Cool Me Down track in New York Times Square
Culture shapes what captures our attention, how we see one another and what we believe is possible. It can bring global challenges into our everyday lives, create connections across differences and turn awareness into participation and action.
This conviction has driven the Museum for the United Nations – UN Live since its founding on United Nations Day, 24 October 2016.
Inspired by the UN Charter’s opening words, “We the Peoples,” UN Live set out to bring the work and values of the United Nations closer to people through culture, and to create opportunities for people and communities to engage, contribute and be heard.
Over the past decade, UN Live has tested bold ideas, launched cultural initiatives and forged unconventional partnerships, bringing together creators, communities, science, institutions and platforms to explore how culture can help address global challenges. From music that generates funding for nature to experiences that connect people across countries and cultures, this work has engaged millions and demonstrated the potential of culture to mobilise collective action.
Today, UN Live is a home for culture-powered impact: a creative, borderless museum working through dialogue and the popular culture and platforms people already care about. The next step is to build on what works — developing the partnerships, creative capacity, evidence and sustainable models that allow promising initiatives to reach wider audiences and turn cultural engagement into lasting impact for people and planet.
Because culture is not decoration around systems change. It is part of the infrastructure that makes change possible.
Testing Ideas, Building Lasting Change
UN Live began with a simple proposition: Share, Learn, Act. By creating opportunities for people to share their experiences, learn from one another and act on what mattered to them, UN Live sought to make the values of the United Nations something people could experience and put into practice.
Early projects explored how creative ideas rooted in local cultures, identities and interests could bring global challenges closer to people. They also generated learnings that would inform initiatives with the potential to reach wider audiences and create lasting impact.
Examples included:
My Body, My Planet, which connected climate and health with young people through carnival in Brazil, comics in India and football in the UK.
Voz Terra, which brought together Colombian musicians, educators and Indigenous people to blend nature sounds with electronic music, drawing on Indigenous knowledge to reconnect people with nature and inspire conservation.
FlipFlopi, which drew on East African cultural heritage to confront plastic pollution, building a traditional sailing dhow from recycled plastic.
From the outset, the ambition was to meet people where they were: through digital and social platforms, cultural experiences and physical spaces, from museums and festivals to places where communities already gathered. The platform followed the purpose — not the other way around.
Building on these early experiments, UN Live has developed a new generation of initiatives designed to reach more people, deepen engagement and turn creative ideas into lasting impact.
Sounds Right grew out of the original vision for UN Live and the groundwork laid by Voz Terra. Together with its partners, UN Live established NATURE as an official artist on major music streaming platforms, inviting people to hear the living world differently while creating a new source of funding for frontline conservation through music royalties. To date, Sounds Right has generated more than 500 million streams, reached more than 30 million listeners, directed over $1 million to conservation and won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Innovation.
Defenders of Planet Earth brings popular entertainment, behavioural insights and practical climate solutions into mainstream television and entertainment, alongside an engagement initiative that encourages people to become Defenders themselves.
Global We creates spaces for people across geographies, hierarchies and cultures to meet, listen to different perspectives and discover common ground. Beginning as the world’s largest recorded conversation on climate action, it has expanded through initiatives including Same Sun and Human Bonds, and now also addresses social justice, health, education, equality and nature-related issues. Through live dialogues across Global We portals across the globe, people encounter perspectives beyond their own experience, challenge assumptions and build understanding across differences.
None of this happens through creative ideas alone. UN Live brings together partners who might not traditionally work side by side, from artists and creative agencies to global platforms, scientists, businesses, philanthropies and international institutions. Combining creative imagination with behavioural insight, scientific evidence, storytelling and the reach of established platforms enables UN Live to develop approaches and partnerships that individual organisations could not deliver alone.
Beyond Projects: Making the Case for Culture
Demonstrating what culture can do is one part of the work. Making sure its role is recognised in policy, philanthropy and investment is another.
Alongside developing cultural initiatives, UN Live works with research partners and think tanks to build the evidence for culture’s contribution to collective action and lasting change - and to bring those insights into wider debates, policy discussions and practice.
Two initiatives help advance this work. Through The Shift, UN Live’s conversation series, artists, thinkers and practitioners explore how culture shapes our worldviews, relationships and sense of what is possible. Our annual Top 10 Culture for Impact highlights initiatives from around the world using music, film, gaming, comics, fashion, sport and art to address societal challenges.
Together, this work helps build the case for popular culture - not as an add-on to systems change, but as part of the infrastructure that makes change possible. The next step is to turn that recognition into action: embedding culture in the decisions, partnerships and funding models that can translate its potential into lasting impact at scale.
What Comes Next: Building for Scale
In an increasingly polarised world, the challenge is not only to explain what must change, but to get people to imagine and participate in a different future. Popular culture can expand what captures our attention, how we see one another and what we believe is possible.
UN Live is building the systems and capacity to turn that potential into reality. While we will keep existing initiatives and continue to scale them, the goal is to move beyond isolated projects and initiatives, and to build models that can scale and mobilise participation, shift behaviours and unlock resources.
Here are three priorities shaping UN Live’s next phase:
· Scaling Global We: Creating more opportunities for people across countries, cultures and social divides to meet, listen and discover common ground, as well as to be heard not only by one another, but also by those with the power to shape decisions that affect their lives. And in doing so, making connection and belonging something more people can experience firsthand, countering the growing polarisation in the world today
· Growing UN-Ventured: Building a venture studio that rapidly tests bold cultural ideas with audiences, develops proven concepts into scalable impact ventures, and mobilises the partnerships, platforms and blended finance needed to reach millions while generating revenue for people and planet.
· Making the Case for Culture: Continue building the evidence, insights and thought leadership that can help change makers – including organisations, governments, and philanthropists - understand culture as essential infrastructure for change and invest accordingly.
Together, these priorities form a connected model: Global We builds insights, connection and belonging; UN-Ventured develops and scales initiatives for change; and thought leadership builds the case for culture and investment.
Early supporters saw the potential in us and made it possible for UN Live to take risks, challenge established ways of working and build approaches that no single organisation could deliver alone. The next phase is about building on those foundations. Investment will help provide the creative capacity, partnerships, sustainable models and evidence needed to take promising initiatives further and deliver lasting impact for people and planet.
Ten years ago, UN Live set out to explore how the United Nations could reach beyond its institutions and connect with people through what moves them. That founding question remains as relevant as ever. The opportunity now is to engage the many millions of people and help foster a greater sense of shared responsibility, solidarity and belonging — a global we.
The future cannot be built for people alone. It must be built with them.
A note of thanks
UN Live would not be where it is today without the people who have backed the vision, challenged our thinking, taken creative risks and helped turn ideas into reality. To our team, board members, artists, creators, communities, patrons, partners, co-founders, funders and other supporters: thank you for being part of the first ten years — and for helping make the next chapter possible.
Read UN Live’s 2036 editorial: The future we dared to imagine →