Binghamton 2 Degrees — a proposed campus initiative to raise awareness about the effects of climate change on Binghamton and the rest of the Southern Tier — hosted its community art and music festival at Confluence Park for the second consecutive year on Saturday.

The festival, held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., featured local organizations like the Sierra Club, the Ross Park Zoo, VINES, the Red Cross and the Broome County Food Council. Organizers promoted ways for Binghamton to adapt to a climate two degrees hotter. Artists — painters, poets and musicians — showcased their creativity through mediums like a Non-Slam Slam Poetry Contest centered around climate change.

Students performed an excerpt of a dramatic work about tree sitters — protestors who sit in trees to prevent them from being chopped down — created by Elizabeth Mozer, an associate professor of theater at Binghamton University. Alyssa Crosby, a local singer who competed on season 25 of “The Voice,” also performed. The event’s organizers partnered with the Roberson Museum and Science Center, BU and the Broome County Arts Council, among others.

Andreas Pape, the director of Binghamton 2 Degrees, an associate professor of economics and an associate dean of the Graduate School, shared how the initiative raises awareness of the severity of climate change and how the community can prepare for the future through art.

“We’re trying to envision this future,” Pape said. “Well, how do we envision? We use art to envision, we tell stories to envision the future. It’s all of that together that makes art so central to this. Just talking to people with facts and figures is not enough.”

Binghamton 2 Degrees plans to hold the festival annually while continuing to spearhead other events to further educate the community about what life after two degrees of warming may look like. Future events would help attendees learn practical skills, like making emergency go bags for natural disasters, as well as uplifting them so they can form ideas for climate education and engagement.

Other showcases included the works of artist Muren Lum, a sales and marketing associate at the Broome County Arts Council, whose paintings are based on research papers about climate change. Leslie Heywood, a professor of English and creative writing, has been involved with Binghamton 2 Degrees since its inception and shares Pape’s view on the power of art to bring statistics and academic studies off the page.

“Scientists are boring,” Heywood said. “They communicate in facts and figures and that doesn’t touch most people emotionally. Most people who want to be moved to do something need to be moved emotionally, and so that’s where the arts come in.”

Another important aspect of the event was participatory art, reinforcing the organization’s mission to bring the community together. Internationally recognized installation artist Steven Siegel encouraged everyone at the festival to contribute to a collaborative piece using the repurposed material he provided. The work aimed to prepare Binghamton residents for the possibility of Broome County becoming a haven for people fleeing climate-related emergencies.

“This might be a place where climate refugees want to come,” Pape said. “So we need to think about when people come here for climate reasons — how are we going to integrate them into the community for our mutual benefit?”