Care in the climate crisis: A collage

This visual essay shares Tentacular , a participatory collage project exploring care in the context of the climate crisis. Developed during a residency at The Ethics Centre in Sydney, the project invited collaborators – ranging from Elders and artists to scientists and caregivers – to contribute visual responses to climate emotions using a shared collage scaffold. Through co-creation, Tentacular became both a vessel for diverse stories and a method for surfacing emotional and ecological entanglements not easily expressed through traditional research. The process highlighted the potential of collage to navigate the complexity of climate change, enabling symbolic expression and unexpected insights through tactile making. Participants’ contributions revealed metaphors of loss, connection and responsibility, offering an emergent, relational understanding of care across human and more-than-human worlds. This visual essay underscores the power of creative inquiry to deepen engagement with planetary health and collective meaning-making in times of ecological distress.