Merging science and arts to communicate nature conservation

Abstract

As a response to overall negative attitudes on nature conservation, Latvian scientists and artists launched a new initiative to communicate biodiversity. Unlike previous efforts, this initiative also included arts (poetry, music, dance and photo/video) as part of the information campaign. This project, named Nature Concert Hall, has been very successful between 2006 and 2012 in terms of receiving national and international recognition; this paper aimed to evaluate its efficiency in increasing the public’s knowledge and awareness of nature conservation issues and pro-environmental behaviour. We used an electronic web-form survey to investigate the views of the Nature Concert Hall’s audience. The collaboration between artists and scientists clearly led to larger audiences: 53% of enquiry respondents would not have attended if there was only the ‘scientific component’ and another 34% were uncertain about their choice. Overall, 80.8% of respondents noted an increase in knowledge on biodiversity issues after attending Nature Concert Hall and 43.4% of respondents reported an increase in their pro-environmental activities. Significant predictors of increased knowledge were gender, profession and the main living location (men, people with creative professions such as artists and scientists, as well as people residing in the countryside, were less likely to learn something new). Significant predictors of increased pro-environmental behaviour were age, the number of events participants attended and the increase of knowledge (older people and those who attended more Nature Concert Hall events were more likely to improve their pro-environmental behaviour, as well as those people who also reported increase of knowledge).