The CARAVANE – Climate Art Fusion project brought together young and emerging artists from across Europe to explore climate justice through diverse, interdisciplinary artistic practices, running from January 2024 through December 2025.
The initiative focused on how cultural creation can spark community awareness and mobilize collective responsibility regarding environmental issues. At the heart of the project were five transnational co-creation labs distributed across Europe.
These active hubs focused on different mediums to engage youth: Spain explored graphic and visual arts; Croatia specialized in film and audiovisual storytelling; Slovenia hosted labs for hip hop culture and Theatre of the Oppressed; and Georgia connected climate awareness with cultural heritage and sustainable tourism and the Netherlands which hosted a multidisciplinary scholarly symposium.
The project’s final phase launched with the Twin City International Tourism Film Festival, hosted at the University of Málaga. This special event served as a cultural bridge between the coastal cities of Marbella, Spain, and Batumi, Georgia, screening independent films and youth-led ArtLab productions that focused on local identity and sustainable tourism rather than conventional marketing.
The journey culminated on November 27–28, 2025, with the CARAVANE Final Festival at the University of Málaga. Transforming the campus into an open civic space, the event showcased a rich mix of documentary screenings, participatory Forum Theatre, and music-based performances that addressed environmental and social conflicts directly with the audience.
A central pillar of the celebration was highlighting youth-led ArtLabs, giving emerging creators between the ages of 18 and 30—including individuals from marginalized and vulnerable groups—their first major international platform.
The festival successfully solidified a pan-European network of artists and educators, leaving behind a sustainable, adaptable ecosystem of participatory methodologies that continue to inspire action for climate justice.
—-The partners and their role in the Final Festival —-
-University of Málaga (Spain) – Lead Partner –
-The Centre for Cultural Activities (CKD) (Croatia) –
-Zavod Bob (Slovenia) -Social Climate (Spain) –
-The Black Sea Global Art League (Georgia) –
GIRES – Global Institute for Research, Education & Scholarship (The Netherlands)
Spain (Host University & Visual Arts Lab):
The University of Málaga served as the vital institutional and physical anchor for the entire festival, transforming its campus into an open, democratic civic forum for public dialogue.
Alongside hosting the events, the Spanish contingent, Social Climate, showcased the outputs of their long-term co-creation lab, which explored urgent ecological themes through graphic and visual mediums. Festival attendees were able to engage with hands-on sustainable art practices, including an interactive painting session where participants created original artworks exploring the relationship between humanity and nature.
Croatia (Film & Audiovisual Storytelling Lab)
The Croatian partners brought the immense power of visual media to the center of the festival’s program. Their dedicated co-creation lab focused on utilizing film and experiential audiovisual storytelling to communicate pressing social and environmental issues across linguistic borders. During the screenings, Croatia presented independent and youth-led productions, which investigated the concepts of regional identity, solitude, and sustainable tourism.
Slovenia (Hip Hop & Theatre of the Oppressed Labs)
The Slovenian organization contributed a deeply kinetic, emotional, and political dimension to the campus by presenting two distinct, youth-led co-creation labs. The first utilized the creative disciplines of hip hop culture—including live dance, beatmaking, graffiti, and MCing—as raw tools for social commentary and ecological resistance. The second lab focused heavily on the Theatre of the Oppressed, facilitating interactive Forum Theatre workshops where the audience was invited to step out of their passive roles, physically enter the staged conflict scenarios, and collectively negotiate solutions to real-world climate injustices.
Georgia (Cultural Heritage & Sustainable Tourism Lab)
The Georgian delegation highlighted the deep intersection between environmental preservation, local heritage, and responsible travel. Emerging filmmakers from the Georgian ArtLabs screened an extensive, sensory-rich selection of short films. By framing travel as a human encounter rather than commercial consumption, their cinematic presentations and accompanying panel debates demonstrated how digital media can ethically preserve regional rituals.
The Netherlands (Recording activities and symposium organizer)
The Dutch delegation, anchored the project’s academic and reflective frameworks. It also throughout these milestone events, the Dutch team acted as the primary archival repository by recording all activities to establish a permanent visual history of the cross-border cultural process. Beyond structural logistics, they directly facilitated critical knowledge-sharing by hosting specialized educational sessions during the International Symposium in Amsterdam.