Artists took up residence in the council's Climate Resilience and Sanctuary Borough teams.

Arts Curator Dima Karout was embedded in the council’s Sanctuary Borough team. She ran print-making workshops in local libraries around Lewisham’s meaningful places, and visited a local hostel where people recently arrived in the borough were struggling to integrate. Conversations around home and belonging were transformed into poems and showcased alongside the prints in an art exhibition at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and an art book, titled Internal Landscapes.

Local theatre company Teatro Vivo worked alongside the Climate Resilience team. They created characters called the ‘Lewisham Usherettes’ who walked the streets, gathering residents’ views on climate issues. Combined with council research, these conversations were woven into a new participatory theatre show, Lewisham Speaks, performed in parks and high streets in all 19 wards of the borough. They also created a community-led Climate Manifesto, displayed at People’s Day.