Earth Day: Planet in Focus

Highlights include:

Somerset House Compost Ink

Over the past year, the Hempcrete blocks that previously formed the walls of SOIL: The World at Our Feet, our major exhibition of 2025, have broken down and been combined with used coffee grounds collected from WatchHouse and Café Petiole. Under the guidance of The Land Gardeners, co-curators of SOIL, this mixture has been processed into a nutrient-rich compost.

Inspired by Artificial Stones (2024), a silkscreen series created by masharu in collaboration with Olga Ganzha and displayed on the opposite wall, a portion of the compost was refined, filtered and mixed with natural binders to produce an ink. This compost-based pigment has been used to screenprint the exhibition title as part of a sustainable, circular approach to material use.

You’ll have the chance to see the compost tumbler in person and learn more about the process of transforming our old exhibition walls into ink!

Sony World Photography Sustainability Award 2025

Discover work from the 2025 Sustainability Prize winners from the Sony World Photography Awards and the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards. A slideshow of photographs from Kasia Strek's winning series Repairing the Earth, which documents positive climate action from bison reintroduction to mangrove restoration in Benin. In ad3dition, come and watch Australian scientist and filmmaker Kirsten Slemint's film Burnt Country, which explores Indigenous fire knowledge practiced for over 65,000 years and the vital role it plays in shaping Australia’s ecological future.

You can see more images entered into this year's Sony World Photography Awards in the West and East Wings of Somerset House from 17 April to 4 May, to book tickets go to worldphoto.org/exhibition

Somerset House Residents Activations

Explore the bold, future‑shaping work of Somerset House’s resident publishers, researchers, climate advocates and funders as they expand on a variety of areas from ecofeminism and the rights of nature to regenerative practice and cultural policy. Together our reading room resources, along with drop-in activations led by residents, will invite you to delve deeper.

The Earth Day Reference Room is open to all visitors who wish to engage with current sustainability art projects, explore practical environmental processes, or broaden their understanding through research and community-led perspectives.

Header image: © Kasia Strek, Poland, Shortlist, Professional competition, Environment, Sony World Photography Awards 2025.