At Sciaena, they focus on marine conservation and environmental awareness, and believe in the power of art as a tool to communicate about the natural world and the threats it is facing. Inevitably, the concept of Mar Motto emerged where Art is used as a mean to convey the message of ocean conservation in a simple, incisive and creative way, seeking a foundation and a community to generate effective action from. Mar Motto is essentially an arts festival, organized once a year in a Portuguese city, where local, national and international artists are invited to create and exhibit works of art inspired by the oceans and the urgency to protect them.

At Route their mission is to promote arts, community service, education and awareness to preserve the health of the world’s oceans, beaches and marine life. Artivism Route Week (ARW) was created to dedicate a week to the promotion of art as a means of questioning and raising awareness about the impacts of our consumption habits on the environment.

Effectively protecting the oceans needs to be an international effort and requires collaboration across nations. This year, Sciaena and Route proudly took exactly this approach by joining forces. Since this year neither of these events could take place, we created a new online event, merging the two concepts: ARW + Mar Motto. ARW + Mar Motto opened up new possibilities to reach out to artists from all over the world and to collectively create art to protect our Seas.