Sam Judd: Will creative minds save the world?

Photo / Thinkstock

Trying to fix the massive environmental problems that have been created by greed and stupidity is not easy.

Those who are trying to curb the tide need to be able to use all the tools they can get. One such tool is most certainly creative thinking and art, which tells a story that can inspire people to make changes.

This was proven at the Rio +20 conference when the combination of political talks achieved a relatively small result, however an amazing sculpture of fish made from plastic bottles had perhaps a comparable impact worldwide to the event itself.

I stumbled upon one great local example in Victoria Park the other day - artists Sarah Smuts-Kennedy and Taarati Taiaroa have created a pop-up installation called The Park.

It is a series of cleverly designed and beautiful beehives that encourages public participation to grow pollen hotels that feed the bees, making a "pollen park".

Bees are, of course, vital to food production and environmental health. I absolutely love this concept and was very pleased to see the obvious success it has delivered in giving people easy ways to do good for the environment in a collaborative way.

This story becomes even more interesting when we find that a published scientific study from the UK has shown that there are more wild bees in suburbia than in farmland.

Last time I wrote about bees a lobbyist from the pesticide industry tried to claim that a report from a panel of international experts with over 800 peer-reviewed scientific papers was "not robust" compared to studies that were no doubt commission by his lobby group or members.

The fact is, paid lobbyists, pubic relations companies and communications professionals will argue anything their clients tell them till the cows come home and simply end up creating conflict. Art - especially when it is participatory traverses these issues by making a bold statement that is very hard to criticise.

We created this video a few years ago with over 200 school children from rubbish that was removed from Rangitoto Island during a coastal clean-up:

But by far my favourite environmental art activation comes from local creative entrepreneurs: The Roots. They activated the suburb of Otara during inorganic collections day and ran this awesome competition to make treasure from peoples' trash.

If anyone out there has examples of creative solutions to environmental problems, please email me or leave a comment below. I am sure there are plenty of people who would love to see them.