Our world is on fire while the fossil fuel industry continues its expansion in the name of profit.
How can global cultural movements help end the reliance on fossil fuels fast and equitably?
During London Climate Action Week 2026, we hosted a free panel discussion with artists and activists at the front of creative climate action to explore how the arts can support an urgent transition, and how principles of climate justice rooted in liberatory futures must shape that shift.
We were proud to hold an honest, urgent space that named the root causes of the climate crisis and exposed how the same system profiting from extracting coal, oil and gas fuels genocide and ecocide.
Kumi Naidoo anchored us in our power as global majority decision-makers. We heard how alternative policy forums like the Fossil Fuel Treaty are advancing new fronts for global political support, and how initiatives like Global Artivism strengthen cultural action amongst creators.
Dominique Palmer shared how youth-led initiatives are gaining momentum and how artists are getting involved with powerful campaigns such as Stop Rosebank.
Chris Garrard from Culture Unstained shared how organisations can ethically sustain themselves by seeking alternative form of funding away from complicit sponsors.
Zamzam Ibrahim reflected on how JB’s Creative Climate Changemakers (CCC) programme contributes to systemic change rooted in climate justice.
Watch the event
Culture’s Role in a Justice-led Fossil Fuel Phase-out
Saturday 27 June 2026 | Somerset House
our speakers
Kumi Naidoo
Kumi Naidoo is a South African human rights and environmental justice activist, who is currently the President of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. He is the former Secretary-General of Amnesty International (2018-2020) and the first person from the Global South to lead Greenpeace International (2009-2015). He is an advisor for the Community Arts Network. He serves as a global ambassador for Africans Rising for Unity, Justice, Peace and Dignity. His family started the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism to build on the positive legacies left by popular South African rapper Rikhado “Riky Rick” Makhado through his music and life’s work. Through this Foundation, he co-founded the Global Artivism Initiative. Kumi is also the author of award-winning Letters To My Mother: The Makings of a Troublemaker and the host of the podcast Power, People and Planet.
Zamzam Ibrahim
Zamzam Ibrahim is a British-Somali organiser and climate justice activist working across migration, education, and social movements. A former President of the National Union of Students UK and Vice President of the European Students’ Union, she is currently Co-Lead of the Alliance for Youth Organising, Director of Somalis for Sustainability, a facilitator for Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Climate Leadership programme, and Youth Advisor to the UN’s Green Jobs Pact. Her work focuses on supporting organisers and communities to build power, strengthen movements, and drive change from the grassroots to the global.
Dominique Palmer
Dominique Palmer is a Climate Justice Activist, Speaker, Author and advocate of slow fashion based in the U.K. She is a coordinator in Climate Live, global youth-led concerts harnessing the power of music to engage, educate and empower, on the Steering Committee for the Youth Climate Justice Fund- the first global youth led climate fund, an activist for #StopRosebank, writes op-eds and pieces for published books, and on the Youth Council for New Zero World. She also harnesses the creative power of the arts to communicate climate issues, and finding joy through uniting. She became an environmentalist after discovering how air pollution was impacting her community, and started her journey in climate action. The same year she was involved in organising the September 2019 climate strikes which brought 300,000 people on the streets in the U.K, and inspiring people across the world to take climate action.” Palmer is a winner of the prestigious Planetary Health Award, and in 2023, was honoured as a ‘Young Leader’ at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards. She was also named in Forbes 2020 Top U.K Environmentalists List for her work. She was named one of the U.K’s most high profile youth activists on Sky News, and has featured in major publications including British Vogue, DAZED, the Sunday Times Style, and Global Citizen. In 2024, she was named on the Future Figures list by BBC 1xtra. Dominique’s debut children’s book Planet Protectors was published by Harper Collins in Spring 2026.
Chris Garrard
Chris Garrard (they/he) is the Co-founder and Co-director of Culture Unstained, a campaigns and research organisation that has helped to turn the tide on fossil fuel sponsorship of museums, galleries and theatres across the UK. He is also an art activist and has devised and coordinated large-scale creative protests, and currently directs an activist choir. He has a doctorate in composition from the University of Oxford, where he wrote music in response to the climate crisis as well as an opera based on Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. In 2022-24, he was also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project ‘Performing Resistance: Theatre and performance in 21st century workers’ movements’ at the University of Exeter.
Chair: Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso
Taghrid joined Julie’s Bicycle’s Senior Leadership Team as Head of Programmes in March 2024. She is a cultural worker with fifteen years of curatorial, producing, and educational experience working across contemporary performance, multi-art form festivals, participatory arts, and cross-cultural programmes. Prior to JB she was Joint CEO at Shubbak Festival, where she was committed to forging more just cultural ecologies; developing collaborative and decolonial curatorial approaches and artistic development opportunities that centre equity while reducing access barriers to the arts. She is passionate about the transformative power of culture to mobilise for the environment, social and climate justice; particularly in relation to restoring nature, food and land sovereignty, resilience, circular economy, just transition, ending fossil fuel capitalism, and the liberation of indigenous peoples. She frequently presents, speaks and leads workshops across JB’s programmes, including Creative Climate Changemakers. She is a trustee with the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, Book Works, and Another Sky.
let’s work together
We are building the infrastructure to host these spaces more regularly. Get in touch if you’d like to partner with us on climate justice in the future.
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