The World Resources Institute is partnering with artists at the California Institute of the Arts to explore how art can spark conversation and inspire action around the ocean as a vital solution to the world’s climate challenges. Drawing from the WRI’s Blue Papers—a vision for a cleaner, more resilient future with the ocean at its heart — the artists collaborated, working across disciplines, from sound and sculpture to performance and graphic design. What emerges is a chorus of perspectives, unified by a deep sense of hope and climate optimism. Blue Echo invites us to consider how behavioral and perspective shifts accumulate into ripples that create environmental impact across the globe. In gathering these works, the exhibition transforms individual expression into collective resonance—an echo that, together, we can turn into a call for lasting change.

Project Goals

Blue Echo centers art that seeks to act as entry points into ocean literacy and formally expresses concepts held in WRI’s deep, research-driven work. Simultaneously, the grouping aims to showcase work across a variety of media (Sound, Performance, Sculpture, and Design ) to provide a multitude of entry points for public audiences. Many of these works also incorporate interactive learning as a core principle of their design, asking audiences to engage with both the work and the subject matter for more meaningful engagement. All of this is done while being nimble and scalable with the hopes to travel to as many places as possible so that knowledge can “echo,” creating a call and response between the work, the ocean, and our communities.