Abstract
Science and art share a long history of interaction, and their practitioners contribute to wide-ranging collaborative projects. Interactions between these disciplines have demonstrated the value of using art to communicate scientific complexities and to incorporate subjective ways of knowing. In this, art is an invaluable resource for helping to navigate communication and decision-making around value-dependent problems, particularly challenging socio-ecological issues. However, relatively little research has been conducted to assess audience engagement within science-art (SciArt) projects, and it is a particularly pertinent first step to examine how science-art interactions affect and engage audiences in informal learning environments. This study assessed SciArt practitioners’ intentionality around audience engagement through semi-structured interviews with New Zealand-based artists.
The results of these interviews suggest that SciArt practices can be valuable mediators in assessing the scope of ecological restoration projects and developing solutions that suit a specific community’s needs. Within this study sample, SciArt practitioners with higher levels of intentionality towards audience engagement were more successful at developing community partnerships, capitalizing on community resources, and establishing new behaviors and/or systems of thought within their audiences. Those demonstrating such intentionality primarily created interactive SciArt pieces, suggesting that active-learning frameworks are as valuable a tool in informal learning environments as in formal environments. These results suggest that interactive works of SciArt developed with intentionality relating to engagement and action outcomes are the most valuable forms of SciArt for engaging communities and individuals and for facilitating community-level change. To advance SciArt interactions, artists expressed desire for better lines of communication between themselves and scientists, as well as more bodies of funding to support collaborative projects.
The creative component of this thesis mirrors the focus of many SciArt projects in addressing issues of ecological disturbance and restoration. In this work I took on the role of a SciArt practitioner –creating a picture book that aimed to translate eco-restoration issues for a youth audience aged five to eight years old. The picture book’s storyline follows a young girl who discovers a magical ability to jump into impressionistic landscape paintings, and then pursues a subsequent journey trying to paint her own landscapes to play in. Through this journey she (and the reader) learn about some of the components and basic interactions within a river ecosystem, experiment with ecosystem construction, and contemplate questions of agency and control in natural environments. Throughout the story, the character’s interactions with ecosystem-construction highlight the aesthetic and value-based decisions that constitute our notions of ecosystem ‘health’, a common concern in the field of restoration ecology. The restoration ecology literature emphasizes how inherent value-dependent decisions are in twenty- first century restoration efforts. As such, this project was intended to create a discourse about these issues in younger generations. This picture book aims to present these elements of restoration in an age-appropriate manner, using art as a portal for framing aesthetic and value-driven elements of ecosystem construction.