Climate Change and Culture | UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

This policy brief is part of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s (UCL IIPP) publication series.

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Climate Change and Culture: Reimagining an inclusive, sustainable and creative future | UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), IIPP Policy Brief No. 36, published in 2026

Authors:

• Mariana Mazzucato | Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London, and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Executive Summary:

Climate change is driving systems toward tipping points that require urgent action, and the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action. Yet the case cannot be made in the language of economics alone. Technocratic solutions cannot make a different future feel possible, desirable, or worth its cost.

That is what arts and culture can do. From visual arts to music and design, they can become the social infrastructure of a just transition: how societies imagine alternative futures, build the legitimacy to pursue them, and hold together as change happens. Yet culture is still treated as peripheral to the economy: a cost to be cut rather than a precondition for transformation.

This paper sets out four shifts that place culture at the centre of a new economy: 

• shaping a new direction for economic growth that is inclusive, creative and sustainable;
• building legitimacy from the bottom up, with communities
• shaping climate policy through their lived experience;
• recognising cultural institutions and coalitions as essential infrastructure, from national bodies to community spaces;
• funding culture as investment, not expenditure, with the “creative bureaucracies” to co-create what comes next

Reference:

Mazzucato, M. (2026). Climate Change and Culture: Reimagining an Inclusive, Sustainable and Creative Future. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, IIPP Policy Brief Series (IIPP Policy Brief No. 36, published in 2026). ISSN 2635-0122.

Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2026/jun/climate-change-and-culture

This policy brief is part of the applied research programme led by Professor Mariana Mazzucato on The Public Value of Art.

This policy brief is part of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s (UCL IIPP) publication series.

Explore more working papers and policy reports here.