[Commlist] CFP - Arts journal special issue - The visual arts and environmental regeneration in Britain

Arts journal special issue - The visual arts and environmental 
regeneration in Britain
This special issue examines how the visual arts in Britain employ and 
engage with environmentally restorative practices, rewilding, nature 
conservation and sustainable food production. Britain is one of the most 
nature-depleted countries in the world (Burns et al 2023) and in 2022 
the British Government committed to the COP15 “30by30” target, which 
aims to “protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030” (DEFRA 2024). 
This area includes existing conservation areas, but also rural and urban 
land currently devoted to other uses. A major use is food production and 
pre- and post-Brexit agricultural subsidies have included increasingly 
rigorous environmental obligations.
The visual arts in Britain have long been entwined with pressing 
environmental discourses, but also established cultural narratives about 
the place, role and value of nature, what we expect “natural” spaces to 
look like, and the socio-economic realities of those spaces. These 
narratives, expectations and realities have been shaped by the 
specificities of Britain’s agrarian, industrial and green revolutions, 
and class and colonial histories, and further inflected by issues of 
human and non-human equity, democratic access, and the strategies of 
conversation itself in a neoliberal economy.
The visual arts are invaluable for propositioning, contextualising and 
communicating change and investigating its potential and paradoxes. At 
this time of environmental transition – which is at once necessary, 
tentative and contested - this special issue examines how the visual 
arts (art, photography, film, digital media, performance) can explore 
transition but also interrogate and challenge embedded assumptions. As 
such, it invites (but is not limited to) contributions examining:

How the visual arts implement, support or mediate rewilding, 
environmentally restorative and/or conservation initiatives and spaces 
of threatened biodiversity
How the visual arts engage with regenerative farming and food production 
in rural, urban and peri-urban spaces
How the environmental visual arts engage with inter-disciplinary 
expertise, stakeholders or policy makers
The role of educational and cultural institutions in supporting 
environmental arts practice
Ideas of the commons and land ownership
Historic precursors that might illuminate the dialogue around 
regenerative environmental arts How the environmental arts engage with 
the relationship between the arts and/or conservation and capitalism

Deadline for submissions: 28th February 2026
Abstracts / proposals can be forwarded to Rupert Ashmore, Northumbria 
University: (r.ashmore /at/ northumbria.ac.uk), or Arts journal at: 
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/62E191HZOA Please note: 
contributing author fees have been waived for this special issue.

For further details: Arts journal - 
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/62E191HZOA Dr Rupert 
Ashmore, Northumbria University: (r.ashmore /at/ northumbria.ac.uk)
References:
Burns, F et al (2023) State of Nature 2023. The State of Nature 
partnership, available at www.stateofnature.org.uk Department for 
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2024) “30by30 on land in England: 
confirmed criteria and next steps” (policy paper 29/10/2024), available 
at: 
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criteria-for-30by30-on-land-in-england/30by30-on-land-in-england-confirmed-criteria-and-next-steps 


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------