Do you work in the Cultural and Creative Industries? More than 80,000 people in Ireland do, but many of us don’t necessarily think of ourselves as creative practitioners. Obviously there are artists and performers, writers and musicians, illustrators and designers. But there’s also a whole world of other folk – programmers and curators, researchers and facilitators, event organisers and festival-makers, stage technicians and script editors, theatre, nightclub and venue managers, educators, advertisers and set-builders. A massive network of high-functioning eccentrics, a truly dedicated creative force right here on this island. If you’re reading this, you’re probably part of this community, and if so, we’re calling on you.
For the past decade, the evidence has been mounting that the creative sector (yes, you) has a huge role to play in the climate conversation.This is far more deeper than your typical surface level climate conversation.. We’re facing a set of messy, entangled ‘wicked problems’ – biodiversity loss (the destruction of nature), waste and pollution, resource scarcity, carbon emissions and climate change, income inequality, mass migration, polarisation. Termed the polycrisis, we really are in a pickle.
It’s difficult to visualise these problems in reality, despite the images we see on our TV screens and social media feeds every day. As a child of the 80s, I grew up with an appetite for science fiction movies and found it very easy to imagine a dystopian future for humankind, devoid of greenery and filled with wondrous technology. Did these authors / prophets do us a disservice? Because now when we see the fires in California or when the skies over New York turn orange, when entire towns in Spain and Italy are washed away, when we read about the Doomsday Glacier melting or mass coral bleaching events, it all feels like science fiction – but it’s very real.
Back in 2015, the Lancet Commission on planetary health found that “far-reaching changes to the structure and function of the Earth’s natural systems represent a growing threat to human health.” The first major challenge reported by this team of scientists, that has to be addressed to maintain and enhance human health in the face of increasingly harmful environmental trends, is a set of “conceptual and empathy failures (imagination challenges), such as an over-reliance on gross domestic product as a measure of human progress, the failure to account for future health and environmental harms over present day gains, and the disproportionate effect of those harms on the poor and those in developing nations.”
Imagination challenges—It’s right there in front of us, and who better to rise to a challenge of imagination than our creative sector? We are the story-tellers, the visionaries, the drivers of cultural narrative. We are the dreamers of dreams, and dream together we must. But this moment isn’t just about envisioning a better world, this is about manifesting it. This isn’t just about switching to LED bulbs, or separating our recycling, it’s bigger than that. This is about asking the big questions, and creating the conditions for a new cohort of empowered, equipped transformative creative thinkers to emerge and thrive.
On April 10th, 2025, the team here at Native Events and Julie’s Bicycle Europe are setting the stage for Ireland’s creative sector to start having these conversations. We’ve grown frustrated with climate action / the environment / sustainability being shoe-horned into a panel discussion here or a workshop there, at various creative industries events over the past few years. It’s time now, to dedicate some time to this, to allow ourselves the space to really explore the polycrisis, together, as a community. So we’re launching the REALISE SUMMIT, and we want you to come along.
You can expect a jam-packed programme on the day, with leaders from across the worlds of film and tv, theatre and the arts, festivals and events, musicians, artists and performers. We’ll be showcasing loads of brilliant projects already underway, and introducing sustainable suppliers and resources for everyone who wants to start doing things differently and reducing the environmental impacts of their work. But maybe more importantly, our aim with REALISE is to provide the opportunity to get involved with impactful projects in nature, energy, materials and communications. To join forces with like-minded folk and start to catalyse change in your industry. We want to bring people together to share, learn and to take tangible action.
The REALISE Summit is the first of its kind in Ireland, but it won’t be the last. At Native Events, the threads we plan to weave over the coming years are those of connection and collaboration. Just last week, we hosted a panel discussion with the forward-thinking Dublin International Film Festival, exploring the idea of festivals being catalysts for collective climate action. At the REALISE Summit, we plan to create a systems map of the creative sector so we can start to visualise, and realise our collective agency and start working together in a cohesive way. In September, we plan to showcase the results of new partnerships at the Earth Rising Festival. Next year, we will build on this work. We are creating touchpoints across the year and across Ireland’s landscape of creative professionals from all artforms to work together in response to the polycrisis. An entangled web of messy problems is going to need a set of diverse skills and perspectives, a network of thinkers and doers, a resilient community of hard-working, creative, passionate people to solve. That’s why we need you.
Tickets and programme details for REALISE are available at https://www.nativeevents.ie/realise-summit/.
The REALISE Summit is brought to you in partnership with IMMA Venues at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and the Regional Waste Management Planning Offices (RWMPOs), our Circular Economy Partner.
We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
