Creatives Take a Stand In the Face of the Environmental Crisis: Sowing the Apple That Dropped on Isaac Newton's Head

During 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate major projects. Recognized for introducing auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing global challenges from nuclear disarmament to ethical eating. In a brief video message, he issued a call for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this international summons for a day of action to reflect on the environment on the fourth of November, 2015,” he declared, inviting cultural workers to oppose the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into domains that are inherently creative.”

The Creation of Environmental Reflection

And so Remember Nature came into being, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. One of the curators, who supported Metzger in his later life, recalls his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I urged him – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to green light this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, Remember Nature hasn’t quite sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be seen in movements like Culture Declares and environmental protests, as well as in how artists approach the sustainability of their methods. This is the reason she is reviving it to mark its ten-year mark. Included in the featured creators involved this time are A Man Called Adam and other notable figures. All participants have produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be presented on 4 November 2025.

Planting Hope

Interviewing Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in a rural area, cultivating apple trees that will grow to form a spiral-shaped orchard. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and half educational workshop. As she explains, the preparation and sowing sessions have already included learning about measurements (calculating the gaps in the orchard), genetics (exploring the hereditary traits), and origins (mapping the journeys of how various cultivars came to the UK).

Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces red juice

“A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases red juice. Each has stories behind them. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that dropped off a tree and landed on the scientist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the natural world and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was prompting them, when they go shopping, to read the label and see what they’re called and where they were grown. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

In London, a participant’s work about extinction will involve participants exploring an art institution on a mission to find the ice masses that have been disappeared in the past decade. Every ice sheet will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a chime will sound and a performance will be conducted to commemorate that individual formation.

Elsewhere, up in another location, Maddi Nicholson will be presenting a open display about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, made using sustainable ingredients. Further north, an artist is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Young Insights

Similar to other artists, a featured creator will be engaging schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to cover a cultural venue in children’s artwork that capture their aspirations and concerns for the tomorrow. “Youthful expressions are impactful because they’re not as restricted as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “What children have to offer to the world is something truly special and hopefully it will stimulate a sense of responsibility from everyone. Kids are unbiased. They have concerns for tomorrow. But it isn’t meant to be about anxiety – it should be about positivity and us ensuring that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also appeals to children. As a former drag queen, his Birds Can Fly involves illustrating avians and then performing as birds – and for the event he is aiming to represent Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a walking tour of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his ongoing series over the last two decades. That ongoing series started after he faced three incidents of discrimination on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to incorporate experiences experienced by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly birds consume them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the direct association – it has long been a slur – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The plan on Remember Nature day is to sow flowers at additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has previously memorialised, all the while discussing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

The artist wishes his work – and