AUB Human newspaper

+ Green Space

Dark Skies

AUB Human

Credits

The work featured in the Environmental Connection project has been created by students from the Arts University Bournemouth studying BA (Hons) Interior Architecture & Design and BA (Hons) Graphic Design.

Support and guidance for the project has been provided by the following AUB staff Edward Ward, Jamie Yeates, Dr Asha Ward, Dr Emilie Giles, Mark Osborne, Ben Parker, Natalie Carr, Marten Sims, Dr Alex Blower and Alice Stevens. Additional event support provided by Monica Franchin and Dan Davies.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dan Cox, Head of AUB Open Campus, for supporting the student exhibition and the series of participatory creative technology activities that took place at Maiden Castle as part of Green Space Dark Skies.

Thank you to Kate Wood, Dom Kippin and Caroline Suri from Activate Performing Arts for working with us on this project and enabling us to be part of the Green Space Dark Skies project.

This newspaper features AUB student and staff work from the Environmental Connection project with BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Interior Architecture and Design courses. The project was undertaken in collaboration with Activate Performing Arts in relation to the Green Space Dark Skies* project at Maiden Castle in June 2022.

The Green Space Dark Skies project aimed to provide an opportunity for people from all paths in life to experience beautiful landscapes across the UK, reconnect with nature and appreciate dark skies.

In addition, the newspaper provides an overview of key activities delivered as part of the student learning journey and a glimpse into related staff research projects.

*Green Space Dark Skies was one of ten major creative projects commissioned as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK. The event was produced and created by Walk the Plank, with the Dorset event being produced by Activate Performing Arts in partnership with Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) at Maiden Castle, Dorchester.

This project was supported by AUB Open Campus particularly the Innovation Studio and Access & Participation. Open Campus supports projects that engage with external communities and business sectors.

The innovation Studio is a space to incubate startups, research and prototype for existing businesses and develop innovative staff and student projects. Access & Participation are dedicated to working with communities and individuals to enable access to higher education and support students from nontraditional backgrounds to be successful.

Support was funded through AUB’s own resources matched with a non-recurrent grant from Research England to support projects with external impact.

Environmental Connection + Green Space Dark Skies

First published in the United Kingdom in 2023 by AUB Human Arts University Bournemouth Wallisdown, Poole, Dorset BH12 5HH

Copyright © 2023 AUB Human

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, AUB Human.

Lead Editor: Alice Stevens

Co-Editors: Dr Emilie Giles and Edward Ward

Designer: Briony Hartley

Printed by: Newspaper Club, Glasgow, UK

Paper: 55gsm improved newsprint made by Stora Enso from renewable virgin fibre that is sourced from responsibly managed forests and producers that have met strict environmental and socially responsible standards. The paper is certified EU Ecolabel and FSC certified.

aub.ac.uk/aub-human

AUB Human was founded in 2016 as a platform to celebrate social, ethical and sustainable creative practice.

Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the AUB Human mission is to inspire others to think, live and create responsibly.

Photo: Front cover © Phil Young; Above © Marten Sims

Introduction: Environmental Connection

AUB was delighted to be invited by Activate Performing Arts to contribute to the base camp activities at the Green Space Dark Skies event at Maiden Castle. The collaboration brought together AUB staff and secondyear students from BA (Hons) Graphic Design and BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design, in addressing the climate crisis.

The Interior Architecture and Design students were tasked with co-designing a site-specific and temporary engagement experience at Maiden Castle that conveyed the broader themes of the climate emergency, ecologies, interaction, and fabrication.

The Graphic Design students had the opportunity to respond to two briefs in relation to the project, with all students being posed the question: How could we help people build a deeper connection to the living world, enabling them to become future ambassadors of the environment and helping them live more sustainably?

Students were able to choose to either collaborate on a participatory staff research project with Dr Emilie Giles or respond to the question in a manner of their choosing. Both strands expected students to engage with the Green Space Dark Skies event, either to run a participatory creative technology workshop with community groups or to showcase an element of their project in the pop-up exhibition and work with Interior Architecture and Design students. Furthermore, students were also able to participate in the event itself and become Lumenators.

The following pages present not only the work from these projects and contribution to the Green Space Dark Skies event, but key contextual elements of the student learning journey; the 2022 AUB Human symposium, exhibition visit and key workshops. In addition, two articles that provide insight into a parallel staff research.

REGENERATIVE AUB Human Symposium

AUB Human was delighted to present Regenerative. A two-day symposium that explored the principles of regenerative thinking and design.

The Regenerative symposium aimed to shed light on current approaches to sustainability that fall short of being able to help save the planet from irreversible harm. The event challenged attendees to reflect on their values and the ways in which they act as creatives, architects, artists and designers. Furthermore, the symposium urged us to consider how we can learn from nature, and design for mutual benefit to help our world heal from the damage brought about by human development.

AUB Human has been curating and presenting symposia for the past six years and aims to provide opportunities for students to engage in critical debate with leading industry professionals and academics. The key purpose of the events is to explore and challenge how we can use our creative skills for positive environmental and social benefit.

The Regenerative symposium was convened by Alice Stevens with support from Dr Emilie Giles, Mark Osborne, Marten Sims and Edward Ward. Speakers included practitioners and academics including: Josie Warden, Michael Pawlyn, James Atherton, Dr Dianne Regisford and Dr Svenja Keune. AUB staff speakers included: Franziska Conrad, Dr Kirsten Tatum, Dr Andy Weir and Edward Ward.

The BCP Climate Action project presentations were chaired by Dr Anna Farthing, Executive Director of External Engagement, with panellists that included Roxanne King (BCP), Marten Sims (Senior Lecturer), Natalie Carr (MA student) and Alice Lynn (Graduate).

An edited selection of the speaker talks from the 2022 symposium can be seen on the following pages.

Programme cover © Natalie Carr

From sustainable to regenerative

Michael Pawlyn

Director, Exploration Architecture

Michael Pawlyn established Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus on regenerative design. The company has developed numerous ground-breaking projects that include an ultra-low energy data centre, a zero waste textiles factory and progressive solutions for green cities.

In 2019 Michael co-initiated ‘Architects Declare a Climate & Biodiversity Emergency’ which has spread to 27 countries with over 7,000 companies signedup. His latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency co-authored with Sarah Ichioka, was published by Triarchy Press in December 2021. Michael is increasingly involved in advising governments and companies on how to make the transition to regenerative development and in his talk, he made the case for an urgent shift from sustainable to regenerative design.

@michaelpawlyn

The UbuntuSphere ARTivist experience

Dr Dianne Regisford

Director: Evoking Belonging Living Practice Centre for Social Sculpture

Social Sculpture Practitioner Social Impact

Entrepreneur Regenaissance ARTiviste Author

Poet Visual & Performance Artiste

D-EmpressEvoke AKA Dianne Regisford is a multisensory, contemporary ARTivist and Social Sculpture practitioner. Dianne is invested in ARTivist enquiry, which curates imaginative and embodied spaces to address root causes of othering and colonisation through cultural and poetic acts of encounter. Inspired by African indigenous knowledge systems, cultural practices of storytelling and spirituality, her works churn the soul soil of African-Diaspora lived experience by co-creating new narratives as pathways to socio-cultural renewal, power and sovereignty.

Dianne commenced her performance with a calling to all ARTivists and invited participants to enter the UbuntuSphere. The UbuntuSphere is a participatory journey of imaginative, embodied exploration of Belonging as a co-created cultural practice anchored in a decolonial social justice agenda. Ubuntu is an African Bantu philosophy, which means ‘without you, I do not exist’... or in short, ‘humanity’.

Dianne’s evocative performance offering took the form of a poetry recital from her book, Evoking Belonging: Poetics of the Urban Indigene Evoking Belonging is a poetic enquiry into identity, indigeneity and belonging from an African heritage Diaspora perspective.

@D_Regisford

Designing and living with organisms

Dr Svenja Keune

Postdoctoral researcher

Dr Svenja Keune is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, in Sweden and at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, where she is currently working on the three-year project which is funded by an international postdoc grant from the Swedish Research Council.

In her talk, Svenja provided insight to her current project ‘Designing and Living with Organisms’ and explained potential methods that could help prepare for post-anthropocentric approaches to design.

Furthermore, she provided insight to her research journey in regard to the motivation of ‘living together’ with her research, where she built and moved into a Tiny House to ‘live together’ with the research experiments.

Josie Warden

Head of Regenerative Design, RSA

Josie Warden leads the RSA’s emerging regenerative design practice and its Regenerative Futures programme. In her talk, Josie explored the emerging area of regenerative design and what this could look like and mean for design professionals. She urged us to consider what new mindsets we might need to bring to our design practices if we are to move from incrementally doing less harm to instead, enabling long term flourishing for people and planet.

@Josie_Warden

From universal to pluriversal, how design can enable regenerative futures

Top: © exploration 2022 Designing With Nature exhibition at The Architecture Foundation 2014. Photo: Courtesy of Daniel Hewitt

Below: Portrait Photo: Courtesy Kelly Hill photography

We design our world and our world designs us back.

Josie Warden, RSA

BCP Climate action projects

Chaired by Dr Anna Farthing

Panellists: Roxanne King, Marten Sims, Natalie Carr and Alice Lynn

In 2019 BCP Council declared a climate emergency and pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030. In 2020, Roxanne King, the Strategic Lead for Climate, Resource & Sustainability at BCP Council, committed £25,000 for AUB students to tackle three pressing problems in the BCP region.

No projects on a dead planet

Edward Ward

Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design

Edward Ward’s research focuses on designing within the Anthropocene for more than human regenerative speculative futures. Centering on world building, projects explore novel production and distribution practices, material developments and application using advanced manufacturing approaches.

Edward’s talk reflected on his previous works and the journey he took towards realising them, including the design and ideation to a range of fabrication methods and approaches.

@theworkisthe.work

During the presentations and panel discussion, students had the opportunity to ask questions about the live student work that had been produced for the project. Graduate, Alice Lynn presented her progress on the regeneration of a poorly-used green space in the nearby council estate of West Howe while MA student, Natalie Carr, presented her project that aimed to tackle beach litter through the creation of a new system of toy libraries situated along the Bournemouth beach front.

For more information on the scheme please visit www.beachlibrary.co.uk

Reflecting on the AUB Human symposium, I have gained a deeper understanding in how design can be an enabler of positive change.

It has made me realise the pivotal role that research plays in design, that not only serves an aesthetic purpose, but also creates meaningful impact.

Jasmine Green, student

Creative workshops

Empathy building for designers

The Empathy Building workshop is an interactive session where students have the opportunity to use empathy tools that can help them gain a better understanding of people who have a different lived experience from their own. The workshop enables students to see how they can ‘design with empathy’ which subsequently can help them to create more relevant and meaningful work.

The workshop explores various techniques and approaches and enables students to try various simulation experiences as well as undertake deep listening activities with the Empathy Toy. Empathy tools include; simulation glasses, an ageing suit, wheelchair, pregnancy suit, and gloves that simulate a reduction in functional ability of the hands, such as with a condition like arthritis. The Empathy Building workshop was run by Graphic Design staff; Alice Stevens, Mark Osborne, Dr Emilie Giles and Marten Sims.

E-textiles

BA Graphic Design students took part in a morning workshop with Emilie Giles to explore how circuits can be built and programmed using a combination of hardware and soft conductive materials. They explored e-textiles (electronic textiles) as a making process for some of their projects and as a prototyping technique. Electronic textiles is a discipline that includes fashion, engineering, design and computing within its reach. The focus is slightly different depending on the precise field – from designing and making runway garments which light up and make a visual impact – to pedagogical research which explores how the process of teaching coding to young people can be made more creative and engaging.

For the AUB students, the aim was to get them using basic textile materials, designing and making simple swatches of their design, and to be introduced to some basic programming using the Adafruit GEMMA microcontroller board.

Their outcomes were both creative and technical, exploring the potential of tools given.

The workshop emphasised the importance of accessible design and the responsibility designers have to think beyond their own ability.

Personally, I found the workshop very impactful as it made me realise my privilege in the way I experience the world, and the barriers that other people can face in their day-to-day life.

Alice Marchant, student

Exhibition: Our Time on Earth

As part of the programme of work, students from both BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Interior Architecture and Design, visited the Barbican in London to see the ‘Our Time on Earth’ exhibition. The exhibition prompted reflective thoughts on the climate emergency and asked us to consider what were we going to do with our time on Earth The exhibition was curated by Caroline Till and Kate Franklin and provided an engaging and interactive exploration of ideas for how we might live and reconnect to nature.

Student, Gemma Cook noted, ‘I found the exhibition very insightful and learned about nature in a unique and creative way. liked the way that the exhibition utilised a range of media to communicate ideas from giant projections to textiles, audio and interactive elements.’

Student, Eve Sawyer reflected: ‘The most poignant piece in the exhibition for me was Superflux‘s ‘Refuge for Resurgence’. The work explored how as humans we have produced a hierarchy within nature, making our relationships with other species out of balance. The work identified that to exist in harmony, and in a way that supports all life on Earth, human beings need to accept that the world’s ecosystems aren’t ours to control and command. Instead, they’re a network of connections that include us.

The piece made me consider an environment and outlook had never previously considered. Imagining a future from a multi-species mindset, with all living creatures considered equal, is a new and disruptive way of thinking for me.’

Edward Ward

Senior Lecturer BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design

The installation

The BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design students codesigned the pop-up installation at Maiden Castle to showcase numerous speculative projects around themes of ecology, the climate emergency and humancomputer interaction. These were represented as pop-up engagement experiences using Maiden Castle as their site. Students co-designed the installation in three emergent groups which were: structure design and build, augmented reality (AR) and interaction. The pavilion presented a combination of student’s work that occurred earlier in the project, varying in scale and ranged from robotic sunflowers that connect with users from across the globe, informing of climatic conditions, to butterfly enclosures that promote the wildlife at Maiden Castle as well as the posters from Graphic Design’s group work projects on similar themes.

Students were encouraged to consider the second life of their work and the exhibition stand. Utilising scaffolding and recyclable or biodegradable materials, components can be reused for other projects or disposed responsibly.

Elements of the exhibition provide a rich and immersive experience, utilising AR to enhance and expand upon the physical work with additional information and animations, using augmented reality (AR) and Quick Response (QR) codes.

Supporting the project Edward Ward, senior lecturer in Interior Architecture and Design, facilitated by Dr Asha Ward and Jamie Yeates in the ongoing development of interactive elements.

Students were excited to be a part of the project.

Second year student Caroline Millard said, ‘the project was really engaging and different to our usual approach, it really brought the group together’. Student Harry Powell added, ‘having the opportunity to build our design at 1:1 scale really provided an appreciation for detailing and construction’.

The temporary exhibition was displayed for the day and appreciated by the hundreds of visitors throughout the event.

Engaging the public

As part of the Environmental Connection project, BA (Hons) Graphic Design students were tasked with proposing speculative responses that enable people to build a deeper connection to the living world. The brief highlighted the importance of exploring people’s relationship to the land, inequalities of access to the landscape as well as considering rights and responsibilities in relation to the environment.

Projects ranged from interactive concepts based on the Wood Wide Web that explore how we might communicate with trees to how gamification might help develop new sustainable communities to design activist approaches that uncover the environmental cost behind much of the food we eat.

An aspect of each of the graphic design projects was exhibited as an augmented reality (AR) poster as part of the Interior Architecture and Design students’ installation. Whilst the event took place, students were available with iPads to demonstrate the Augmented Reality (AR) and talk about the project.

It was amazing to see my work being showcased at such a high-profile event. Seeing how the general public engaged in our work through scanning the QR code and exploring the AR was a great experience!

Ella Lovewell, student

Alice Stevens AUB Human Founder + Senior Lecturer

Green Realities

People are becoming more disconnected from nature. Green Realities explores how we can engage people to make better use of underused green spaces in city contexts. This could help people to get in touch with nature, explore locally and subsequently help them to become future ambassadors of the living world. Our intention is to create a shift to a more utopian future where we live in harmony for mutual benefit.

Team: Jack Colley, Charlie Coughtrey, Owen Blue and Jack Nace

Witnessing people connect with the natural world whilst engaging with our artwork has been really a rewarding experience.

Fortune Aduroja, student

Photo © Jayne Jackson Photography, Activate, Green Space Dark Skies, Walk the Plank

Foraging Together

Team: Tiegan Caulfield, Ella Cottrell, Ness Gagnon and Savoy O’Connor

Research suggests that during the past sixty years people in the UK have become more distanced from nature and its subsequent benefits. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and foraging was a way of life. For this project the team have explored how foraging could help build a deeper connection to the living world and inspire people to live more sustainably as they come to appreciate spending time in nature and learning about flora and fauna. ‘Foraging Together’ is a journey into the joys of urban and suburban foraging.

The Urban Veg Project

Team: Hollie Collins, Ali El-Hawary, George Griffiths and Lauren Sutch

One In five London households doesn’t have a garden. Feeling connected to nature is essential for our mental health and can inspire us to live more sustainable lives.

The Urban Veg Project encourages city dwellers to grow their own food using limited available spaces. The project aims to create more appealing natural environments as well as provide satisfaction in growing your own food.

Grey to Green

Team:

Research shows that people on a lower income or from a minority group tend to have less access to green space. This is a problem as not having access to nature can have a detrimental effect on one’s health and wellbeing. This project is about reclaiming unused areas to create more green spaces. Football is universally understood and can be played in the smallest of spaces: rooftops, inactive streets and alleys can all provide a pitch and help promote a sense of community and a deeper connection to nature.

Fortune Aduroja, Daniel Bryant, Ellie Bullett and Dan Smart

Dr Emilie Giles

Senior Lecturer BA (Hons) Graphic Design

Staff research and student-led participatory workshops

Increasingly within design, creatives and researchers are moving towards making with people rather than for them. This builds on areas such as participatory design or co-design but also has a foot in community or participatory arts practice. Along with members of the public engaging with Green Space Dark Skies from a performative perspective, the graphics teams at AUB wanted them to work with our students to learn about technology, hands-on-making and sustainability. The graphic design students had the opportunity to work on a research project, the focus of which was:

■ Participatory making workshops using craft and technology with members of the public;

■ Exploring how marginalised groups can engage with maker culture on their own terms;

■ Embedding approaches of prototyping, participation and co-designing kits within the outputs of the unit being studied by the students, and seeing from a pedagogical perspective what their experience was.

Dr Emilie Giles worked with the students to develop a pool of design workshops, which took a participatory making approach (Twigger Holroyd and Shercliff, 2014). These involved using elements such as conductive paint, DIY electronics, origami and model making, to inspire participants to engage with nature and sustainability and in doing this be more creative and crafty, whilst also learning about technology.

As a project starting point, the AUB graphics team posed the following question to the students:

How could we help individuals build a deeper connection to the living world, enabling them to become future ambassadors of the environment and helping them live more sustainably?

As a way to answer this, participants needed to discuss how making activities might influence them in taking a more active part in fostering this connection. Previous research has shown that taking a participatory making approach can help participants open up and discuss their views and feelings about certain situations, as opposed to just taking part in an interview, and so a workshop approach seemed the right method for addressing the research questions.

As Price (2015) discusses, talking whilst making (particularly crafting) allows for ‘thoughtful creativity’.

Along with the main research question, the following ones were also important to answer:

■ How does creative participatory making encourage conversations in the moment for marginalised groups?

■ Does taking part in a creative activity in the rural environment help people feel more connected to it, who might previously had low engagement with it?

■ By combining design and technology in a crafting based workshop, do barriers break down people’s perception of their skills?

■ Did participation in a crafting workshop increase the confidence of those involved to mobilise skills aligned to design and technology?

This project saw the students design kits for the participants to build, these ranged from Nesting Nooks – a laser cut bird house which contains an LED that blinks when there is no inhabitant – to Power Flowers –origami flowers which can be used as a lamp in a dark space. All projects were educational, with these two examples teaching participants about bird species and their habitats, and about endangered species of flowers – all situated in the UK.

Seeing the process of designing a workshop and having the public participate was inspiring and really sparked an interest in participatory practices.

Clockwise from top left: ‘Nesting Nooks’ workshop; Prototype for Power Flowers (Student team: Kelly Man, Adam Lundie and Josiah Lunt); Dr Emilie Giles at Green Space Dark Skies; ‘Spin Mill’ Prototype

Right: ‘Power Flowers’ workshop

Photos © Emilie Giles and Alice Stevens

Prototyping

The students went through a rigorous prototyping process to design and produce their kits, taking a reflection-in-action approach (Schön, 1983) by being encouraged to critically reflect on their designs as they took the time to make up their kits, making changes accordingly based on their own making experiences and that of test participants.

Dr Alex Blower, Access and Participation Manager at AUB led on the outreach element of the project, along with Activate’s Caroline Suri, Producer in theatre, education and outreach. Together, they focused on recruiting participants who might not always have the chance to engage in the arts, with these people including foster families, those from a lower income background and young people with specific learning differences or learning needs. This meant that a diverse range of participants were able to attend the workshops and engage with the activities.

The outreach element of the project was incredibly important, with ties with the local community being strengthened, and new connections made. Dr Alex Blower said of the process:

“The Access and Participation team at AUB were delighted to work with our partners at Activate Performing Arts and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council in providing funded transportation to the Green Space Dark Skies event for young people in foster care and their families.

We are very proud of the connection we have with our local community, and this was a fantastic example of us working in partnership to provide opportunities for young people which may otherwise have been unavailable.”

Positive feedback

The workshops were received well by members of the public, who wrote their reflections of the process on labels with comments such as:

“Very relaxed experience. Good use of tech to promote a connection with nature. Well done team.”

This approach was used by Twigger Holroyd (2013) within her PhD research, where participants at festivals were asked to write notes as they crafted. This approach was chosen for feedback as the research team wanted a way for participants to be able to record their thoughts in a way which was nonintimidating and felt in tune with the crafting nature of the activity. After writing the labels, they were each attached to the structure of the workshop tent, as an array of memories from the process.

The students were also positive about their experience on the project with feedback such as:

“I loved working on the live brief especially with Emilie and my group, seeing the process of making a workshop and having the member of the public participate really sparked an interest.”

Along with:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the E-textile workshop, it was something I have never experienced before and an experiment that engaged me with both analogue and technical materials. Though I’m not a fan of coding, found the workshop simple and easy to follow, while being fun and creative. used the knowledge to develop a successful and popular workshop during the Green Space Dark Skies event.”

Clockwise from top: ‘Spin Mill’ workshop (Student team: Bryni Boxford-Faulkner, Luke Street and Vajune Strazdaite)

‘The Light Story’ Prototype (Student team: Olivia Allan, Harriet Lee and James Wilen)

‘Nesting Nooks’ Prototype (Student team: Sara Jayne, Mehera Kalantari, Eve Sawyer and Rosie Young)

Right: AUB Graphic Design staff and students

Photos © Emilie Giles and Alice Stevens

Taking a participatory making approach – not only through the students working with members of the public to build the kits, but also with the academics working with the students to design the workshops and kits, as opposed to giving them a strict brief –embodied the ideas of ‘mutual learning’ (Bratteteig, 1997) and ‘social constructivism’ (Vygotsky, 1968). These are important within participatory design and pedagogical theory as it’s about making everyone in the process equal, learning with and from each other whilst collaborating.

To make design more democratic as a practice, its vital that student designers are mentored to not only be user-centered, but also participatory. The Green Space Dark Skies workshops are an example

of how this can happen and how both designers and participants can feel equally empowered and have a sense of their own creative agency.

References

Bratteteig, T. (1997) ‘Mutual Learning: Enabling cooperation on systems design’. In: Braa, K. and Monteiro, E. Proceedings from the IRIS 20 Information Systems Research Seminar Oslo, Norway, pp. 1-20.

Price, L. (2015) ‘Knitting and the City’, Geography Compass Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 81-95.

Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals think in action, New York, NY, Basic Books.

Twigger Holroyd, A., and Shercliff E. (2014) ‘Making with others: working with textile craft groups as a research method’. In: The Art of Research V Conference: Experience, Materiality, Articulation.

5th Art of Research Conference 26-27 Nov 2014, Helsinki, Finland. School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University.

Twigger Holroyd, A. (2013) Folk Fashion: amateur re-knitting as a strategy for sustainability. Unpublished PhD thesis, Birmingham City University.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1968) Thought and language (newly revised, translated, and edited by Alex Kozulin). Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Celebration of the landscape

In addition to the exhibition and workshops, AUB students were invited to participate in Green Space Dark Skies. This event enabled communities to come together and follow in the footsteps of our ancestors and celebrate the landscape at Maiden Castle.

The roles involved either being an event volunteer or a Lumenator. The Lumenator role involved carrying a low-impact geo-locating light, designed by Siemens, into the landscape as dusk fell. As it became dark, the hundreds of lights, carried by the Lumenators, created remarkable patterns on the landscape. In combination with music, dance and poetry, this was a magical and profound experience for all those involved.

20,000 people from across the UK, including AUB students and communities that are often underrepresented in the countryside, were recruited as Lumenators to create twenty large-scale outdoor artworks. The Dorset event involved 1,000 people including Allsrt’d, a Poole-based organisation that helps young people with learning disabilities, Dorset Blind Association, Dorset Islamic Cultural Association and the 13th Weymouth Guides.

Kate Wood, Director of Activate Performing Arts, said: ‘We were delighted that students and staff joined us for the Green Space Dark Skies project at Maiden Castle on 11 June and were especially pleased with the creativity of their workshops, their interactive installation, and the engagement these attracted.

Their brief was to help people build a deeper connection to the living world, enabling them to become future ambassadors of the environment and help them to live more sustainably, and the students delivered this exceptionally well. As ever, it was an enriching experience for Activate to partner with Arts University Bournemouth and AUB Human.’

These mass-participation events have been captured on film. The Dorset event at Maiden Castle can be viewed online at: https://greenspacedarkskies.uk/films/ dorset-aonb-dorset/

Photo © Phil Young

Being a Lumenator was a unique experience. I loved the meditative and reflective music playing whilst we moved around with other Lumenators. It was quite a spiritual experience.

Tolu Dada, student

Photos © Phil Young

As part of the Green Space Dark Skies event, I had the beautiful experience of being a Lumenator. This experience was captivating, connecting and insightful. I felt a sense of community and togetherness throughout the whole day …it was completely inspiring and something I will remember forever.

Nina Longman, student

Photo © Phil Young

Weather

Imagine-Better

Background

Through AUB Human, Alice Stevens has been collaborating with Activate Performing Arts for the past four years. This has involved a range of projects and roles, including chairing the public-facing panel discussion

Climate in Crisis – Can Art Inspire Action? at Poole Lighthouse to a co-produced student exhibition on the site of an iron age hillfort in Dorset. However, Stevens believes that it is their shared values that make the collaboration so rewarding and mutually beneficial.

In June 2022, aligning with the Green Space Dark Skies project, Activate and AUB staff collaborated on developing the Environmental Connection brief. The brief drew on Stevens’ practice-based PhD research that also aims to foster a deeper connection with nature.

Research

Stevens research aims to address the problem whereby existing narratives around the British weather can prevent people from building a deeper connection with nature. For example, the continuous portrayal of rainfall in the media as a negative event creates a disconnection with the essential role of water in all forms of life. These types of disconnection can in turn engender behaviours that can have a negative impact on the environment. Mădălina Diaconu asks: ‘Does Beautiful Weather have to be Fine?’, and calls for ‘a reflective aesthetic attitude on weather, as influenced by art, literature, and science, which discovers the poetics of bad weather and the wonder that underlies average weather conditions’ (Diaconu, 2015). A central aim of this research is to extend the principles of ecolinguistics into design practice. Through exploring new forms of visual communication, the work aims to provoke new conversations that could act as a catalyst for positive sustainable change.

Photo © Rhiannon Evans and Sam Megilley

Alice Stevens

AUB Human Founder + Senior Lecturer

These

Sensing Audio Wellies aim to create a joyful experience in what is often perceived as bad weather. By encouraging the wearer to appreciate positives in the rain, the wellies intend to connect people to the natural world and provoke broader conversations about the climate emergency.

Alice Stevens

Ecolinguist, Professor Arran Stibbe, explains: ‘Through awareness of the weather, students can gain new insights into the relationship between person, local place and world, and how this relationship will need to change if we are to build more sustainable societies’ (Stibbe, 2017). Stevens research aims to show how thinking and making that is informed by the theories of ecolinguistics can use non-rational faculties such as imagination to imagine a better, more regenerative future.

Prototype

The Weather Sensing Audio Wellies are the first in a series of experiences that aim to connect people with new narratives and perceptions around the British weather. The intention of the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies is to provide a joyful experience that provokes thoughts and conversations about the broader issues of the climate emergency through the weather.

Over the past few months, Stevens has been working with Mark Benson, creative technologist, to create a working prototype of the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies. The wellies contain an environmental barometric pressure sensor and are able to sense different weather conditions. They also contain a speaker and Raspberry Pi Pico, a microcontroller board that can control and receive input from a range of electronic devices, along with various pre-recorded spoken eco-poems. This means, that when the wellies sense a specific weather condition, such as rain, a specific poem can be triggered.

Stage Two

Following a meeting with Kate Wood and Dom Kippin from Activate in November 2022, Stevens was invited to present the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies as a series of community walks at the international outdoor arts festival, Inside Out Dorset. This will take place at Dorset Wildlife Trust site, Wild Woodbury in September 2023. The experience aims to challenge the perceptions of the general public to reflect on what is referred to as good and bad weather.

In additional, Stevens will be working with Zakiya McKenzie, environmental writer and storyteller, to generate new eco-poems for the project. These poems will draw inspiration from the principles of ecolinguistics and use positive language around the weather to help people build a connection with nature.

The next step is further testing and development of the prototype. This will provide forty working weather sensing audio wellies that will be presented as Welly Walks at the Inside Out Festival at Bere Regis on 2024th September 2023.

For more information: https://activateperformingarts. org.uk/whats-on/inside-out-dorset/

This project has been made possible with support from the AUB Innovation Studio.

References

Diaconu, M. (2015). Longing for the Clouds – Does Beautiful Weather Have To Be Fine.

Contemporary Aesthetics, 13. Available from: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/liberalarts_ contempaesthetics/vol13/iss1/16/ [Accessed 22 Feb 2023]

Stibbe, A. (2017). Living in the weather-world: reconnection as a path to sustainability [online]. University of Gloucestershire. Available from: http://mewewhole.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/11/english-version-WEATHERWORLD.pdf [Accessed 22 Feb 2023]

Wiring diagram © Mark Benson

AUB Environment

AUB acknowledges global climate change and the ecological crisis and wishes to play its part in mitigating and adapting against unwanted outcomes of these issues. In consequence, we are committed to implementing environmentally sustainable practices, holding ourselves to account through our Environmental Management System (ISO14001:2015 and EcoCampus Platinum award). Our Sustainability and Net Zero programme sets our ambitious commitments for 2022-2030 and ensures we manage the campus efficiently, increase biodiversity net-gain, minimize emissions and utility usage, and ultimately achieve our net zero ambitions. We have also made a commitment to never invest in fossil fuels.