Nature Speaks activates Ocean Space’s Research Room into a Policy Lab and initiative curated by Pietro Consolandi and Amalia Rossi and developed in collaboration with NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The project maps the rising Rights of Nature movement – recently described by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as the fastest-growing legal movement of the twenty-first century – through visual inquiry, campaign building, and calls to action. 

The project, arriving at a pivotal moment in the struggle for ecosystemic rights, is developed in fundamental collaboration with two activist networks: IDRA – Iniziativa per i Diritti delle Reti d’Acqua (Initiative for the Rights of Water) at a local level and the Confluence of European Water Bodies at a continental one.

In Venice, a wide alliance of citizen groups – later coordinated by the IDRA network born through this process – carried out a campaign that led to the release of the Declaration of the Rights of the Venice Lagoon. The document was presented for the first time at Ocean Space in October 2025, outlining the historical, scientific, and philosophical principles for a potential charter of rights and legal personhood mechanism for the Lagoon.

Evolving from its central participation in these collective processes, TBA21–Academy furthers its support to the Rights of Nature movement by transforming Ocean Space's Research Room into a space for community gathering, research, and campaign advocacy focused on the rights of the Venice Lagoon. This commitment is embedded within TBA21–Academy’s long-term research lines and curatorial work at the intersection of art, ecology, and environmental justice.

The initiative will feature documentaries by filmmakers Giovanni Pellegrini, Pietro Torrisi, and Yann Arthus-Bertrand, demonstration props developed by the Polish art and activism collective River Sisters, and research materials from case studies gathered by the Confluence network and developed by the local water bodies part of IDRA.

The space will also host a Policy Lab, working to develop the proposed Declaration of Rights of the Venice Lagoon into a legal proposal and a public campaign in support of a citizens-led initiative, open to all Venetians and allies, offering a welcoming environment for participation in public meetings and citizen assemblies, as well as in the public program developed as part of Nature Speaks. The Research Room will thus become a space for active citizenship, giving form to the hopes and struggles of Venetians living with the Lagoon, and inviting them to join forces in the struggle for ecosystem rights. 

Nature Speaks: Listening for Rights of Nature in Venice and Europe (2026) is Ocean Space's Research Unit, curated by Pietro Consolandi and Amalia Rossi, co-produced by TBA21–Academy and NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca' Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with IDRA and the Confluence of European Water Bodies.

At the core of this initiative is a Policy Lab dedicated to advancing the Declaration of the Rights of the Venice Lagoon into a concrete legal proposal.

TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca' Foscari University Venice, and the grassroots network IDRA – Iniziativa per i Diritti delle Reti d’Acqua, is convening a Working Group to participate in the Policy Lab.

Find out more about the Open Call for the Working Group.

Pietro Consolandi is a researcher and artist based between Venice and the Isle of Wight. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Southampton, in the Leverhulme PIRS programme. He lived in Venice for the last ten years, where he co-founded the Barena Bianca collective and collaborated with TBA21–Academy and NICHE (Ca' Foscari) on the project around the Declaration of the Rights of the Lagoon among many other projects. He is an active member of the Rights of Nature movement, approaching the topic from an academic, artistic and activist standpoint.

Amalia Rossi is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Research Fellow at NICHE - Centre for Environmental Humanities at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. She holds a PhD in Contemporary Anthropology (University of Milan Bicocca) and teaches Cultural Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, and Ecosophy at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan and Rome. Rossi has conducted fieldwork in Italy and Thailand and is an expert in political ecology, Buddhist studies, and the ethnography of social movements. Within NICHE, she has been one of the founders of the IDRA network and part of the drafting group of the Declaration of Rights of the Venice Lagoon.