As climate change edges ever closer to the center of public discourse, communities and institutions are grappling with their roles in the crisis—whether it’s through artistic expression or academic partnerships. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, The LAVA Center is preparing to host a three-day festival of short climate change plays, while across the Atlantic, Imperial College London is under scrutiny for its longstanding ties to major fossil fuel companies. Both stories, though separated by an ocean, reveal the complex, often fraught ways in which society is confronting the climate emergency.
The LAVA Center, a community arts hub located at 324 Main Street in Greenfield, will present “The Time Is Now” festival from October 24 to 26, 2025. Each of the festival’s three days will focus on a different theme—resilience, urgency, and hope—offering a tapestry of perspectives on the climate crisis through the medium of theater. Friday’s performances, directed by Ash Goverman, will spotlight resilience with plays like “Science is Dead!” by David Geary, “Consultation” by Dylan Van Den Berg, and “We’re Running Out of Chairs” by Kirby Vicente. Saturday’s program, under Kiersten Samalis’s direction, shifts the mood to urgency with “Space Cat” by Lewis Hetherington, “Appreciation” by Katie Pearl, and “Six Polar Bears Fell Out of the Sky” by Alister Emerson. The festival closes Sunday afternoon with hope-themed works, including “A Letter From the Ocean” by Caridad Svich, “The Mermaid” by Nikhil Katara, and “All Its Tainted Glory” by Georgina HL Escobar, directed by Penney Hulten.
But this isn’t just a weekend of theater. The LAVA Center’s festival is designed to foster deeper community engagement. Alongside play readings, there will be public discussions and a workshop, inviting audience members to reflect and participate—though participation is entirely optional. According to the festival’s organizers, “The Time Is Now acts as an avenue for a larger discussion to create ripple effects throughout the Greenfield community and Pioneer Valley.” Light refreshments will be served after each performance, and for those unable to attend in person, the plays will be available for online purchase for a month following the festival.
The festival’s plays are drawn from Climate Change Theatre Action, a global initiative that presents short plays about the climate crisis in sync with the United Nations COP meetings. The event is made possible through funding from Greening Greenfield and Mass Humanities, and tickets are offered on a sliding scale from $5 to $15, with a $1-2 Card to Culture option to ensure accessibility. The LAVA Center emphasizes inclusivity, noting that its facility is on the ground floor and features an accessible, gender-inclusive bathroom, though it is only partially ADA compliant.
While local communities like Greenfield are using theater to spark dialogue and inspire action, academic institutions are facing their own reckoning over the climate crisis—particularly when it comes to relationships with the fossil fuel industry. In March 2024, Imperial Climate Action (ICA), a group of students, staff, and alumni at Imperial College London, compiled a database detailing 250 connections between the university and fossil fuel companies, some dating back to 1987. These ties include grants, funding, and staff relationships with industry giants such as BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Petronas.
ICA’s volunteers used a web crawler to scour Imperial’s website for mentions of these companies, meticulously removing duplicates and verifying each entry for accuracy. They then wrote plain language summaries of each relationship, which are now publicly available on the ICA website. "It was clear anecdotally that there were many connections between Imperial and fossil fuel companies, and we wanted to quantify that relationship in a clear way," said John, an ICA member, as reported by Felix Online. ICA’s goal, according to John, is not to assign blame but to "highlight the depth of the connections between Imperial and fossil fuel companies that represent a meaningful percentage of all global emissions ever."
The timing of ICA’s investigation is significant. According to Carbon Majors, a historical database tracking emissions from the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, 36 companies—including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell—were responsible for more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2023. The influence of these companies on academic research is a growing concern. A 2020 report from the Corporate Mapping Project and the Parkland Institute found that government and corporate funding continues to favor fossil-fuel-related research over renewable energies and energy efficiency. The pattern extends to the creation of research chairs and institutes, often reinforcing the status quo.
Imperial College, for its part, maintains that it only collaborates with fossil fuel companies on projects related to decarbonisation, as determined by its Imperial Zero Index (IZI) policy. Yet, the university’s own communications have celebrated its partnerships with industry. A 2019 article on Imperial’s News website highlighted the "prosperous relationship with BP," noting that "BP’s collaboration with Imperial College London has shaped research programmes, facilitated industry-academia debates, and involved testing novel approaches to new disruptions." Over five years, the partnership yielded co-authorship of 23 journal and conference papers and fostered connections with academics from nine of Imperial’s departments.
Despite these achievements, some students remain uneasy about the implications of such partnerships. "Universities have been a target for fossil fuel companies for decades," said Alex, another ICA member. "[This] has created a reliance on them for funding and provided opportunities for the industry to access students [to] encourage and perpetuate their destructive business model." The concern isn’t just about funding; it’s about the risk of "greenwashing," a term for when companies exaggerate or misrepresent their environmental credentials. "Fossil fuel companies rely on a ‘social license’ to operate. This means that they need to be seen by the public as essential and beneficial," Alex explained. "Universities like Imperial help with this strategy by presenting them as part of the solution, whilst they abandon climate targets and their wealth [of] expertise [on] renewable energy, and scale up fossil fuel extraction. This amounts to greenwash."
Such strategies, critics argue, undermine genuine efforts to address the climate crisis. The United Nations Climate Action website warns that deceptive claims by fossil fuel companies can discourage meaningful action to reduce emissions. "Any fossil fuel company that is planning any new extraction or [to] increase production is not aligned with keeping warming well below two degrees," John said, referencing the Paris Agreement’s temperature target. "The idea that somehow these companies are making a valiant effort to transition [and] that we should help [them] is ridiculous after the last 50 years of science denial and misinformation."
ICA hopes its database will empower the Imperial community to ask tough questions about research funding and bias. "I hope it empowers us to ask questions in two broad categories," said Chris, another ICA member. "One, what kind of bias does this lead to, when these companies enable only particular questions to even be researched; and, two, what is it about the state of research funding that means we are not empowered to work with much better partners to get funding and collaborators?" For John, the stakes are clear: "Fossil fuel companies are harming our health and the health of our children, so we need to stop working with them."
From the stages of Greenfield to the laboratories of London, the climate crisis is prompting communities and institutions to reflect on their choices and responsibilities. Whether through the arts or activism, the message is clear: the time for action—and honest reckoning—is now.
