While we were exploring through the floors of the COP22 green zone, we found lots of interesting inventions, organizations and art pieces. One piece that I found really beautiful was called Flowers Of Change. As you can tell from the title the artwork had something to do with flowers, and you’re right! The installation included flowers made from recycled plastic bottles, they were cut and designed to look like the most extravagant flowers I have ever seen. There were all colors, shapes, and sizes, flowers were sprinkled throughout the platform. The petals were shaped to form frizzled flowers but also pink rosy flowers.

The artist of Flowers Of Change is Pierre Estève  and he comes from France. Although I never got to actually meet with him and talk about his piece of work I found out that Flowers for change is a larger project all over the globe to raise awareness to eradicate plastic from our everyday lives. They usually hold workshops where every participant should bring twelve plastic bottles and through this step they believe that people will become more aware of how much plastic we consume in our everyday lives. The next step is to learn how to make a ‘flower of change’ with the artist Pierre Estève. They then hold an exhibition for anybody to have a look at the flowers and learn more about the projects, just like I did at the COP 22.

Awareness projects like this are the first step to tackling the plastic issue all over the world. We first have to educate and make people aware of the problem before we can expect them to come up with solutions. This is also a fun, creative, hands-on way to learn in a fun way on the heavy topic of plastic consumption. Artworks are a great way to get people to pay attention and relate to things. This definitely got caught my attention and got me interested, way to go Flowers of Change.

To learn more go visit their website: http://flowersofchange.org/en/

Written by Isabel Wijsen