Reflections from the team: Co‐creating visual media about ecological processes for young people (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
Can you imagine a world where no-one goes outside? Our world is under threat from human activities, from what we do, and the way we do it. This will have a huge impact on our future lives, and we need to think about how we protect places and the people, animals and plants found there. Whilst, there is a widely-recognised need to address this threat, there is a specific focus on how we can involve young people in this process. Within this, there is additional concern about how little time children and young people spend outside. My qualitative study responds to these concerns by exploring young people’s relationship with nature, and how this may be developed through the projects we offer them. The participating projects have been spread across England, from south-east to north-west, including rural, coastal and urban environments. The young people, aged between 11 and 25, were from diverse backgrounds, with a wide range of individual needs. This transdisciplinary research has used an...
Postcards of the Landscape: Researching Children's Perceptions of the Environment Through the Arts
Australia holds some of the most unique, diverse and vulnerable ecosystems in the world, ranging from marine, coral reefs, to the arid and semi-arid outback, to tropical rainforests. Young children’s perceptions of, and attitudes to their environment carry with them into adulthood, determining their capacity to learn about and interact with their world. To sustain Australia’s unique landscapes it is essential that these future adults have an informed knowledge of the role, value and function of the country’s environment. To ensure that we are helping the youth of today understand the natural environment we must first determine their current perceptions of it. This research describes an Arts/Science nexus; while traditional data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews and focus groups are often used to determine children’s understandings, these methods are limited by their reliance on words. Children, particularly young children, do not always have the words to describe what ...
How are you connected to nature? Visual responses to climate issues
In Wang L. Y. & Hung, Y. (Eds.), Learning through art: International Pictures of Practice, 2022
This book was launched with the central theme of international pictures of practice. Our broad aim was to present readers with clear, first-hand accounts of what artist-educators do in various contexts, such as schools, communities, or other settings. During this visual art unit, framed by the context of the International Baccalaureate curriculum, students aged 14 - 15 from an international school in New York City addressed and created a visual response about the issue of climate change. Because it affects each region, students were touched by this problem as they come from different countries. The project I proposed in art as a subject in the MYP IB curriculum was introduced by asking the students to discuss how they are connected to Nature. Then, by mediating conversations using images from artists and the news, students addressed the impact of climate change in their homeland. The summative assessment consisted in creating artwork by applying the technical skills of double exposure portrait in photography, digital collage, and contemporary art principles to express their feelings, concerns, and points of view about the issue of climate change.
Empowering the next generation to connect with nature: a global movement
Humankind’s affinity to nature is threatened. Youth, in particular, are missing out. Without the connection, a love of nature cannot develop. Alienation leads to a loss of support for conservation of nature. Conservation has yielded an extensive network of parks and protected areas that in turn provide the opportunity to connect directly with nature. The opportunity presents itself for parks and protected areas to play an increasing and significant role in connecting people with nature. A next generation leadership, youth for youth, is needed to take up this challenge. Through understanding the needs and values of youth, parks and protected area leaders must offer programmes that connect young people to nature and empower young people to be agents of change. The 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress provides a launch pad for such collaborative efforts. Stream 8: Inspiring a New Generation, is focused on a legacy whereby future generations will develop and nurture life-long relationships with nature and the support for conservation that flows from that connection. Youth, National Park and Protected Area leaders are poised to build on the simple equation that LOVE of Nature + ACTION = CHANGE with the desired outcome of an enduring connection to nature.
Merging science and arts to communicate nature conservation
As a response to overall negative attitudes on nature conservation, Latvian scientists and artists launched a new initiative to communicate biodiversity. Unlike previous efforts, this initiative also included arts (poetry, music, dance and photo/video) as part of the information campaign. This project, named Nature Concert Hall, has been very successful between 2006 and 2012 in terms of receiving national and international recognition; this paper aimed to evaluate its efficiency in increasing the public’s knowledge and awareness of nature conservation issues and pro-environmental behaviour. We used an electronic web-form survey to investigate the views of the Nature Concert Hall’s audience. The collaboration between artists and scientists clearly led to larger audiences: 53% of enquiry respondents would not have attended if there was only the ‘scientific component’ and another 34% were uncertain about their choice. Overall, 80.8% of respondents noted an increase in knowledge on biodiversity issues after attending Nature Concert Hall and 43.4% of respondents reported an increase in their pro-environmental activities. Significant predictors of increased knowledge were gender, profession and the main living location (men, people with creative professions such as artists and scientists, as well as people residing in the countryside, were less likely to learn something new). Significant predictors of increased pro-environmental behaviour were age, the number of events participants attended and the increase of knowledge (older people and those who attended more Nature Concert Hall events were more likely to improve their pro-environmental behaviour, as well as those people who also reported increase of knowledge).
Re-Connecting With Nature: Transformative Environmental Education Through the Arts
Educators are seeking ways to make learning relevant at a time when students are increasingly disconnected from the natural world and the places where they live, and more connected to digital media and technology. Guided by Thomas Berry’s influential vision and David Orr’s environmental education work, this theoretical study argues for a humane and integrative environmental education and the important pedagogic role of art and modern communication technologies in support of it. This thesis examines how the arts may nurture environmental sensitivity, shape ecological identities, and engage students in a co-creative dialogue with nature and culture, directing older students toward a more responsible and critical view of technology and media. By examining different worldviews, philosophies, educational paradigms, the role of arts in learning, and the use of media and technologies, in light of childhood and youth identity development, this thesis explores how the arts can effect ‘transdicisplinary’ learning, a deeper connection to nature and help establish a holistic and humane environmental education curriculum.
Exploring children's environmental understandings through the arts
The last several decades have seen an abundance of research examining the growing disconnect between children and their local, natural environments. This divide has been labelled with terms such as 'biophobia' (Wilson, 1984), 'extinction of experience' (Pyle, 1993) and 'nature deficit disorder' (Louv, 2005, 2008). Crook (1985) argues that the content of children's drawings may provide valuable insights into their thoughts and feelings about the world (cited in Barazza, 1999). Visual mediums of data collection have often been overlooked because of traditionally favoured written and spoken modes. Indeed, the visual aspects of early literacy in particular and graphical forms of representation in general are under-valued, under-researched and under-represented (Anning, 2003: 5, cited in Kendrick & McKay, 2004, p.126). Qualitative methods have been found to capture children’s experiences in a more accurate and child-friendly manner (Benson, 2009). This paper e...
Learning about climate change in, with and through art
Climatic Change
Effective strategies to learn about and engage with climate change play an important role in addressing this challenge. There is a growing recognition that education needs to change in order to address climate change, yet the question remains “how?” How does one engage young people with a topic that is perceived as abstract, distant, and complex, and which at the same time is contributing to growing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety among them? In this paper, I argue that although the important contributions that the arts and humanities can make to this challenge are widely discussed, they remain an untapped or underutilized potential. I then present a novel framework and demonstrate its use in schools. Findings from a high school in Portugal point to the central place that art can play in climate change education and engagement more general, with avenues for greater depth of learning and transformative potential. The paper provides guidance for involvement in, with, an...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
The paper describes an innovative structured workshop methodology in garden-based-learning (GBL) called “Nature in Your Face” (NiYF) aimed at provoking a change in citizens behavior and engagement as a consequence of the emotional activation in response to disruptive artistic messages. The methodology challenges the assumption that the change needed to meet the carbon targets can be reached with incremental, non-invasive behavior engineering techniques such as nudging or gamification. Instead, it explores the potential of disruptive communication to push citizens out of their comfort zones and into creative modes of re-creating futures. This is done by confronting us with consequences of consumption by means of art and eco-visualizations. The aim being to achieve awareness, mental flexibility, and spurring debate. Thus, we invite them to react – and act upon these reactions by communicating their feelings or thoughts. This is used as an entrance point for broader and/or deeper engag...