One Ocean 2026

One Ocean 2026 was a weekend of free talks, workshops and screenings on art, adaptation and the future of our oceans. Supported by the UK National Commission for UNESCO and The Peter Dubens Family Foundation, Turner Contemporary presented a rich public programme of talks, documentary and artist film screenings, workshops and community activities. Through art, science and storytelling, One Ocean aimed to translate complex environmental issues into accessible, action-driven experiences.

You'll find the full programme in the PDF linked below. All the events were free to attend. 

Saturday 20 June events

What the Wild Sea Can Be

With Helen Scales

Helen Scales opened the One Ocean 2026 programme with an invitation to look out to sea. Fitting, given what she revealed lay beneath it—an 80 million year old chalk reef: ancient plankton turned to stone, and now home to a living ecosystem.

This was a keynote about holding two truths at once. The ocean has never been hotter, more polluted, more exploited. And yet it recovers. From Arran's Lamlash Bay to French Polynesia, from returning bluefin tuna to regrowing mangroves—Helen shared proof that when we remove external pressures, ocean life bounces back.

Her honesty about eco-anxiety landed in the room. Not false hope. Not despair. A workable balance between the two.

As Helen moved between her research and storytelling, the blue thread was interconnection. One Ocean. One living system. A global story that's playing out on Margate's coastline. This opening set the tone for the entire weekend. How wonder and warning can be held together—and the quiet insistence that recovery is ours to steward.

What we learned

1. Hope and realism can be held together

Helen's answer to eco-anxiety wasn't false optimism but balance—the capacity to look honestly at how damaged the ocean is while still believing in its recovery. Despair and hope aren't opposites to choose between. They can coexist in the same breath.

2. Given the chance, the ocean recovers

From Lamlash Bay to French Polynesia's vast marine reserves, from returning bluefin tuna to regrowing mangroves, the evidence is consistent: remove the pressure of fishing, pollution, extraction and ocean life can be restored. Recovery isn't wishful thinking, it's already happening.

3. Global change begins with local stewardship

Helen showed us how tiny protected places, like Arran's Lamlash Bay, became a catalyst for change far beyond that coastal community. The chalk reef beneath Margate has that same opportunity. An 80-million-year-old protected ecosystem, that is ours to cultivate and care for.

Margate's Coastal Identity

With Polly Brannan, Dan Thompson, Phil Hubbard and Amber Massie-Blomfield (Moderator)

Moderated by cultural producer Amber Massie-Blomfield, the panel explored what makes Margate the place it is, and who shapes what it becomes.

Dan Thompson emphasised Margate’s historical and cultural significance, making the case that seaside towns can be a genuine contributor to national culture, rather than edge lands. Phil Hubbard explored the changing representations of Margate from its working-class roots through to its current arts and cultural scene. He described seaside towns as liminal places—where land meets the sea, and often where different socio economic groups live side by side. Polly Brannan shared Open School East's community-led work, rooted in Margate's history and the importance of supporting the initiatives already growing here. She highlighted the varied creative practices that make Margate so special, and the importance of protecting them as the town keeps changing.

The panel also discussed how climate change is fast becoming part of what it means to live in a coastal place and the importance of creativity and the arts to help inspire and mobilise communities to take action.

Then a question from the floor caught the panel off guard—where were the voices of people who had actually grown up here? Polly answered honestly. She isn't from Margate originally, but has committed to it through her work and plans to be here for a long time. She acknowledged representation is something we need to keep working at.

What this conversation made clear is that Margate's story is never finished. What matters now is making sure that everyone gets to write their part.

What we learned

1. Seaside towns are cultural testing grounds

Margate and other coastal communities aren’t on the margins—they’re at the forefront of cultural experimentation. Ideas and creativity often take shape here first, long before they grow elsewhere.

2. Grassroots creativity must be protected

Long before the galleries arrived, Margate was making and shaping a culture of its own. What matters now is protecting that grassroots creativity and its unique multi-disciplinary forms, so it isn't lost as the town continues to transform over time.

3. Identity is fluid and shaped by liminality

Margate’s identity lives in its edges—where land meets the sea, and where the privileged and the marginalised live alongside each other. This 'coastal liquidity' means the stories we tell about the place determine who belongs and who invests in its future.

Ocean Health and Human Health 

With Nick Hardman-Mountford, Andy Hughes, Randa Kachef and Janice Li (Moderator)

Chaired by curator Janice Li, this session asked a simple question: how does the health of our ocean affect the health of our community? The answer, it suggested, is that the two are deeply interconnected. We carry the sea within us—in the oxygen of every other breath, the salt in our blood, and now the microplastics found there too.

What followed wasn't necessarily about answers. It was about widening our view. Nicholas Hardman-Mountford inviting us to reimagine our relationship with the ocean as symbiotic, rather than the extractive one of the past. Randa Kachef turned to waste and its impact on place. She highlighted how rarely we see value in what we discard compared with other cultures and the importance of changing perceptions. Andy Hughes made the case for how art can reach people in a way that other forms don't and how noticing is often the trigger for protecting what we love.

Then the audience question that maybe mattered most. As talk drifted to solutions, a local voice cut through. Where, in all this, was the reality of money and inequality that shapes the health of so many in our community?

A reminder that the health of the ocean and our health are bound together—and so are the lives of the communities living on its edge.

What we learned

1. Ocean health and human health are one system

The boundary between our bodies and the sea is more fluid than we think. From the oxygen in every other breath to the microplastics now found in our blood, the panel made the case that a healthy ocean isn't a 'nice to have'. It's the foundation of our own physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

2. The real cost of waste

Randa's reframing stayed with the room. We talk about throwing things 'away'—but there is no away. What we discard doesn't disappear. It accumulates, mostly out of sight, in our water, on our shores, and in the communities left to live alongside it. The cost is real, and it isn't shared equally. 

3. We protect what we love

Whether through Nick's deep-sea discoveries—over a thousand new species named in a single year—or Andy's lifetime photographing what washes up on our shores, the same idea surfaced. Wonder is where care begins. We look after the things we have learned to notice, and to love.

Sunday 21 June events

Speaking with the Ocean

With Christiane Bosman, Joycelyn Longdon and Emma Lewis (Moderator)

 
Moderated by Turner curator Emma Lewis, Speaking with the Ocean invited us to consider a different way of relating to the living world—one rooted in listening, reciprocity and a willingness to see beyond the human perspective.

Joycelyn shared how listening takes many forms in her work—from cultural wisdom held by communities living alongside ecosystems for generations, to bioacoustics technology, which she described as "Shazam for nature". The room laughed at the familiarity of the comparison, but beneath it was a profound idea: that nature is not silent. The question is whether we have learned to hear it. For Joycelyn, this meant moving beyond human dominance—understanding how we relate to ecosystems through our bodies as well as our minds.

Christiane Bosman began by awakening our senses, releasing the scent of the North Sea into the room as another way to feel it beyond the view. She introduced Embassy of the North Sea, a practice rooted in art, advocacy and the belief that the sea is not an object for human use, but a subject with its own rights, stories and stakes. Through the growing global Rights of Nature movement, she explained how we're already reshaping systems that have historically placed humans at the centre.

Their conversation flowed to imagination more than once—not just as escape, but as a way of questioning the stories and structures we have inherited.

If the living world has been speaking all along, perhaps the work is not simply to give it a voice, but to rethink our own position. To listen differently, redistribute power, and cultivate a more reciprocal relationship.

What we learned

1.  Nature already has a voice. We need to learn how to listen.

Both speakers emphasised that nature is constantly speaking—whether through ancestral wisdom, cultural knowledge, or innovative technology like bioacoustics. The challenge is how we listen and step back from placing ourselves at the centre. When we truly learn how to hear the living world, care and action follow naturally.

2. Nature can hold legal rights — and it already does

From New Zealand to Spain, and over fifty rivers in the UK, legal rights for nature are becoming a reality. These rights aren’t granted by those in power but won by local communities advocating for the natural world. It’s a slow, hopeful shift in who the law protects—and who it listens to. 

3. Imagination is where hope lives and change begins

Much of what we believe is simply a story we’ve been told. To imagine the world differently is the first step toward changing it—not as escapism, but as a quiet form of hope. It reminds us that the future is still ours to shape, if we’re ready to reimagine it.

Artists and Ocean Justice

With Poulomi Basu, Suzanne Dhaliwal and Iman Amrani (Moderator)

This conversation was about what art can do when it moves beyond raising awareness and becomes a way to challenge power, build solidarity and activate change. Moderated by journalist Iman Amrani, the session brought together artist-activists Suzanne Dhaliwal and Poulomi Basu, whose practices explore the connections between climate justice, colonialism, gender and the lived experiences of communities on the front line of environmental harm.

Suzanne Dhaliwal began with a powerful reminder—before action comes listening. Sharing her work with communities impacted by extraction, she spoke about the importance of understanding struggles from the ground up: rather than arriving with solutions, building solidarity with those who have been resisting for generations. Her practice has used creative interventions to challenge fossil fuel companies and expose the systems behind climate injustice, while also reflecting on the personal cost of this work, from burn-out to the challenges of speaking out.

Poulomi Basu explored the deep connections between bodies, water and land. Drawing from her own experiences and years of community-led work, she showed how issues often seen as separate—access to water, gender inequality, bodily autonomy and environmental destruction—are deeply connected. Through projects such as Blood Speaks, she has used photography, film and storytelling to challenge stigma and support campaigns for change.

Both artists challenged the idea that climate justice can be reduced to simple narratives of hope or inspiration. They spoke about the need to hold complexity, and how pain, resistance and resilience often exist alongside each other. For Suzanne and Poulomi, art isn't just a way of communicating crisis, but a space for collaboration, collective imagination and building the movements needed for a more just future.

What we learned

1.  Climate justice comes at a cost

Both artists spoke with conviction about what climate justice really costs—the violence faced by communities on the front line of extraction, and the exhaustion of doing this work for years. Real solidarity means listening before acting. Staying with the hard truths, instead of looking away and holding the light and the dark together.

2. To protect the water is to protect one another

There is no line between a body and an ocean, a river and a life. Drawing on lived experience and intersectional feminism—from water rights to girls' education—the conversation showed us how harming the land is harming its people, and how deeply these injustices are rooted in patriarchal and colonial systems.

3. Art can be a bridge

Where campaigns might alienate, art can reach. It connects, inspires, and opens up other ways of seeing—calling in people beyond the usual bubble, across different audiences and spaces. Art doesn't just communicate the crisis. It helps to build the movements and the imagination, that lasting change depends on.

Youth for the Ocean

With Alexandra (Sasha) Kristofovicova, Louisa Casson, Olivia Mandle and Fatima Ibrahim (Moderator)

The weekend’s talks closed with a conversation led by four young female campaigners at the forefront of ocean and climate justice. Moderated by Fatima Ibrahim of Green New Deal Rising, the panel explored our relationship with the ocean—how we understand it, how we protect it, and how a new generation is organising to reshape ocean futures.

Alexandra Kristofovicova invited us to think about the ocean as part of a wider living system, connecting climate, nature and our own lives. Coming from landlocked Slovakia, she challenged the idea that ocean protection is only a coastal issue, reminding us that the ocean plays a vital role in regulating our climate and protecting us from its impacts. For her, the missing piece is connection—helping people better understand our relationship with nature and recognise how much we depend on the ocean.

Olivia Mandle shared how her activism began as a child, after questioning the treatment of dolphins in captivity. That moment led her to campaign for an end to dolphin captivity in Spain, taking her work to the Spanish Congress and European Parliament. Her message was simple: we protect what we know and love, and building a deeper connection with the ocean is key to inspiring action.

Louisa Casson of Greenpeace highlighted what's possible when power shifts from the ground up. Sharing the campaign to stop deep-sea mining, she shared how communities, fishers, teachers, scientists and activists have come together to challenge powerful industries and protect ocean ecosystems. Her message was that change does not belong only to experts or institutions—it starts when people organise, find collective power and refuse to accept that damaging futures are inevitable.

What we learned

1.  We don’t own the ocean. We belong to it.

The panel challenged us to move away from seeing the ocean as a resource to exploit and towards a relationship based on respect, responsibility and care. Protecting the ocean is not charity—it is essential to our survival.

2. Ordinary people can create extraordinary change

From communities challenging deep-sea mining to young campaigners taking action, change begins when people come together around something they care deeply about. Collective action can challenge even powerful industries and institutions.

3. It begins with connection

People are more likely to care for what they understand and love. Rebuilding our relationship with the ocean — through education, storytelling and experience — is essential to creating a movement that protects it for future generations.

Closing remarks

With Polly Billington MP

Closing out One Ocean 2026, Polly Billington MP reflected on what it means to live as a coastal community, where the boundary between land and sea brings both connection and responsibility. Bringing together the themes of the weekend, she reminded us that healthy oceans and healthy communities cannot be separated, and that lasting change depends on all of us playing a part. Creativity, storytelling, policy and community all have a role to play, because protecting the ocean is not someone else's responsibility. It belongs to all of us.

Photography: Steven Jackson

Words: Sea of Purpose