Some of the UK’s leading arts institutions – including the Royal Court Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe – are planning to hold a day of climate action next month to raise awareness of the growing ecological crisis.

The London venues will be joined by the National Theatre Wales and scores of other arts and community spaces around the UK for the event, which is inviting members of the public to submit “letters to the Earth”.

Lucy Davies, the executive producer at the Royal Court, said it was proudly supporting the initiative.

“Arts organisations are civic buildings and we must make public space to amplify this emergency, and use our skills, vision and stories to help imagine an alternative future,” she said.

Those behind the project say they have been inspired by the school climate strikes, in which 1.4 million people took to the streets last weekend, and the Extinction Rebellion direct action group, which is planning to bring London to a standstill from 15 April to highlight the climate crisis.

They are calling on the wider arts community to play its part in telling the truth about the scale of the ecological crisis – and the action necessary to address it.

David Lan, a writer, producer and former artistic director of the Young Vic Theatre, said: “Sophocles and Shakespeare and Molière and Ibsen and Brecht wrote plays as interventions into the major political crises of their worlds and of their time, so we now need our writers to record and reflect this probably biggest ever global challenge but, more than that, to help us understand what to do about it, how to prevent climate disruption from destroying so much that the west, the east, the north, the south have struggled to create over millennia.”

Organisers say the letters to the Earth will form the centrepiece to a day of action on 12 April and can take any form.

“The idea is open to interpretation,” said a spokesperson. “It can come from a personal place, be dramatic in form, be a call to action. The invitation is open to all – to think beyond the human narrative and bear witness to the scale and horror of this crisis. This is an opportunity to ask how this existential threat affects the way we wish to live our lives and the action we take.”

Kay Michael, a theatre director and one of the organisers of the project, said it was time the arts got involved in the biggest challenge facing the planet.

“Hundreds of thousands of school strikers and rebels around the world are demanding action. Local governments all over the world are declaring climate emergencies. It’s time for the arts and cultural sectors to do the same.”