“We have no land, we are the land. We have no sea, we are the sea.”
Günther Baechler – Toda Peace Institute
When CHWA started planning our 2025 Awards this summer, it was vital to us that the awards categories reflected the most current thinking, action and research across creative health. Established in 2020, the Climate Award is run in partnership with The Happy Museum and Culture Declares Emergency. Initially designed to recognize progressive work that addressed both climate change and health, the award has now been renamed to reflect the broader issues driving the climate emergency.
We know that planetary health is in dire decline; loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources, extreme and devastating weather patterns and poor air quality are areas of urgent concern. In addition, in the last five years, humans have continued to face complex and persistent societal challenges in areas including governance and leadership, global relations, health inequalities, economy and infrastructure, which have had a drastic effect on our collective feelings of healthfulness, and hopefulness. We are becoming far more aware of the interconnectedness of these issues well beyond the ‘1.5 degrees’ message of the 2010s, and how their impact is often disproportionately felt by those more vulnerable in society, contributing to poor physical and mental health outcomes, food insecurity, loss of livelihood and displacement.
Increasingly, ‘Climate’ felt too narrow, too limited in scope to communicate effectively the interwoven nature of human and planetary health, and its rootedness in how we treat ourselves, each other and the world around us.
As a result of this, CHWA, The Happy Museum and Culture Declares Emergency decided to rename the Climate Award the ‘Healthy People and Planet’ Award for 2025. We’re hoping this change will better reflect our developing thinking and attract a wider variety of work. We’re looking for projects and programmes that recognise the interdependence of human and planetary health, and work with culture and creativity to support both. We’re particularly excited by projects that have beneficial outcomes for people and planet, that are rooted in social justice, and/or that encourage shifts in ideas around individual agency and collective response.
The CHWA Awards are open for applications until Friday 29 November. The awards ceremony will be held online on 23 April 2025 – you can book your free ticket via Eventbrite.