Artist Climate Action Residency
CALLING ALL ARTISTS!
APPLICATIONS DUE MAY 1, 2026
KEY DETAILS:
· Four kamaʻāina artists will be selected from across the State.
· Each artist will receive a stipend of $7,000 for materials, shipping and travel.
· Artists will collaborate with climate action occurring at the County agencies in the places where the artist resides.
· Artwork will be exhibited at the Capitol Modern, the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum in Honolulu in early 2027.
Click here to submit your application: https://forms.gle/RDD5ahuXojpuBDgt6
The Hawaiʻi State Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission’s (CCMAC) is running an innovative Climate Action Artist Residency program. This Artist’s residency engages local artists in the implementation of Hawaiʻi’s Climate Action Pathways (CAP) through creating works across a range of artistic media.
Through art, this unique program aims to inspire and connect Hawaiʻi residents to critical climate change challenges.
The selected artists engage in key topics from the Climate Action Pathways, including cultural knowledge, land stewardship, waste management, energy efficiency, transportation decarbonization, and community resilience. The finished artworks are exhibited at the Capitol Modern, the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum in Honolulu.
This project is a partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program and Capitol Modern. The project aligns with the CCMAC’s mission to promote ambitious, climate-neutral, and culturally responsive strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation in Hawaiʻi.
Selected artists will participate in monthly cohort meetings (1-1.5 hrs) from June to December 2026 and be partnered with a county department where they live developing climate action on the ground. Artists will engage with topics that are relevant for the local context (i.e. Food Waste, Fire risk, Agriculture, Energy, etc.). This will involve learning about
the climate related challenges and actions that the county is active in, working with the county department to get to know more about this topic over a period of 6 months (June-December 2026) through: monthly meetings and site
visits.
By the end of 2026 artists will have their work ready to be exhibited in the Capitol Modern, the Hawaiʻi State Museum in Honolulu at the start of 2027.
We welcome applications from local artists of all media including painting, illustration, sculpture, ceramics, music, digital, videography, clothing and textiles, photography, and many more!
Click here to submit your application: https://forms.gle/RDD5ahuXojpuBDgt6
About the program
Art in Action
The first cohort of 4 artists, Gillian Dueñas, Benjamin Fairfield, Erin Voss, Keisha Tanaka, were selected in the summer of 2024 from a pool of 65 applications from artists across Hawai’i. Over several months the artists met, engaged with local communities and developed their work in photography, painting, graphic art, and instrument making and music. In October 2025 their work was shown at Capitol Modern in the exhibition titled Kaiāulu: Rising Together.
Explore the full exhibit program here:
Keisha Tanaka, Erin Voss, Gillian Dueñas, and Ben Fairfield (left to right), Capitol Modern 2025. Photo credit Udi Mandel
