Leading community engagement on climate change: a role for regional Australian galleries and museums

Imagine a place where global climate challenges are tackled through the lens of local stories and art. Building on scholarship that frames museums as ‘lifeboats’ and ‘pathways’ through the climate crisis, this article demonstrates the unique strengths of regional institutions: their deep community embeddedness, local knowledge, and capacity for agile, place-based engagement. Regional institutions are closely attuned to the social and ecological specificities of their localities. They are thus well-positioned to translate complex global environmental challenges into locally meaningful narratives and actions. Through multi-modal exhibitions and participatory programming, they foster climate literacy, cultural continuity, and collective agency. Using the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, this article demonstrates how regional institutions can help translate global dilemmas into local solutions through dynamic, ongoing, multi-modal engagement strategies that strengthen community understanding and resilience. In doing so, they emerge as critical infrastructures in navigating an increasingly uncertain ecological future.