The Finnish National Core Curriculum puts an emphasis on multi-literacy and critical engagement with visual culture. They both are vital to visual arts education and closely linked to climate education. Critical cultural competence is crucial when we try to identify cultural structures deeply embedded in ourselves – our values, thoughts and approaches – which have caused the problems the planet and humankind are currently facing.

Art provides strategies to engage the public and bring up important topics from different angles. This differs from the approach of politics, journalism or non-governmental organizations, which art often complements or questions. Art helps to visualize, define and revive information otherwise hard to comprehend. Visual art can be documentary and bring out human stories and make that which is invisible, visible. It can be a tool to simplify the reality in order to elicit an emotional response from the audience. In addition, it provides a free platform to mix fiction and non-fiction using a broad spectrum of possibilities for artistic expression from subtle communication to direct action, such as making graffiti.

Art is a wide-ranging tool for communication and change and it includes film, photography, posters, cartoons, dance, poetry and performance among others. During the wartime, posters helped to spread political propaganda. Subverts and President Obama’s “Hope” campaign are examples of modern influential posters. Also, advertising exploits art to attract consumers’ attention. Media literacy is a crucial skill in becoming a critical consumer.

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Art provides knowledge about wider realities without simply limiting itself to the art world. It can aim, for example, to critically observe certain cultural conventions, make them more obvious, and influence the values and goals of society and education. Art events, art activism and community art offers tools for young people to make a difference at the local level.

Tackling climate change requires a lifestyle change, and artists often have practical solutions regarding this. For a long time, visual arts have been a popular medium to imagine, plan, build and explore alternative futures.

Creativity requires an ability to deal with uncertainty. Art encourages us to embrace the unknown and abandon safe and familiar answers. It has been said that art should give us “tasters” of uncontrollable circumstances i.e. provide a chance to practice such situations in which ordinary solutions don’t work. In art, wild and unconventional ideas are welcome. Particularly community art and projects that juxtapose art and science embrace this type of approach.

Design and architecture play a key role in finding hands-on solutions for a sustainable life. Along with engineers, industrial designers have worked to advance wind power technology, create efficient commercial wind turbines, and make public transportation vehicles more appealing. The housing and building industry cause a significant amount of emissions. Architects do important work to design more energy efficient or even energy-producing buildings and enhance the resilience of houses to extreme weather.

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The approach to climate change is often problem-centred: we discuss about the size of our carbon footprint and our negative impact on the planet. Carbon footprint is no doubt a useful tool, but there is another more positive approach: ecological handprint. It describes the good we have done for the world, what we manage to restore and recreate, how much we act, educate and inspire. Instead of problem-driven approaches, the ecological handprint can be used as a conceptual tool in planning a new world.

Another easy way to leave friendly handprints and cultivate empathy is by incorporating daily acts of kindness. Random Acts of Kindness is an American movement dedicated to inspire everyone to practice kindness in order to make the world more peaceful and compassionate by a “critical mass of good deeds”.

Many artists work with emotions, and recognizing and processing them is one of the central goals of visual arts education. Art says something about the artist’s inner world, and therefore creativity is the best way to connect with beliefs and emotions. Creating art or discussing existing artworks can help provide a healthy distance from difficult and distressing issues which in turn creates a channel to project and process thoughts and emotions safely without getting overwhelmed and overly distressed.

Climate change tends to trigger strong and negative feelings, such as distress, fear and powerlessness, which are often denied or suppressed. Visual art education can play an important role in learning to understand and process these emotions. It is also a useful tool to identify personal values and improve positive emotional intelligence, which in turn helps to see the big picture of issues like climate justice. The urge for social change can also encourage to come up with fresh, unconventional ideas and plans for a new world.

Art can also increase sensitivity to the environment. Environmental sensitivity is the cultivation of empathy, love and respect for nature based on personal experiences and observations. It often correlates with positive childhood nature experiences boosting physical and emotional wellbeing. Environmental sensitivity is defined as an ability to observe and sense the environment and become aware of what is changing. It is crucial to understand the connection between our actions and climate change. Positive nature experiences and environmental sensitivity are closely linked to cultivating feelings about nature as a pleasant locale.