Transdisciplinary and arts-centred approaches to stewardship and sustainability of urban nature

Abstract

This paper explores case studies of how artists working with scientists and land managers affiliated with the Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Program (UFS Arts) are fostering new relations of care with urban nature and thereby informing landscape decisions. The ‘wicked’ problems related to sustainability demand novel, holistic approaches to transformation that engage multiple ways of knowing. We present 4 examples from UFS Arts by triangulating data across programmatic documentation, evaluation, and ethnographic materials from 2016-present. Matthew López-Jensen’s Tree Love and Nikki Lindt’s Underground Sound Project sensitise us to the capacities of trees and forests through image and sound. Mary Mattingly’s Swale is a floating food forest that enacts new forms of community stewardship. The exhibition Who Takes Care of New York? maps the stories and practices of civic environmental groups. Three themes in these works suggest opportunities for transformation throughout the knowledge production cycle: posing novel questions, engaging multiple methodologies, and communicating ideas with the public. Through these transdisciplinary works, we learn things we could not have learned via traditional disciplinary or interdisciplinary work and assert that stewardship offers a pathway towards sustainability transforming management practices and landscape decisions by reshaping our relationships to community and the land.