Art and Environmental Awareness
Fostering Community Connection and Collaboration
Art—including mural painting, performance, film, and photography—can provide a direct pathway for people young and old to connect with their environment and feel responsible for taking care of it, leading to greater resilience by fostering stewardship. Art can also illustrate how individual actions affect the environment by calling attention to important places where people interact with nature – such as storm drains, which typically go unnoticed, but are where pollutants and trash can enter local waterways. By drawing attention to these liminal spaces, art teaches people how to take better care of where they live – for example, by maintaining their storm drains and removing trash so that it doesn’t harm wildlife or downstream communities. Residents can also use art to put a stamp on the places where they live, enlivening history and culture and making a community’s past and current values visible to others; visitors, in turn, can use it as a way to learn more about the people living there. Through community engagement and participation, artists establish new lines of communication between groups of people, such as scientists and young learners.
Case Studies
The Urban Waters Learning Network (UWLN) is a peer-to-peer group of urban waters practitioners focusing on restoration, resilience, and clean environments for all in urban river work.
[Expand the map to explore the full network - see the map of case studies below].
Three case studies from within Urban Waters Learning Network (UWLN) are highlighted here to show creative ways to raise awareness about climate change and other environmental issues.
In this Story Map, we draw together interviews with organizers working with artists to create interactive and engaging spaces that foster awareness and stewardship among residents, scientists, youths, and others.
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Many organizers are involved in this work to create connection with place (and make that connection more visible), because they themselves experienced this transformative power of art as young people. Art helps people connect to one another and the greater world. It can communicate scientific concepts in accessible formats, it can build community engagement, it can move people to action. These projects and programs are just a few examples of how organizations can use art to push environmental awareness.
You can find more examples below, and if you’re feeling inspired, reach out to and connect with us at www.urbanwaterslearningnetwork.org !