(article drawn from ASEF eNewsletter)
Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) recently announced the launch of “Green Guide for the Philippines,” the 10th in the series Creative Responses to Sustainability published through its arts and culture portal, culture360.
Researched by the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU), the guide aims to provide a contextual overview of the intersection between sustainability and the arts in the Philippines.
As a geographically diverse and environmentally vulnerable country, the guide dives into sustainability challenges faced locally and creative approaches that emerged in response.
In the guide, one can specifically find an overview of the artistic landscape and environmental realities in the Philippines as informed by interviews and experiences of artists, cultural workers, and sustainability advocates.
It also discusses how arts organizations and collectives are responding to sustainability challenges, ranging from exploitation of biodiversity, intensified natural disasters, and marginalization of vulnerable communities.
It also features a directory of 18 organizations based in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, that integrate sustainability-related themes into their artistic initiatives. The 18 organizations reflect an emerging trend in the Philippines arts scene, one where arts organizations are increasingly embodying indigenous or community-centered interpretations of the art.
The guide concludes with recommendations and reflections to all stakeholders for a more sustainable and climate resilient Philippines.
Since 2015, ASEF has been publishing the series Creative Responses to Sustainability. This series of country-specific guides looks at arts organizations that address issues of sustainability in their artistic practice in several countries of Asia and Europe. The previous guides focused on Singapore (2015), Korea (2016), Indonesia (2017), Australia (2018), Portugal (2019), Spain (also 2019), United Kingdom (2021), and India (2025), with the spin-off in the series on the city of Berlin (2017).
