Hear NATURE roar

Dear Friends,

Last week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, NATURE was heard loud and clear—on the biggest stage in creativity. Sounds Right, was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix for Innovation, which is a tier above gold, and only given in some years for exceptional accomplishments – making Nature itself an official, award-winning artist.

It was one of four awards we are happy to take home from Cannes Lions this year:

🏆 Grand Prix for Innovation

🥇 Gold in Sustainable Development Goals category

🥉 Bronze in Corporate Purpose and Social Responsibility in Radio and Entertainment

🥉 Bronze in Creative Strategy

Receiving these big awards presents a good opportunity to go back to how it all began. The seeds of Sounds Right were planted in Bogota, Colombia – where musicians, scientists, students, community leaders and UN Live came together in a workshop in 2029 to ask a hopeful question: how can we inspire environmental action in Colombia? The group found common ground by blending the country’s love for music and rhythm with a deep nostalgia for the Amazon. This was the start of VozTerra and a long-standing collaboration.

The answer emerged through sound. VozTerra began recording nature’s voices from the Van Der Hammen Reserve to the Caquetá region, and invited the public to do the same. During the pandemic, those sounds evolved into “Sounds From Our Windows”, a global call for reflection and connection. More than 50 original songs were created in response, with contributions from artists such as Aterciopelados, Lido Pimienta, Dombrance, and Café Tacvba’s Rubén Albarrán. Today, that same energy continues to shape how we listen, collaborate, and create, with music as a bridge between people and planet.

What followed was an open-ended realm of creativity that was deeply collaborative, exploring the question of how we could take this to scale? Through that process, a new way of working and listening began to take shape. UN Live, VozTerra and AKQA, gathered powerful partners around the table, and what emerged was Sounds Right.

Sounds Right continued to roar with NATURE as an artist, and with partners like Spotify, AKQA, EarthPercent The Listening Planet, Wildlife Conservation Society and The Nature Conservancy and many others, we were, and are, building towards something both ambitious and simple – to credit NATURE in music, and direct streaming royalties to the people protecting it. By crediting natural soundscapes like rainforest ambience, ocean waves, and birdsong in tracks by global artists including Hozier, AURORA, Ellie Goulding, UMI with V of BTS, and Armaan Malik, streaming royalties are redirected to Indigenous and community-led conservation projects around the world. With over $225,000 already committed and over half a million projected by 2026, Sounds Right is proof that everyday acts can fuel extraordinary impact.

Last week at Cannes was an important milestone, and a celebration of how far we’ve come. It's also a reminder that meaningful ideas take time, and they come from listening, embracing uncertainty, letting others lead, and working together across unfamiliar territory.

Thanks to all partners, collaborators, and artists who helped make this happen and bring this vision to life. These wins belong to everyone who believes in the power of creativity to move hearts, minds  and change systems.

As we look ahead to COP30 in the Amazon, we know this is just the beginning.

The Amazon is calling.

Upwards and onwards. 

🎧 Follow NATURE on Spotify

🌍 Check out Sounds Right

🔊Listen to Sounds From Our Windows

What we’re watching: Cannes Lions Edition

While our team was on the ground at Cannes Lions 2025, we also took the chance to soak in and celebrate some of the festival’s most powerful and creative. Emma, our Partnerships Manager at Museum for the United Nations, UN Live, put together a curation of standout work that left a lasting impression and showcased the power of storytelling at its best.

• Pedigree - Caramelo Cannes: Shifting the Narrative on Mix-Breed Dogs (Brazil)

• Paris Paralympics 2024: Reconsidering preconceptions of Paralympic greatness - England/France

• Bodyform: Highlighting the dissonance between what women+ are taught to expect, and the reality of their menstrual experiences - England

• Fictional Insurance: Fostering a conversation on insurance through TV - Colombia

• Lucky Yatra (Case Study): Incentivizing train ticket purchases through lottery - India

Sparking imagination at London Climate Action Week

This week UN Live is at London Climate Action Week to spotlight how popular culture can be a game-changer for sustainability and climate action — through stories, music, film, art, AI, and people power - as well as to build on the great wins and lion awards at Cannes Lions last week. 

From transformational storytelling to AI in the arts, to accelerating creativity to the interlink between climate and health, we’ll be meeting, speaking, and networking across town — including at the Wellcome Collection, the Art of Business, Climate Innovation Summit, the Goals House, BusinessABC AI Summit, and many more.

UN Live is London to remind the world that climate solutions and action don’t just need policies and tech — they need imagination, they need new stories, they need people, lots of people. And people move through culture.

Climate Innovation Forum

UN Live is pleased to partner with Climate Action for the Climate Innovation Forum, a flagship event of London Climate Action Week taking place on 25th June in Guildhall. 🌱 

The Climate Innovation Forum brings together over 2,000 business leaders, policy makers, investors and civil society representatives to accelerate the speed and scale of our collective efforts in driving climate action.

Changing the Climate Narrative

At the Climate Innovation Forum we are particularly looking forward to being part of the launch of the “Transforming Climate Narratives: A Blueprint for Success”, and the accompanying roundtable discussion with Johan Rockstrom and Kumi Naidoo, as well as youth, COP30 leadership, and of course EPIC representatives, who are behind the blueprint.

The blueprint is a tool for a much needed reframing and repositioning of climate change in a public conscious.

“To shift climate action at scale, we must shift hearts as well as minds. At UN Live, we harness the power of popular culture to turn global challenges into shared human stories and action. The EPIC Blueprint is a timely and much-needed tool—it helps connect climate to what people care most about: their health, wellbeing, and sense of home. Linking climate, health and home makes the climate crisis intimate and not abstract. When the crisis feels personal and relatable, that’s when people engage—and that’s when real change begins.” Says Katja Iversen, our CEO.

https://epicplanet.org/blueprint/