About

JUST ART: Creating Common Grounds for Climate Justice Through Artistic Research brings together artists, researchers, campaigners, and communities in rural and urban regions across the Kingdom of the Netherlands to address different forms of climate injustice and take action together to shape more just futures.

While the complexity and scale of the climate crisis can feel overwhelming, artistic practice and research can open up new ways of understanding the intersectional dimensions of this crisis so that people feel empowered to act, in whatever way they can. We believe that art and artistic research are vital in this context not just because they can help to imagine other ways of being in the world but because they can foster meaningful dialogue and collaborative practices across disciplinary, geographical, and cultural borders.

The six-year project begins in January 2026 and extends across the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and the Netherlands). JUST ART brings together the University of Amsterdam (UvA); the University of Aruba (UA); the University of Groningen (UG); the University of Twente (UT); Utrecht University (UU); Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU); Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS); Avans University of Applied Sciences in Breda, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Roosendaal, and Tilburg (AVANS); Hanze University of Applied Science in Groningen (Hanze); art academies in Arnhem (ArtEZ), Groningen (Academy Minerva), and Breda and Den Bosch (St. Joost School of Art & Design); the National Organization for Applied Sciences (TNO) in Groningen and Amsterdam, and a wide range of cultural and societal partners and artists.

Led by the University of Groningen (Prof. Dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Faculty of Arts), the JUST ART project will support emerging work at the intersection of artistic research and climate justice and cultivate new strategies for climate action through residencies, conversations, workshops, performances, exhibitions, PhD-research trajectories, and other collaborative projects structured around five core research themes: “Just Transitions,” “Just Matter,” “Just Production,” “Just Futures,” and “Just Practices.”