---
title: "The Atrium Gallery: Change Is Human Work"
description: Sustainability usually gets discussed at the altitude of policy documents and net-zero targets. LSE's Atrium Gallery has spent the summer making the opposite...
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-06-09T22:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-08-07T17:38:17.806Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/the-atrium-gallery-change-is-human-work
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/festival-2026-banner-1920-x-680.xdfd85cbf.webp
categories: Art & Festivals
content_type: Guide
region: London
publication: The Quantum of Light
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Sustainability, as a word, tends to live at two altitudes. There is the altitude of policy documents and net-zero targets, and there is the altitude of a person switching off a lab's equipment at the end of a shift, or sorting waste correctly in a shared kitchen, or repairing rather than replacing something in a building that has stood since before the concept had a name. Change Is Human Work: Sustainability at LSE, staged in the Atrium Gallery of LSE's Old Building, has spent its run built almost entirely at the second altitude. It closes on 7 August, which leaves one more week to see it.

## Portraits instead of policy

At the exhibition's centre are photographic portraits of the people whose ordinary work keeps a large institution functioning, academics, but also professional services staff and students, the individuals responsible for procurement, governance, energy management, waste reduction, catering and the upkeep of shared spaces. The choice to photograph them directly, rather than illustrate sustainability through infographics or targets, is itself the exhibition's argument. Institutional change of this kind rarely arrives as a single dramatic decision. It accumulates through thousands of unglamorous, repeated choices made by people who mostly do not get photographed for anything.

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