Extinction Rebellion turns down nomination for Beazley Designs of the Year prize

In-your-face environmentalists Extinction Rebellion have turned down a place in the shortlist for this year’s Designs of the Year prize, reports Creative Review.

The decision to remove itself from the running is down to communal discomfort with the prize’s decade-long sponsor, London-based insurance company Beazley.

Talking to Creative Review, Extinction Rebellion legal strategist Tim Crossland explicitly joins the dots between the insurance industry and the climate crisis that’s currently causing catastrophe across the globe.

“Already insurers are going out of business in California, unable to meet their liabilities from wildfires,” he says. “More and more property in the UK is becoming uninsurable due to flood risk. Yet the industry is failing to disclose the resulting financial risks to the ordinary people who are their customers.”

As you can imagine, profiting on ecological instability isn’t quite the sort of thing that the Extinction Rebellion brigade are too keen on.

“For Extinction Rebellion to be co-opted by an organisation like Beazley runs counter to our movement’s values,” says Clare Farrell, one of the members of Art Group, the design team responsible for the immediately-recognisable logo which has been an ever-present sight at the group’s globe-spanning protests in recent months.

Creative Review states that “XR is now calling on other nominees to follow their lead and refuse inclusion in the exhibition.”

Back in April of this year, the group worked alongside arts and culture institutions and individuals to officially declare a climate and ecological emergency.