Is encouraging action still art? What does it mean to make art about the environment? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough brings together a curator, researchers and artists to discuss these questions. She hears about suggestions from artists, inspired by the forward thinking Gustav Metzger (1926 - 2017), collated by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. These include the idea from Futurefarmers that we "make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer's bookshelf" or Forensic Architecture's call for us to "Look at an air bubble" or Olafur Eliasson's "Look down, look up" and a poetic call to action inspired by the writer Audre Lorde (1934-1992): you can find an episode all about her work in the Free Thinking archives. Lucy Neal describes a project that has involved a forest camp in Coventry looking back at the ideas of the suffragettes. Wayne Binitie shares his experiences of taking photographs of melting ice sheets, recreating them in a gallery and making sound and music. Dr Jenna C. Ashton describes her work with communities in Manchester thinking about how they face up to changes in the climate and reflect those in a pageant planned for next year.

140 Artists' Ideas for Planet Earth edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Kostas Stasinopoulos is published now - and draws on the environmental programme Back to Earth run by the Serpentine Gallery where Obrist is an Artistic Director https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/

You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Dr Des Fitzgerald and Dr Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins