The Oakland Oral History Project creates a bridge between Oakland’s activist past and present. Murals throughout the city serve as a catalyst for community storytelling and a springboard for exploring the city’s resilience.

Water is an inherent human right, yet almost a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion live without sanitation. There is also a “stress nexus” between water, energy and food. “WATER=LIFE” explores the connection between water and the welfare of human communities.

Throughout the world, women and girls are victims of countless acts of senseless violence, occurring in every segment of society, regardless of class, ethnicity, culture, or whether the country is at peace or war. “Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art” is a multi-media traveling exhibition that promotes awareness of the root causes of violence against women; creates empathy for women’s stories; fosters a dialogue about the pervasiveness of violence against women; and inspires the belief that women and girls can be empowered with new behavioral choices.

“AWARE/OWARE: A Game for Female Empowerment” serves as a sculptural and aesthetic public artwork, as well as an interactive forum for the community to explore issues of female empowerment. AWARE/OWARE has been adapted from the ancient African board game, oware, and is designed to explore a variety of issues relating to female empowerment, including education, economic, health, stewardship, human rights and politics.

“Nature’s Toolbox” brings together works by artists who explore biodiversity’s many facets. Some grapple with the ways our everyday activities are linked to loss of species and biodiversity. Others examine how biodiversity contributes to the quality of our lives, or probe the potential of nature’s amazing blueprints to build a future in which human needs are met in harmony with nature. At its core, “Nature’s Toolbox” is a celebration of biodiversity, creativity, and ingenuity.

Gender-based violence is one of the most serious and widespread violations of the basic rights of women, particularly on the African continent. This is the context for the adapted and expanded West Africa version of the contemporary art exhibition “Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art.” Its mission: to promote awareness of the root causes of violence against women and girls, create empathy for women’s stories, foster a dialogue about the pervasiveness of violence against women, and inspire the belief that women and girls can be empowered with new behavioral choices.

Art Works for Change sent the Venezuelan artist, Antonio Briceno, to Rwanda to photograph its many environmental challenges, from overcoming poverty to developing sustainable energy resources to solving land degradation. The exhibition, entitled “Millions of Pieces: Only One Puzzle,” addresses the importance of our diverse species and ecosystems, and how they contribute to human well-being through their impact upon medicine, climate, food production, energy, design, and culture.

Cities are alive — with people, trees, critters, and all the diversity of life. Like all living creatures, cities consume oxygen, transform food and fuel into activity, and create waste. They can be healthy or ill, sprawling or spare, bustling with life or eerily devoid of activity. “The Nature of Cities” explores how we can create healthy urban environments by learning from nature — how it produces its own food, uses only energy from the sun, provides heating and cooling, protects itself against severe weather, and generally creates conditions conducive to life.

How does an artist consider the Dalai Lama? That question began a journey in which 79 artists and artist collaborations from around the world created their own individual answers, tapping into their unique journeys and belief systems to create visual portraits of how they perceive the Dalai Lama. The result is a collective tapestry of images, themes, and media that mirror the many roles the Dalai Lama plays within his world and ours: statesman, philosopher, politician, holy man, visionary, peacemaker, icon, and more.

The Unlearning Intolerance Seminar Series was initiated by the United Nations Department of Public Information in 2004. The series offers opportunities to discuss how intolerance, wherever it exists and for whatever reason, can be “unlearned” through education, inclusion and example. The Unlearning Intolerance art exhibition, “Art, Attitudes & Environment,” created in 2008 for the Seminar Series, centers on the intolerance of our treatment of our Earth and the attitudinal and behavioral changes that must be made in order to protect it.

Nature strives for balance, including balancing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the rate at which humans are moving carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels has surpassed Earth’s ability to maintain balance. In this exhibition, we ask the artists to offer new visions and new choices for a balanced Earth.

“Making the Choice” explores how our daily habits contribute to environmental issues worldwide. The exhibition presents information on two levels, the personal and the collective, in order to highlight how personal action and daily choice in local communities is a critical part of the global environmental solution.

The effects of climate change are taking place on a global level, from the Andes to the Arctic, and throughout Africa, Asia and the Americas. While the impacts of climate change are vast and growing, we asked 40 artists from around the world to focus on the melting and thawing of the ice caps and permafrost, and the implications for humans and other species.