Nature PLACE (Urban Field Station Artist Program)
We build understanding of and engagement with urban social-ecological systems through arts, facilitate transdisciplinary collaboration between artists, scientists, and land managers. We also curate events and public programs that explore ideas emerging from these collaborations.
Introduction Murals are everywhere now—on schoolyards and salt boxes, buses and armories, waterfronts and wildlife refuges. They are declarations made in public, at the scale of daily life. And increasingly, they’re asked to do more than beautify: to cool streets, catalyze coalitions, shift behaviors, and tell a truer story about who “we” are and what …
Continue reading “Roundtable: How can murals be catalysts for climate and community action?”
Matthew López-Jensen, the artist, author, and educator behind New York City Street Tree Tarot. The Street Tree Tarot deck is a photography deck designed to be used like any other tarot deck, but with the hope that users will bring their own meaning to the cards and develop new patterns and ways of interacting with …
Continue reading “Street Tree Tarot is a Tool for Storytelling, Connection, and Reflection”
By Lindsay Campbell, New York. Robin Cline, Chicago. Laura Landau, New York. Georgia Silvera Seamans, New York City. Ben Helphand, Chicago. Paola Aguirre, Chicago. Sonya Sachdeva, Chicago. Natalie Campbell, Washington D.C.. Nora Almeida, New York City. — As part of The Nature of Cities Festival, on 29 March 2022, a team of practitioners and researchers …
In early 2018, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, which is located in the western part of the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, announced that they would be demolishing their conservatory in April, citing the end of the structure’s lifespan. At that time, artist Helga Jakobson was experimenting with designs for capacitors that could capture plant …
Continue reading “Composing an Entropic Symphony from the Sounds of Plants About to Be Displaced”
Human impacts on the environment are no joke, and climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. So, Environmental Education (EE) is serious business. Given the context, it is understandable that EE is usually communicated to adults through serious methods of communication such as lectures, information sessions, and pamphlets. But are these the …
Introduction Storytelling about humans and nature We know that different ways of knowing produce different insights. Scientific knowledge produces key knowledge about urban social and natural systems and how they might be sustainable and regenerative. Similarly, artistic practice and expression yields its own knowledge, which often connects us to deeper emotional paths of understanding. Both …
This essay is part three in a series. Since 13 March 2020, our team of social science researchers has been keeping a collective journal of our experiences of our New York City neighborhoods and public spaces during COVID-19. Read the essays from spring and summer here. 1. Winter is coming: Second wave and quarantine fatigueIn …
Want to explore diverse and connecting threads in urban ecological arts? In the LEAF, three FRIEC Urban Arts Collective members share something from their ideas and work for 10 minutes each, followed by Q&A. Presenters: Olive Bieringa, OsloMatthew Jensen, New YorkStéphane Verlet-Bottéro, Paris Olive Bieringa, Oslo: “Resisting Extinction” is a performance work that will offer embodied practices for …
Continue reading “The LEAF Episode 1: Show and Tells from FRIEC Collective Artists”
This essay is part two in a series. Since 13 March 2020, our team of social science researchers has been keeping a collective journal of our experiences of our New York City neighborhoods and public spaces during COVID-19. Read the first essay from spring here. SUMMER We started to settle into our “new normal”, with …
How do you conduct social science research about people’s relationship to place and the environment during shelter-in-place? Many are turning to big data—scraping social media, tracking cell phone use and movements, and these aggregated, digital data streams are providing key insights about mobility, vulnerability, and spatial patterns of the virus and its impacts across the …
Continue reading “The View from Our Windows: Our Social Ecologies of Sheltering in Place”
