Perhaps the greatest environmental challenge of our time is the deep divide that exists between those with different views. Whether it epistemological differences – what counts as knowledge, or opposing ideas for desirable landscapes, the division between groups can be polarizing and irreconcilable. There are often good reasons for these diverse views. Our experiences, cultures, and learnings inform how we see the world, and this is a strength not a failing. However, there are times when diversity creates boundaries, which prevent good things from happening. When better communication could improve understanding, and shared experiences might build trust. How can we navigate these boundaries in ways that open doors, create access, and enable positive change?
In collaboration with Emily Carr Aboriginal Gathering Place and Tanah Air Beta, we are exploring the use of artistic expression and material practice in navigating boundaries. We seek to understand how art can break down boundaries, bridge diversities, strengthen understanding, and create shared visions. We came to this question from different experiences. At the Emily Carr Aboriginal Gathering Place, Indigenous material practice is a way to connect with Indigenous culture, open difficult discussions about colonization, and share stories of land, people, and materials with historical and contemporary significance. At the Vibrant Forest Landscape lab and Tanah Air Beta, murals, drawing, and visual media are central to the way we learn and better understand issues of sustainability – how to communicate different visions for the future. Our collaboration brought these ideas together in a workshop series, first in Vancouver, then in Bali, Indonesia.
Materials at the ECUAD Aboriginal Gathering Place
At the Emily Carr University of Art + Design Aboriginal Gathering Place, we brought together 35 people, drawn to art or landscape sustainability – or both. Participants were a mixture of professors, artists, students, including Indigenous artists, natural and multidisciplinary scientists. Together, we made rattles and braided cedar, we learnt how Indigenous art weaves stories into expression, and we explored how scientists could integrate the practice of making in learning and teaching.
 MIF students making cedar bracelets |
 Learning how to braid cedar |
Months later, in Indonesia, a different group gathered at Prana Dewi at the foot of Mount Batu Karu to discuss how artistic expression and cultural processes cross boundaries to achieve sustainable landscapes. We spent three days with Indonesian conservation practitioners, researchers, traditional knowledge keepers and artists, sharing how audio and visual methods – dance, music, ceremonies, animation, maps – have unique strengths in communicating conservation awareness, cultural significance, and local aspirations. Through the making of offerings, visiting temples and local sacred sites, learning local gamelan music and dance performances, we learnt of the Balinese Tri Hita Karana, the philosophy that connects the gods, nature, and people to provide harmony. We exchanged learning on Indigenous and customary ways of knowing in Canada and Indonesia, creating connection across languages, disciplines, and experiences.
 Making Balinese offerings (Banten) |
 Discussing with local wood carvers |
In each of the workshops, we put arts at the centre of discussion – how it is intricately connected with nature, culture, knowledge and learning. Yet participants also shared the difficulties of engaging with artistic expression in their work. For those schooled in natural sciences, traditional knowledge or artistic expression can be seen as inferior. For teachers and researchers, art can be difficult to weave into more common ways of expression – either due to lack of access to artistic methods, time limitations, or simply conventional views on how knowledge should be transferred. Despite this, almost all participants agreed that art and material practice contribute to a diversity of processes to improve learning, communication, and engaging with social-cultural boundaries.
Botanic Art activity led by IDSBA
Many people at the workshops spoke of their personal connection to art. Others shared that artistic expression was completely foreign to their life and work experiences. Participants drew connections between art and science in a myriad of ways: communication, traditional knowledge, as a collaborative project, in creativity and imagination, or by the way we combine experiences and process new information in our minds. At the Aboriginal Gathering place, when we closed our workshop with a sharing circle, participants spoke of feeling energized, of gratitude, of stretching boundaries. At Prana Dewi, there was a feeling of a shared mission among the group – that each person would take something back, try something new, and pass it on.
Overall, there was an eagerness to learn how to put these ideas into practice. We agreed that art can be a way to bridge boundaries, but how does it work when real futures are at stake? How can we bring people together, who see the world differently, who sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, and ask them to listen, learn and act together for sustainable landscapes? In our workshops, we learnt that practitioners, researchers, students, and artists that care deeply about sustainability believe that arts and their entwinement with Indigenous cultural knowledge can play a powerful role in bridging divides. Across the world, we can see the benefits of artistic expression in strengthening resilience, bridging knowledge across generations, and creating new partnerships. Our next steps will explore these ideas in landscapes; understanding issues by drawing upon local knowledge and art, and attempting to bridge divides. We will draw from the wealth of experiences shared through these workshops and continue to learn from the power of art in navigating boundaries for sustainable futures.
Read the full workshop report here