people are wrestling with the emotional toll of this crisis—how to hold space for grief and anxiety and realism but also recognizing the need to move forward with hope and determination,” she said.  “I truly believe that the way to move forward is to channel those emotions into positivity and collective action, to show that real change is possible.”  

We know how to solve the crisis, DeLue agreed.  What’s missing is the political will. We build that will by emboldening people with the knowledge to mount collective responses that produce influence. In other words, more events like Art X Climate.