Happy Earth Month! Now the entire month of April, rather than just one day, is dedicated to celebrating our planet and taking action to protect it. In honor of Earth Month, the USC Arts & Climate Collective, or the ACC, hosted their 3rd annual Arts & Climate Collective Festival.
Outside of the Hancock Foundation Building, students and artists were soaking up the sun, and enjoying some free food while sharing their sustainable art. Even USC faculty were showing out at the festival, like Marianna Babboni displaying her paper mâché wishing tree on behalf of USC Urban Trees Initiative
“There are a lot of folks at USC working on green initiatives, so there’s plenty of ways to get involved and find your niche, whether it’s urban forestry or corals there’s always something interesting going on that you should get involved in.”
Junior political science and public relations major Au Chung is the ACC’s community Engagement Coordinator and one of the host organizers for the event. They emphasize the importance of the ACC initiative in showcasing student artwork that connects storytelling with environmental justice.
“This event is kind of what I see as USC’s main Earth Month event because we have almost every single Earth or sustainability related student organizations ... we have local organizations and USC offices here, so it’s really all hands on deck. Everybody’s here, everybody’s showing out. We have workshops, we have free food, we have student art, whether that be from our ACC cohorts or from our, like, partner organizations. But we’re really here to provide students with community, um, trying to find people who also care about the environment. So I think that’s really cool just the building of our green community.”
Even though Earth Month is only for 30 days, don’t let it stop you from celebrating our planet every day.