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Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate significant endeavors. Famed for creating art that erases itself, Metzger had dedicated his life to responding to human struggles from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. In a brief video message, he requested support for a global day of action to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this international summons for a day of action to commemorate our planet on November 4th, 2015,” he declared, inviting artists and creatives to stand against the ongoing loss of living beings. “Our responsibility is to make audiences aware of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Creation of Nature Remembrance

And so Remember Nature was established, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who supported Metzger in his last days, remembers his sense of urgency. “He had a strong sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I just said – let’s not mess around. We shouldn’t hold back for financial support or for anyone to approve this. Take action immediately.”

A Decade Later

Ten years later, the project may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but supporters think its impact can still be seen in initiatives like artist-led declarations and environmental protests, as well as in how makers handle the eco-friendliness of their work. That’s why she is reviving it to mark its 10-year anniversary. Part of the 18 lead artists involved this time are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. Each has produced imagery, made video appeals, and created artworks set to be revealed on November 4, 2025.

Planting Hope

When speaking to the artist, she is out in a field in the countryside, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a coiled garden. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and part learning experience. She describes, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), genetics (studying the hereditary traits), and history (tracing the backgrounds of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that releases red juice

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases crimson liquid. They all have histories attached. The ancient variety was brought over by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that descended from a tree and struck the scientist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the natural world and the power we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was urging them, next time they were out, to read the label and see their names and the source. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Throughout Britain

In London, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will engage visitors exploring a major gallery on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been vanished in the past decade. Each glacier will be illustrated on the gallery’s windows and walls using ultraviolet markers. When located, a alert will occur and a reading will be held to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, Maddi Nicholson will be putting on a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as holding a communal feast, cooked from regional food. In another city, Uta Kögelsberger is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers begin a project to use music to heal flora in a green space.

Children’s Voices

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be engaging schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in children’s artwork that capture their dreams and worries for the future. “Kids’ art are impactful because they’re not as trammelled as grown-ups’,” she says in her call to action video. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and it may provoke a sense of responsibility from everyone. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about positivity and us ensuring that they have a tomorrow.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then dressing up as them – and for the initiative he is intending to tackle an iconic figure. He is also organizing a walking tour of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his ongoing series over the past twenty years. This endeavor began when he endured multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a particular day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and record it – the project has since grown to cover events experienced by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly birds consume them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

Harfleet chose the flower not just for the clear connection – it has long been a derogatory label – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The project on the event day is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the incidents and his memories of them. “We’ve seen quite a few after my previous work,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

The artist wishes his work – and