COAL, an association created in 2008 by professionals of contemporary art, ecology and research, mobilizes artists and cultural actors on societal and environmental issues and promotes the essential role of creation and culture in raising awareness, transforming territories, and implementing concrete solutions. The three active co-founders of COAL are Lauranne Germond - who has also directed the association and all its artistic projects since its creation -, Loïc Fel, Clément Willemin.

The global ecological crisis is now affecting all societies, territories and activities, whether through climate change, resource scarcity, various forms of pollution or the erosion of biodiversity. This is intertwined with its economic and social consequences. But this crisis is also a cultural crisis. The dominant values and representations, our globalized culture, determine our individual and collective behaviors, and ultimately our collective impacts on the planet. Therefore, the solutions to this crisis can only be political and technical. Culture can be a major player in this. This is what COAL has been promoting since its foundation in 2008.

COAL is at the origin of about fifty exhibitions for important cultural structures all over France (such as the Anglet Biennial, the Société du Grand Paris, La Condition Publique, Unesco, La Villette, la Gaîté Lyrique, the FIAC, the Domaine départemental de Chamarande, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, la Halle aux Sucres…). COAL also promotes the emergence of a culture of ecology and the transformation of territories through art by developing artistic programs specifically designed for the territories in which they are located, such as the programs Appel d’Air and Sols fiction for the Grand Paris, Nature in Solidum for the Parc Régional du Haut-Jura or Stuwa for the Syndicat d’initiative du Sundgau.

COAL awards the COAL Art and Environment Prize and the COAL Student Prize – Culture and Diversity every year and participates in the knowledge and dissemination of the theme through European cooperation (coordinator of La Table et le Territoire and French member of the ACT – Art Climate Transition, Imagine2020 and Creative Climate Leadership networks), consultancy, the organization of numerous symposiums and conferences, publications (publication of the book Art et Écologie in 2021), as well as the animation of Ressource0.com, the first media and resource center dedicated to the promotion of national and international initiatives linking art and ecology. COAL also develops workshops and trainings for the cultural sector.

These connections between culture and sustainable development are now the subject of a real international movement in which COAL participates as the first French actor. As such, COAL implemented in 2015, ArtCOP21, the Cultural Agenda of COP21 which, with more than 550 events, was able to reveal and include culture in the agenda of the ecological transition. In 2020, COAL created VIVANT, a Cultural Season for Biodiversity within the framework of the IUCN World Conservation Congress in partnership with the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, the Ministry of Culture, the IUCN and the OFB. In 2021, COAL co-founds with Fibois France the Nuits des Forêts, a nationwide festival for the general public, which invites people to discover the forest close to home, and to understand its multiple ecological, economic and cultural functions. COAL has also launched in France the Murs d’Audubon, a vast art project in the public space consisting in painting, on the walls of cities, frescos representing birds threatened by climate change in collaboration with the LPO and National Audubon Society, which gave birth to the Audubon Mural Project movement in the United States. In 2022, following the One Ocean Summit and while the United Nations has proclaimed 2021-2030 the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development, COAL, with its partners, wished to mobilize all artistic disciplines to weave a red thread dedicated to the seas and oceans throughout the year: the Season Ocean.