Artist Ben Whitehouse founded SkyDay® in 2014 in response to hearing Yo-Yo Ma speak about the need for artists to serve community as citizen artists. As a parent who cares deeply about our children’s future and as a citizen dismayed by our inability to come together to fix the climate crisis, Ben saw a need for artists to collaborate with scientists to try to improve the climate conversation.

We have an amazing team of distinguished advisors dedicated to the task. In our first few years we created a new approach to teaching environmental science that has been received well by teachers. Our units integrate NGSS standards, the latest science, intergenerational learning and student led action projects. International Sky Day (September 23) has become a popular way for people to explore their own personal connection to climate and sky and SkyDay Project has over 20,000 artworks posted. In this interactive citizen artwork, schools and groups create sky galleries to which they post their artworks about our sky, climate, air quality and more. We even installed SkyDay Project on the International Space Station so astronauts could take part. Check it out!