About John Kenneth Paranada

John Kenneth Paranada (born 22 September 1988) is a British Filipino curator, writer, researcher, and critic internationally recognised for pioneering climate focused curatorial and museological practice. He is the inaugural Curator of Art and Climate Change at the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, and a Researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. In these roles he advances a vision of the museum as a regenerative institution, one that aligns art, science, education, and community to foster resilience, ecological consciousness and societal transformation.

Curatorial and Museological Practice

Paranada has curated and led landmark seasons, exhibitions, symposia, residencies, commissions and acquisitions that foreground the role of art in addressing ecological and social transformation. His projects include the multi platform season Can the Seas Survive Us? (2025) and major exhibitions such as A World of Water (2025), Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa (2025), Coastal Kin: De Onkruidenier (2025), Ivan Morison: Towards the Weird Heart of Things (2024), Sediment Spirit: Towards the Activation of Art in the Anthropocene (2023), Claudia Martinez Garay (2023) and The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders (2022), among many others.

His practice extends to living and interdisciplinary projects including Ackroyd & Harvey’s Beuys’ Acorns (2007 to present) and Ivan Morison’s The Reapers (2024 to present), regenerative public sculptures co created with farming communities that decompose into organic fertiliser. These works exemplify his commitment to art as ecological process.

He has also overseen significant acquisitions, including paintings by Tesfaye Urgessa and other contemporary voices. Paranada has collaborated with, commissioned and presented works by leading artists including Olafur Eliasson, Julian Charrière, Maggi Hambling, Josh Kline, Paul Pfeiffer, Eva Rothschild, SUPERFLEX, Pio Abad and the Karrabing Film Collective among others.

Distinctions

Paranada’s distinctions include:

Mondriaan Fonds Award for International Presentation (2022)
Cultural Grant, Kingdom of the Netherlands (2023)
AAMC Foundation EPIC Fellowship (2023)
Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant (2024)
Cultural Diplomacy Grant, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (2025)
Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant (2025)

He has also served as a juror for the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Art & Environment Prize at MOCA LA (2024) and the Lumen Prize, Norway (2025).

Publications

Paranada’s scholarship spans the edited volumes Planet for Our Future (Sainsbury Centre, 2023), Museum International: Museum Sustainabilities (Taylor & Francis, 2024) and Can the Seas Survive Us? (Kulturalis, 2025). Across these works, he explores the intersection of art, ecology and society, positioning exhibitions and museums as catalysts for planetary repair and civic imagination.

Public Engagements

He has delivered keynote lectures and chaired panels at major forums including:
UNESCO (Paris, 2025), CIMAM Annual Conference (Los Angeles, 2024), AAMC Foundation Art Curators Conference (New York, 2025), Folkestone Triennial (UK, 2025), Visual Artists Ireland (Dublin, 2025), Ewha Womans University (Seoul, 2025), Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam, 2024), Great Northern Festival (Minnesota, 2024), and leading UK institutions including UCL, UAL, Cambridge, Southampton, Leeds and the Museums Association UK. These engagements position him at the forefront of global discourse on art, museums and climate responsibility.

Vision

Against the prevailing narratives of ecological collapse, Paranada advances a curatorial and museological practice rooted in alliance building, imagination and active hope. His work positions museums as regenerative spaces where art, science and communities converge to cultivate peace, ecological consciousness and shared prosperity. With this vision, he seeks to align museums with the urgent transformations of the twenty first century, shaping futures that are just, generous, luminous, ecologically attuned and rooted in care.

Institutional Profiles

Selected Key Conferences & Engagements

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Art & Environment Prize – Jury & Ceremony, MOCA LA (USA, 2024)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles – Environmental Impact Report (USA, 2024)
EA Sustain, Sustainability, Firstsite Museum Colchester (UK, 2024)
AAMC Foundation – Environmental Ethics of Commissioning and Exhibition-Making (USA, 2023)
AAMC Foundation – EPIC Curatorial Fellowship Awardee (USA, 2023)
Asia Art Archive, Curatorial Development Workshop Exhibitions (2020)

Press & Media Coverage

Selected Publications & Edited Volumes

Can the Seas Survive Us? (2025, Kulturalis Ltd – WorldCat entry)

Museum International – “A Path Forward: Curating Art & Climate Change” (2024)
Planet for Our Future: How Do We Adapt to a Transforming World? (2023, Sainsbury Centre)
CIMAM Annual Conference Proceedings, CIMAM Publication Series (2024)
Collisions: Art and Climate Change, in Adaptation: A Reconnected Earth (Museum of Contemporary Art Manila, 2023)
Invoking New Words for Our Transforming World, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (2023)
How Do We Begin a Meaningful Conversation About Art’s Place in the Climate Crisis, (Design Council UK (2023)
21AM Dagdag Dunong: What Might Matter—Materiality and Immateriality in Artists’ Online Presence,” Cultural Centre of the Philippines (2022)

2015–2020 (Selected Earlier Writings)

Catching Ghosts: A Conversation, 21AM, Cultural Center of the Philippines (2022)
All Is Not Forgiven, 21 AM, Cultural Center of the Philippines (2022)
Tie A Sting: But Cut It in the Middle, Ateneo Art Gallery (2017)
Will Nature Make a Man of Me Yet? Dream Idea Machine (2016)
Curating Social Sculpture Revisited, On Curating (2015)
Curating in Depth Toolkit, World of Art (2015)

John Kenneth Paranada, curator of art and climate change at the Sainsbury Centre, featured in Wikipedia and ORCID.