On Thursday, November 11th, the DigitalArt4Climate COP26 Press Conference was held in Glasgow to discuss the role of art and blockchain technology in building a sustainable creative economy. Among the panelists was Arts Help Chief Marketing Officer Janice Lau-Pearson, who officially announced the launch of Conscious Crypto Creator as well as the first recipient of the Artist Grant.
Also seated at the panel was Miroslav Polzner, the Founder of DigitalArt4Climate, Irina Karagyuar, the Head of Metaverse Growth at Unique Network, and Elena Corchero, Director of Technology and Innovation at Dow Jones Live.
The conference opened with the announcement of the DigitalArt4Climate Art Competition winner, Bricx Martillo Dumas, a digital artist from the Philippines whose work Nexus he describes as “a visual representation of how our simple everyday lifestyle affects our environment, our ecosystem and how we struggle to live.” The NFT gallery of the 30 finalist digital artworks is now live.
As Arts Help is partnered with DigitalArt4Climate, Lau-Pearson spoke more on the collaboration between the two organizations.
“We are extremely excited to be a part of this movement and lend our platform to advance this very important message of DigitalArt4Climate through our movement Conscious Crypto Creator,” announced Lau-Pearson.
The Conscious Crypto Creator, or CCC, is two-fold. First, Arts Help will be rolling out a mini masterclass curriculum that is free and open to anyone who is interested in learning more about NFTs, from crypto and blockchain 101 to the environmental impact of the developing technology.
“We feel that as an organization with 4 million artists and fans, we have the duty to educate and to empower them with the knowledge and the right tools to pick the right platform and the right technology to monetize in the space of NFT,” explained Lau-Pearson.
Second, Arts Help will be sharing resources to empower CCC Verified Artists to use their art in the fight for transparency and sustainable crypto-validation practices. “We’re really excited that we have a $3.5 million Artist Grant that will allow us to mobilize artists from around the world to continue to advance this very important message,” said Lau-Pearson, also announcing DigitalArt4Climate as the very first grant recipient.
"With DigitalArt4Climate we aim to harness the potential of digital art for inspiring society's engagement in climate action and for systemic solutions towards resource mobilization for youth climate action empowerment," says Miroslav Polzer. "While promoting the uptake of digital art solutions for climate action empowerment, we see it as indispensable to also critically reflect upon potential adverse effects of digital art on the environment."
"Therefore we are delighted to work with Arts Help to help promote the Conscious Crypto Creator program and to jointly build the capacity for the creative community to choose the right technological solutions that will be a win-win-win: for the artists, for global community and for the planet," says Polzer.
“We are in a very pivotal moment as this whole economy is taking hold and actually gaining a ton of traction,” concludes Lau-Pearson. “We, together, need to demand that the new technology and the development of NFTs land on the right side of this climate fight.”
Watch the press conference in its entirety here.
To learn more and to sign up for the Conscious Crypto Creator program, click here.