Abstract
“Doing” is a (re)storying and recounting of a yearlong action research project undertaken with a Grade 4/5/6 class in order to inquire, learn, and teach Environmental Education (EE) through the creation of an eco-art installation around the Lost Streams of Vancouver. Using the figuration of the salmon, the author attempted to (re)imagine education as a process of metamorphosis in which diverse bodies and beings grow and adapt to new environments, a collective becoming with. Exploring and creating various eco-art projects throughout the year provided openings for other stories and otherworldly conversations, opening up the formal curricula to practices of experimentation, collaboration, patience, and to discovering the creative agential world outside the classroom.
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Notes
- 1.
Similar to Haraway (2004, 333): “I like layered meanings, and I like to write a sentence in such a way that, by the time you get to the end of it, it has at some level questioned itself.” Definitions of terms are palimpsestic, multimodal, multidisciplinary, historically situated, and often (mis)translated. My hope in this book is to search for polysemes, and hold together the multiple definitions of terms to create a deeper, richer, and more complex understanding(s). My goal is to create thick meanings, messy meanings, that drawing on multiple fields/planes/modes of thought; to create generative (re)interpretations and translations. The definitions scattered throughout the book are not intended to be conclusive static definitions; they are simply the current gathering of descriptions that shape my understanding.
- 2.
Figurations, a literary tool introduced/used by Donna Haraway, are tropes or figurative metaphorical beings found within specific cultural traditions; they are, as Rosi Braidotti (2011, 101) describes, “a commonly shared foundation of collective figures of speech.” Haraway (2004, 2008b) creates new powerful figurations (i.e., cyborg, dogs, OncoMouse™, and other companion species) to work/think/play with, in order to challenge existing taken-for-granted notions and habitual practices of thought. For Haraway figurations are where the imaginary meets the ordinary every day; figurations are not “didactic illustrations, but rather material-semiotic nodes or knots in which diverse bodies and meaning co-shape one another” (Haraway 2008b, 4).
- 3.
The Old Streams of Vancouver are a series of creeks and streams that existed prior to the extensive development of Vancouver and the surrounding area. The streams have since vanished, having been covered by houses, roads, or diverted via culverts and sewage pipes with only a few sections existing today. Over the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the creek system with a number of restoration and daylighting initiatives beginning in the area.
- 4.
The Think&EatGreen@School project (http://thinkeatgreen.ca) was a Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) Grant project that investigated issues around food security in elementary and secondary school across Mainland Vancouver, BC. This community-based action research project investigated food security and sustainability issues with students, parents, staff, and administrators within the Vancouver School Board, specifically through the creation of curricula focused on student learning and the creation of critical environmentally conscious “food citizens.”
- 5.
In her book Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Braidotti (2002, 125) draws attention to the processes of transforming animals into metaphors (another powerful form of metamorphosis); she reminds us “animals are also living metaphors, highly iconic emblems within our language and culture. We normally and fluently metaphorize them into referents for values and meanings.”
- 6.
There are a number of terms used to describe various forms of earth art including environmental art, nature art, art in nature, crop art, site-specific performance, land art, earth art, earthworks, eco-art, ecological art, bio-art, and/or ecoventions. Throughout this book I will use the terms eco-art and earth art. Many use these two terms to differentiate contemporary artistic approaches from earlier earth art practices. The term “earth art” involves, as Bower (2010, n.p.) explains, the use of the “earth itself as stage, material and canvas for conceptual art ideas.” As he continues, the term eco-art is a “contemporary art movement which addresses environmental issues and often involves collaboration, restoration and frequently has a more ‘eco-friendly’ approach and methodology” (ibid.). I have chosen to use the term “earth art” to describe the works of art present at VanDusen Botanical Gardens because they are created in a more traditional fashion, by manipulating organic materials found onsite. However, a number of the pieces addressed contemporary environmental issues similar to other eco-art pieces we studied later in the year.
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Adsit-Morris, C. (2017). Doing: Exploring the Lost Streams of Vancouver Through Eco-Art. In: Restorying Environmental Education. Curriculum Studies Worldwide. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48796-0_4
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