Exploring how creativity can help communities understand, imagine and respond to environmental change.
Climate Creatives is LandxSea’s programme of artist-led events, workshops and community collaborations connecting climate action with culture, storytelling and place.
Developed with Angus Climate Hub and other creative partners, the programme has focused particularly on coastal erosion and what a changing coastline means for Montrose.
Scientific information is essential, but facts alone do not always help us express what environmental change feels like or imagine how we might respond. Art can make complex issues visible, create space for different voices and bring people together around the places they care about.
What Is Creative Climate Action?
Creative climate action uses art, culture and collective imagination to explore environmental challenges and encourage meaningful public participation.
It might take the form of a film, installation, performance, public artwork, storytelling walk, community gathering or another creative intervention shaped by the people and places involved.
Our Journey So Far
SEPTEMBER 2024
Coastal Erosion Summit
LandxSea welcomed more than 80 local residents, scientists, artists and community leaders to Montrose Playhouse to share knowledge and experiences of coastal erosion and its visible impact on the places people know and love.
The event included films produced by Angus Climate Hub documenting local flooding and coastal change following Storm Angus. One of its clearest messages was that communities need not only information, but meaningful and creative ways to respond.
Explore the Coastal Erosion Summit →
Watch the local coastal erosion films →
MAY 2025
SPRINGBOARD Montrose
With support from Culture for Climate Scotland, the conversation continued through a hands-on assembly focused on generating artistic responses to coastal change.
Facilitated by northeast-based artist Eve Mosher, participants developed early ideas for public artworks, installations, community interventions and place-based storytelling projects.
SEPTEMBER 2025
Sea Change: Climate, Community and Creativity
The work continued at LandxSea Film Festival through an accessible, artist-led workshop exploring the developing Sea Change project.
Participants used creative activities and collective discussion to help imagine how Montrose might respond to coastal change and what a climate-resilient future could look and feel like.
Creative Climate Action You Can Join
PoP Shop Festival Preview Week · 16–22 August 2026
Creative climate action does not need to begin with a finished artwork or a fully formed campaign. It can start by making something together, sharing a story, learning a skill or noticing a familiar place differently.
During our 2026 PoP Shop Festival Preview Week, artists and participants of all ages are invited to explore nature, place and environmental change through hands-on creative activities.
FEATURED PARTICIPATORY PROJECT
The Map of Health of the Sublime
Join multidisciplinary artist Carrie Fertig and help add the final tactile details to a remarkable embroidered map exploring landscape, touch, health and the experience of the sublime.
During a free drop-in workshop, participants can learn or share three-dimensional and stumpwork embroidery skills, adding shells, rocks, leaves and other raised elements using sustainable and personally meaningful materials.
The completed map will then be carried to Montrose Beach in a public procession, bringing a collectively made artwork out of the workshop and into the landscape that helped inspire it.
More Ways to Take Part
Write and Share
Explore landscape, environmental change and the future through poetry and creative writing, using words to express what facts and figures cannot always capture.
Make with Natural Materials
Create with driftwood, leaves, clay, textiles and found materials, building a closer connection with the textures, forms and stories of the natural world.
Tell Stories through Film and Sound
Try animation, filmmaking or soundtrack creation and discover how moving images and sound can help us see environmental stories in new ways.
The PoP Shop programme includes free drop-ins, bookable workshops and activities for children, young people and adults. No artistic experience is needed.
What Happens Next?
The ideas and relationships developed through the Coastal Erosion Summit, SPRINGBOARD and Sea Change provide a foundation for continued creative work in Montrose.
Our next steps include:
- Creating opportunities for artists, residents and community groups to continue developing ideas together.
- Supporting informal working groups, creative labs and community meet-ups.
- Developing artistic responses to coastal erosion, environmental change and the future of Montrose.
- Exploring public artworks, installations, projections, walks, performances and storytelling projects.
- Testing an initial public event or creative intervention that makes coastal change visible and invites wider participation.
- Sharing work through LandxSea Film Festival and other community spaces and events.
These projects will be shaped by the people who take part. The aim is not to arrive with a finished answer, but to create space for residents, artists and organisations to explore what matters and what might be possible.
Hear More About the Project
BBC Radio Scotland: Out of Doors
LandxSea embedded artist Eve Mosher and Chris Platt of Montrose Community Trust welcomed broadcaster Mark Stephen to Montrose to discuss Sea Change, coastal erosion and the role creativity can play in responding to environmental change.
Get Involved
Are you an artist, maker, filmmaker, writer, activist, climate worker, student or local resident with a story to share or an idea to explore?
You do not need to arrive with a fully formed project. You might want to join a working group, contribute local knowledge, share a creative skill, help organise an activity or simply stay informed about what happens next.
There is space for different experiences, perspectives and forms of creativity in this work.
Join us in imagining and creating bold responses to the environmental changes facing Montrose.