In an age of rapid globalisation, fashion, music and film have grown far beyond entertainment. They carry culture, and increasingly they carry responsibility too. As they shape, reflect and preserve who we are, they also challenge social norms and push us towards a more conscious relationship with the planet.
Five voices show how. Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Kendrick Lamar, Ava DuVernay and Wangari Maathai each, in their own way, reveal where creativity, culture and the future of our world meet.
Fashion
Fashion
Music
Film
Advocacy
Together they offer a vision of art, fashion and music that is not only relevant but responsible. Their work asks us to do more than consume: to cherish, protect and sustain both our cultural and our natural landscapes.
I · Fashion
Weaving Culture and Sustainability into the Fabric of Change
“Youth culture now really looks back and embraces the past but keeps it contemporary but not sticking to one particular style.”
Alexander McQueen
Fashion has a rare ability to fold history into the present, and few designers did it with more force than Alexander McQueen. His work celebrated the art of fashion while questioning the industry’s appetite for excess.
His Autumn/Winter 2009 collection, The Horn of Plenty, made that critique explicit. McQueen reworked silhouettes and motifs from his own earlier collections and staged the show on a heap of props and debris from past shows, turning fashion’s waste back on itself. It was a pointed comment on throwaway culture, excess and the cost of constant newness.
McQueen’s legacy, daring and deeply rooted in historical technique, shows how reverence for the past and a challenge to the status quo can live in the same garment.
“Don’t invest in fashion, but invest in the world. Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.”
Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood treated fashion as self-expression and rebellion. Her punk roots and her politics were inseparable from her clothes. For her, real culture was never about passing trends but about values that last, and about respect for people and the planet.
1981
The Pirate collection
1985
The Mini-Crini
Climate Revolution
Activism on the runway and beyond
Her message
“Buy less, choose well, make it last”
Designs like the Pirate collection and the Mini-Crini were cultural statements as much as garments, fusing British heritage with anti-consumerist ideas. In later life Westwood turned her platform fully towards activism through her Climate Revolution campaign, taking environmental messages onto the runway and urging shoppers to “buy less, choose well, make it last”.
Westwood, who died in 2022, left a legacy rooted in counter-culture: a reminder that fashion, seen through a cultural lens, can be a powerful tool for self-expression and critique. Her influence still encourages people to invest not just in clothing, but in the stories and values that shape who we are.
II · Music
Cultural Soundtracks for Social and Environmental Change
“People are used to music that justifies street culture, but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.”
Kendrick Lamar
Artists have long used music to explore culture, identity and injustice. Kendrick Lamar goes further than most, asking not just what life looks like in communities like his native Compton, but why.
good kid, m.A.A.d city · 2012To Pimp a Butterfly · 2015“Alright”“The Blacker the Berry”
Albums like good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly confront racial inequality, poverty and the systems that shape marginalised communities. “Alright” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, a song of resilience in the face of injustice. “The Blacker the Berry” takes on systemic racism and its psychological toll head-on.
The Connection We See
Lamar doesn’t set out to write about the environment. But the places he documents, neighbourhoods shaped by underinvestment and scarce resources, are often the same communities that carry the heaviest burden of pollution and environmental neglect. Seen this way, his work shows how poverty, marginalisation and environmental injustice reinforce one another, and why the fight for social justice and the fight for a healthy planet belong together.
Lamar’s music is cultural commentary at its sharpest, asking listeners to consider not just the what of culture but the why. That shift, from describing conditions to questioning them, is exactly where lasting change begins.
III · Film
Visual Storytelling as Cultural Reflection and Change
“If you’re doing something outside of dominant culture, there’s not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.”
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay has built a body of work that puts the stories of marginalised communities at the centre of cinema.
2014
Selma
2016
13th
2019
When They See Us
2023
Origin
Selma brought Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for voting rights to the screen. 13th traced the line from slavery to mass incarceration in the United States. When They See Us told the story of the five teenagers wrongly convicted in the Central Park jogger case. And Origin, inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, widened the lens globally, drawing connections between systems of hierarchy across the United States, India and Nazi Germany.
Her impact reaches beyond her own films. Through ARRAY, her film distribution and arts collective, DuVernay creates space for filmmakers of colour and women filmmakers whose stories rarely find a platform.
For BLACK PEARL, her work shows that filmmakers can act as cultural custodians. By challenging dominant narratives and widening who gets to tell the story, cinema lays the cultural groundwork any truly inclusive, sustainable future depends on.
IV · Advocacy
The Intersection of Nature, Culture, and Wisdom
“Culture is coded wisdom… wisdom that has been accumulated for thousands of years and generations. Some of that wisdom is coded in our ceremonies, it is coded in our values, it is coded in our songs, in our dances, in our plays.”
Wangari Maathai
For Wangari Maathai, culture and the environment were never separate. In 1977 she founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, mobilising women to plant trees, restore land and earn an income. In 2004 she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The movement became far more than an environmental project. It became a symbol of pride and a tool for development, and by putting women at its heart, it helped them become agents of change in their own communities.
Maathai drew directly on cultural knowledge. She wrote of the sacred mugumo fig tree near her childhood home, which her community protected and would not cut, and of the stream it helped sustain. Such customs, she believed, held practical wisdom about living with nature, wisdom that was lost when those beliefs were abandoned. Her work restored that connection, showing that cultural pride and environmental responsibility belong together.
A Question for You
What does culture mean to you?
Fashion, music and film show how creativity and cultural identity can drive global change. In fashion, McQueen and Westwood challenged the disposable culture of the industry. Through music, Lamar exposes the conditions and inequalities too often left unspoken. Through film, DuVernay widens whose stories are told. Through her activism, Maathai proved that culture and nature cannot be separated.
Looking ahead, creativity must help lead the way. A garment, a song, a film, a tree planted: each invites us to engage with the world, rethink our relationship with nature and celebrate the diversity of human experience. Together, culture and care for the planet hold the key to a future where creativity shapes not just who we are, but the world we build.
