Leading on Climate Amid Longstanding Structural Inequities
How Youth Are Turning Art, Storytelling, and Lived Experience into Climate Leadership
Why the Climate Change Makers Gallery Exists
For many young people, climate change is not a distant or abstract issue. It shows up in everyday life, through extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, displacement, and uncertainty about the future. These impacts do not exist in isolation. They are layered onto longstanding structural inequities tied to race, income, housing, health, and access to resources, conditions young people did not create, but must navigate.
The Climate Change Makers Gallery was created in response to this reality. It offers a public, digital space where youth can share how climate change affects their lives and communities, using art and storytelling to make their experiences visible. Just as importantly, it recognizes young people as leaders with insight, creativity, and agency, not simply as those most affected by climate impacts.
The Impact of the Climate Change Makers Gallery
Launched in 2024, the Climate Change Makers Gallery is a public digital gallery of youth climate artivism. It brings together artwork and stories that reflect real experiences of climate change and invites families and communities into conversations about preparedness, resilience, and action.
Since its launch, the Gallery has welcomed more than 6,700 visitors from the United States and around the world. In just the past seven days, people visited the Gallery from Annapolis, New York, and Phoenix, as well as Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. This reach shows how youth-created work can travel far beyond its point of origin, creating space for young people to lead climate conversations through creative expression and ensuring their voices are seen, valued, and taken seriously.
From Creative Expression to Climate Leadership
The Climate Change Makers Gallery is part of ACESWorld’s Climate Change Makers ecosystem that supports youth and families in moving from awareness to action.
Youth learn about the climate impacts affecting their communities in ways that are age-appropriate and relevant. Families access trauma-informed preparedness resources for extreme heat, hurricanes, flooding, drought, and severe storms. Young people create and share art that reflects what they are living through. Together, youth and families turn learning and expression into planning, leadership, and community engagement.
By embedding the Gallery within this ecosystem, creative expression becomes more than storytelling. It becomes a starting point for preparedness, leadership, and collective action, centered on youth voice and strengthened by family and community support.
How You Can Get Involved
Explore the Gallery
Spend time with youth-created art and stories that bring climate impacts to life.
Help Youth Add Their Voices
Host a Climate Change Makers workshop or encourage young people in your community to share their art and stories in the Gallery.
Become a Climate Change Maker
Join families, educators, and community leaders as they work alongside youth to build climate resilience through creativity, preparation, and action.
Your donation helps sustain the Climate Change Makers Gallery and expand opportunities for youth to share their voices, build leadership, and strengthen climate resilience in their communities.
