May 6, 2023 – Sep 7, 2023
In partnership with UNC Charlotte’s Public History program and the Charlotte Teachers Institute.
Climates of Inequality is a participatory public memory project created by students, educators, and community leaders in over 20 cities across the U.S. and around the world. Local teams work together to activate the histories of “frontline” communities: those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but bear its heaviest burdens. Their multimedia portraits expose the roots of current environmental injustice and share generations of frontline communities’ strategies for resistance, resilience, and mitigation. The project promotes future visions for confronting the climate crisis that understand, and undo, past environmental harms. By compiling these histories in an evolving, internationally traveling exhibit with local events at every stop, this project seeks to affirm frontline communities’ work and inspire others to action for climate and environmental justice.
Within the traveling exhibit of multimedia stories from across North and South America, a featured exhibit, “Climate Refugees in the City of Creeks,” explores histories of environmental change, displacement, and migration in Charlotte. Showcasing voices and artwork of students, teachers, and community members, it highlights Charlotte’s contributions to the environmental justice movement, from the first Earth Day in 1970 to today.
Climates of Inequality is a project of the Humanities Action Lab, a coalition of universities led by Rutgers University-Newark working with issue organizations and public spaces to create traveling public projects on the past, present, and future of pressing social issues.
