NAEA Artists, Ecological Issues, and Activism  (participant)
Recording Date: October 28, 2021
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My presentation focuses on several Art Education masters research projects that facilitate a move beyond adopting solutions facing us with regard to our natural environment but toward a contact zone of asks, actions to equalize relations for human dimensions of climate change adaptation. I will share several examples in which artists and my graduate students explored a unique approach to environmental issues. This scholarship offer art educators an alternative representational pedagogical spaces to think about social systems of engagement in regard to our environment — a space of active interplay.

Artist educators and their students have a long tradition of engaging with plants and animals in exploring themes such as sustainability, vulnerability, aesthetics, stewardship, natural cycles, and reinventing our natural world. Today artists and art educators are collaborating with plants for social justice and models of interconnectedness, to see what matters and why. This presentation focuses on several Art Education masters research projects that facilitate a move beyond adopting solutions facing us with regard to our natural environment but toward a contact zone of asks, actions to equalize relations for human dimensions of climate change adaptation. I will share several research examples (3-5 depending on time needed) in which my graduate students explored a unique approach to environmental issues. This scholarship offer art educators an alternative representational pedagogical spaces to think about social systems of engagement in regard to our environment — a space of active interplay. Through art education, art, and design we can form an experiential bond for ecological care and social justice by creating a future while staying in the present.