No Time To Lose (NTTL), a project of the Open Space Institute's Citizen Action Program, provides support for programs that highlight the environment through the creative arts. Recognizing the urgent need for people—and especially children—to create direct, personal connections to nature, NTTL recently expanded its scope to include design and informal learning outdoors. This new focus is reflected in NTTL's latest program, PlayLab, dedicated to helping children, their families, and communities discover and explore the basic science at work in parks and on playgrounds.

Past programs coordinated under NTTL include a plan for an installation by the Japanese ikebana master Hiroshi Teshigahara, a community artists' garden in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and a lecture series of artists, scientists, and economists at Harvard University. In addition to its public programs, each year NTTL recognizes excellence in the field through its annual No Time to Lose Grassroots Arts and the Environment Award. The 2010 winner is the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, which has created a monumental outdoor space for the presentation of the arts in New York Harbor. Past recipients include the Brooklyn Children's Museum (2008), Antanas Mockus, former Mayor of Bogotá (2007), Ecotopia, developed by the International Center of Photography (2006), The Pratt Center (2004), Minetta Brook (2003), and The River Project (2002).