Culture, Environment and Innovation for Earth Day 2025

Written By Steven Dagenais

Mydas Greenworks newsletter on environmental sustainability and cultural development.
In collaboration with Sound Diplomacy Events & Education .

In this edition:

Projects selected at the MUTEK AI Ecologies Lab

In the heart of Montréal, a city renowned for its vibrant arts scene and technological innovation, the MUTEK AI Ecologies Lab is pioneering a transformative approach to artificial intelligence. This interdisciplinary residency converges artists, technologists, and researchers to explore sustainable and ethical alternatives for digital creation, emphasizing the intersection of AI, ecology, and art.

A Cohort of Visionaries

The lab introduces a diverse cohort from across Canada, each bringing unique perspectives to the table. Their projects delve into themes like AI transparency, decentralized computation, bio-inspired sensing, and sustainable digital practices, offering glimpses into a future where AI serves both artistic and ecological well-being.

Highlighting Innovative Projects

  • Chat-BRB: Developed by Femke Kocken, Ivonna Bossert, Connor Cook, and Sura Hanna from Montréal, this project addresses the often-overlooked ecological toll of AI. By designing chatbot interfaces that reflect real-time energy strain, Chat-BRB aims to disrupt the illusion of endless availability and encourage more conscientious use. Through visual, interactive, and sonic cues, it challenges users to rethink their reliance on AI, promoting habits of restraint in an era of escalating environmental costs.​

  • Lichen as Biosensor: A collaboration between Kelly Andres, Matthew Waddell, and Brennan Andres from Ferintosh, Alberta, this project transforms lichen growth into a speculative alphabet of ecological change. Utilizing time-lapse imaging, environmental sensors, and AI modeling, it reveals the silent narratives expressed by these symbiotic organisms. Lichenlines invites audiences to perceive nature as a communicative system, tracing living scripts of resilience, adaptation, and warning.​

  • LoRes Moss Sky, Nightly Build: Created by Eyez Li and Xijian Lou from Montréal, this project reimagines AI as a decentralized ecosystem. It transforms low-end devices into nodes for collaborative creation, replacing energy-intensive cloud systems with peer-to-peer networks. Users co-build avatars embodying dual futures: a tamagotchi-inspired creature and the distributive AI being. This approach emphasizes community-driven, sustainable digital practices.​

Collaborative Efforts and Future Showcases

These projects are developed in collaboration with leading institutions, including the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, the Abundant Intelligences Program, and the Applied AI Institute. The outcomes will be showcased at the MUTEK Forum’s 11th edition in August 2025, providing a platform for these innovative ideas to reach a broader audience. forum.mutek.org​

Earth Night is a week-long celebration combining the best of music, nightlife, and environmental activism with DJS 4 Climate Action

Earth Night is the flagship event of DJs for Climate Action (DJs4CA), a collective using music culture to drive climate awareness and systemic change. Their motto? “Turn up the volume on climate justice.” From underground warehouse sets to rooftop day parties, this isn't just about playing music—it's about building an emotionally resonant climate movement that’s joyful, accessible, and rooted in community. As the sun sets on Earth Day, a new rhythm emerges: Earth Night. From April 23 to 27, 2025, DJs for Climate Action (DJs4CA) orchestrated a global symphony of music and environmental activism, transforming dance floors into arenas of ecological awareness.​

A Global Groove for the Planet

Earth Night, now in its eighth year, is more than just a series of parties. It's a decentralized movement that unites over 40 cities worldwide, including Montréal, Paris, Tokyo, and Sydney, in a collective celebration of sustainability and community. Each event is a unique blend of local culture and global consciousness, featuring DJ sets, climate discussions, and eco-friendly initiatives. Grist​​

Empowering Local Action

DJs4CA provides toolkits for organizers to host sustainable events, encouraging practices like plastic-free venues, plant-based menus, and the use of renewable energy. This grassroots approach empowers communities to take ownership of their environmental impact while enjoying the universal language of music. Grist​

Earth Night exemplifies how cultural events can serve as catalysts for environmental change. By merging the energy of nightlife with the urgency of climate action, DJs4CA creates spaces where awareness and enjoyment coexist, inspiring attendees to carry the momentum beyond the dance floor.​The Daily Climate

For more information and to join the movement, visit DJs for Climate Action.

If you're still thinking of Earth Day as all tree-planting and PSA videos, it’s time to plug into a new frequency. Music Cities Events just dropped a lineup of 10 global projects using music as a tool for environmental change and the list reads like a mixtape of innovation, culture, and climate urgency.The feature highlights how artists, festivals, and organizations around the world are blending beats with biospheres to create something way more powerful than awareness: action.

Music as Climate Infrastructure

From Bogotá to Berlin, these projects prove that music isn’t just a vibe, it’s a vessel for environmental storytelling and collective transformation. Think solar powered festivals, indigenous led sound walks, and AI infused marine ecology sonics. The scene isn’t just growing it’s regenerating.

One of the biggest spotlights? The Music Cities Awards, which this year recognized outstanding initiatives integrating sustainability into music ecosystems. The winner of the Best Initiative Using Music to Support Environmental Sustainability exemplifies how cultural infrastructure can become climate infrastructure—channeling creativity into long-term ecological resilience.

Last year’s winner Bye Bye Plastic is a women-led grassroots nonprofit co-founded by BLOND:ISH, focused on eliminating single-use plastics in the music industry to restore ecological balance. Utilizing music as a powerful social connector, the organization aims to inspire grassroots artists and music lovers to create sustainability waves that promote a plastic-free culture. Bye Bye Plastic unifies and empowers music industry stakeholders, particularly artists and DJs, to lead sustainability efforts and combat climate change. By fostering a sustainability ecosystem, the initiative encourages collaboration among artists, event professionals, and fans, amplifying the movement for a more environmentally conscious music scene.

Other featured projects include:

  • Sounds Right, a UK-based campaign licensing nature sounds to support conservation,

  • hinter live: live music that plants trees by Mydas Greenworks

  • JUMP European Music Market Accelerator, helping musicians embed sustainability in their tours and merch,

  • Eco Sound Lab in Australia, merging deep listening with ecological restoration.

Music is one of the few things that transcends borders, language, and ideology. On a planet facing polycrisis, the global music community is emerging not just as entertainers, but as climate communicators, system designers, and movement builders. And with platforms like Music Cities Summit and the Music Cities Awards, these efforts are finally getting the recognition they deserve.

To read the full Earth Day 2025 roundup and discover all ten music-powered environmental projects, hit up Music Cities Events.

A network for sustainable organizations:

The Sustainability Academic Network (SUSAN) unites sustainability community members, institutes, students, and organizations to join forces in combating climate change. The platform allows users to post and share datasets, papers, conferences, job postings, local events, and grants related to sustainability. You can see SUSAN as the LinkedIn for Sustainability.

Rooted in Montréal, Susan defines itself as a practice for transitioning systems. That means confronting the overlapping crises we’re living through climate breakdown, digital extractivism, economic inequality and building other ways forward. They work with communities, researchers, artists, and institutions to co-create projects that are as much about imagining futures as they are about healing the present.

Built out of McGill University by Professor Juan C. Serpa, SUSAN (susanhub.com) is a new platform designed to break the silos between disciplines and help researchers, students, organizations, and everyday changemakers actually collaborate. Launched just a few weeks ago, it’s already going viral with over 8,000 users and 3,000+ institutions connected.

SUSAN’s vibe is more network than database. It doesn’t just list sustainability events, projects, or research themes and it maps out how they all connect. Using generative AI, it sorts everything into 60 themes, ranging from food sovereignty to social equity, urban planning to climate storytelling. It’s like LinkedIn, Google Calendar, and a sustainability zine all rolled into one.

SUSAN is stepping into that gap, offering a space where someone doing climate poetry can connect with someone running clean energy modeling, where artists and policymakers can co-organize events without having to Google “sustainability conference + [your city].”

It’s not just for academia

Sure, it’s packed with researchers and students. But it’s also open to community orgs, public institutions, indie collectives, and people just trying to make something happen in their neighborhood. You don’t need a PhD to use it, just curiosity and a stake in the future.

Juan Serpa, the mind behind it all, summed it up perfectly in a recent interview for The Tribune:

“Sustainability isn’t like medicine or law, It doesn’t live in one faculty. It crosses boundaries. That’s why we need something like SUSAN.”

SUSAN is doing something we’ve needed for a long time: making sustainability work visible, searchable, and most importantly collaborative. Whether you’re an artist, researcher, activist, or all three (hi, it me), this is a platform that feels like it was built with us in mind.

We are excited about this platform as we need connection, shared tools and a sense of momentum.

Check it out: susanhub.com

Let’s talk live music and climate. For years, they’ve felt like two totally different worlds one about sound, crowds, movement; the other about emissions, data, and policy. But Sustainable Live, a new initiative from the Canadian Live Music Association (CLMA), is proving that these worlds aren’t separate. In fact, they need each other.

If you work in music, culture, or events, and you’ve been wondering how to actually green your work without sacrificing the vibe, this is the guide you’ve been waiting for.

So What Is Sustainable Live?

It’s a national project helping Canada’s live music sector transition toward low carbon, climate resilient practices. Sustainable Live it’s a full blown toolkit for everyone in the ecosystem: venue owners, festivals, tech crews, promoters, and touring artists.

This is climate strategy written in the language of tour buses and soundchecks. It meets the industry where it’s at, and helps chart a path to where we need to go.
If you’re part of the live music world, you know the stakes are high. The pandemic already rocked the foundation of venues and events across Canada. Now, climate disruption is the next big curveball, whether it’s wildfire smoke canceling outdoor shows, rising insurance costs, or growing pressure from audiences to act responsibly.

Sustainable Live is about doing better, collectively, and creating the tools to make climate smart choices actually accessible. Because let’s be honest: not every indie venue has a sustainability officer. Not every artist has the budget for carbon offset programs. But everyone deserves a shot at doing this right.

Culture Can Lead the Way

When people go to shows, they’re open. They’re feeling things. They’re listening. That’s a perfect moment to introduce new habits, whether it’s reusable cup programs, carbon light gear transport, or even just talking about the climate between sets.

Live music has always been about connection. Sustainable Live is just tuning that connection toward the planet.

What You’ll Find on the Platform:

  • A practical guide for reducing carbon emissions in live events

  • Case studies from festivals and venues already making changes

  • Tips for sustainable rider creation, merch, and travel

  • Tools for data tracking and reporting your climate impact

  • Resources for equity and inclusion, because sustainability isn’t just environmental. iIt’s social

A Call to the Scene

This isn’t a trend. It’s the future of live music. And it’s one where our favourite venues, artists, and festivals can thrive without burning out the planet.

So whether you’re booking your first gig or programming a multi-stage festival, Sustainable Live has something for you. It’s smart, it’s action oriented, and it’s built by people who get how the music world works.

Plug into the movement at canadianlivemusic.ca/sustainable-live

You don’t have to be a playwright or a producer to take the climate stage this year, just someone with a space, a voice, and a desire to connect. Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) by Arts & Climate Initiative and The Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. is back for its 2025 edition, and it’s calling on artists, activists, educators, and everyday citizens around the world to bring climate stories to life.

If you haven’t heard of CCTA, let me put it this way: imagine a global wave of micro performances, flash readings, and pop up plays all happening at once, all tuned to the pulse of the climate crisis. It’s like a decentralized, DIY climate arts festival that stretches across six continents, and it’s beautiful.

What’s CCTA All About?

Founded in 2015 by The Arctic Cycle, CCTA happens every two years to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference (COP). Artists around the world produce readings and performances of short climate plays commissioned from writers in every region of the globe. Each piece is just 5 minutes or so, but together, they form a global chorus.c.

This year’s theme? “All Good Things Must Begin” a phrase that flips the apocalyptic script on climate storytelling. Rather than staying stuck in dystopia, CCTA 2025 is asking: What if we told stories of renewal, repair, and radical beginnings?

It’s a hopeful call for transformation and you don’t need a fancy stage to answer it.

How You Can Get Involved

Organizing a CCTA event is beautifully open-ended. You can host a staged reading in a black box theatre, do a community reading at your local library, partner with a climate org to perform outdoors, or gather folks around a kitchen table and read by candlelight. Some organizers blend theatre with panel discussions, music, or climate action—others just let the plays speak.

All you need to do is:

  • Register your interest via the CCTA 2025 call for organizers

  • Choose a few plays from the 50+ curated scripts (available in multiple languages)

  • Plan and host your event sometime between September 15 and December 21, 2025

CCTA even provides resources to help you get started, whether you’re new to performance or a seasoned producer looking to make your next season more climate-conscious.

Why This Kind of Work Matters

Look, climate data is everywhere but people aren’t just moved by stats. They’re moved by stories. By metaphor. By music. By presence.

That’s where CCTA shines. It offers a way to feel the climate crisis, not just intellectualize it. And maybe more importantly it creates space for collective imagining, something we desperately need in a world that keeps trying to convince us that it’s too late.

So, Who’s It For?

It’s for students. For teachers. For community leaders. For cultural organizations. For anyone who wants to use the arts to build momentum for climate justice. And yes, that includes you.

Whether you’ve got a stage or just a living room, Climate Change Theatre Action gives you the structure and the freedom to make something meaningful, together.

Learn more and sign up to organize at: sustainablepractice.org

Let’s take a beat from the usual climate convo. You know the one: carbon counts, circular materials, policy roadmaps. Important? Definitely. But what happens when we start with something deeper—like language, memory, culture?

That’s exactly what Cultura Circular, a Latin America–based initiative spotlighted in a recent Julie’s Bicycle conversation, is doing. And honestly? It’s one of the most refreshing, necessary takes on sustainability I’ve seen in a while.

Isn’t Just About Waste, It’s About Worldviews. Led by Chilean artist and cultural manager Manuela Infante, Cultura Circular challenges Western, linear models of sustainability by rooting its work in Latinx ancestral knowledge systems, oral traditions, and collective memory. This isn’t sustainability as a checklist. This is sustainability as a living, breathing relationship with land, story, and spirit.

Infante’s work doesn’t just ask how to reduce environmental impact—it asks why we think the way we do about nature in the first place. And more importantly, who taught us those ideas?

Spoiler: a lot of modern environmentalism is still shaped by extractive, colonial frameworks. Cultura Circular is trying to shift that, not with slogans—but with stories.

Sustainability as a Cultural Practice

One of the biggest takeaways from the conversation? The idea that culture isn’t just a tool for communicating sustainability. Culture is sustainability.

Infante talks about the danger of using culture only to amplify climate messaging—like it’s just a delivery system for someone else’s data. Instead, she insists on treating culture as a space of knowledge in its own right. A space where art, performance, community traditions, and everyday practices carry deep ecological wisdom.

If you’re someone who lives in the overlap of art and environment, this hits hard. Because it means your work isn’t peripheral—it’s central.

Why This Matters Right Now

We’re living in a time when climate narratives are still dominated by the Global North. Scientific research, design standards, and even "sustainable" funding structures are shaped by Eurocentric logics of progress, growth, and “green innovation.”

Cultura Circular reminds us that other ways of knowing have always existed and that sustainability might look less like a startup pitch and more like a grandmother’s garden, a folk song, a land ritual.

In the interview, Infante says:

“We need a circular culture before we can have a circular economy.”

And that’s it, really. Culture is what makes sustainability stick. It’s what makes it feel like home.

If You’re in the Scene, Take Note

For artists, curators, producers, and cultural workers across Latin America and beyond, Cultura Circular is offering a new model that’s grounded, relational, and unapologetically rooted in place.

If you're working in the arts and wondering how to bring sustainability into your practice without flattening it into corporate greenwash, this is the conversation to watch.

Read the full piece on Julie’s Bicycle: Cultura Circular: In Conversation


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by Steven Dagenais Narvaez
Contact us: info@mydas.ca

Steven Dagenais
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