ARTS & CULTURE AT COP26

Edinburgh CUHF member Wallace Heim has co-authored a new report exploring the roles of arts and culture around COP26, the United Nations climate conference held in Glasgow in November 2021.

COP26 saw an outpouring of the artistic and cultural activity that has become integral to how a COP is represented, not only in the media, but on the streets, in the buildings, and over the landscapes of the host country. This report explores why COPs provide a special context for arts and culture, providing detailed case studies of representative projects.

Read the full report at Creative Carbon Scotland, or by clicking the image below.


Wallace Heim writes, researches and makes art in the median zone where culture, art and human performance meet the other-than-human, meet nature. In these conjunctions of the animate, the material and the elemental, new forms of human experience can emerge; new modes of understanding and action can take shape.

Her academic writing and research analyses the experience of art works and social practices, to consider how these events shape their social and ecological contexts, and to develop critical frameworks appropriate to the experience of culture in the time of climate instability. Her slant is philosophical, but she works across disciplines including performance and theatre studies, arts criticism, geography, politics and environmental humanities. She also works as a sculptor and as a writer and producer of sound and theatre pieces.

Learn more about Wallace Heim’s work on her website.