“Ecomedia and DIY Citizenship: Platforms and Practices for Participatory Art + Science” presented by Bianca

• Kimberley Bianca

Community platforms support a new era of citizen-driven social and environmental justice, make engagement more accessible to non-professional publics, and create participatory and collaborative communication for climate change. My action-oriented research encourages and guides participants in making media art and contributing to citizen science to generate dialogue on environmental issues, create spaces for alternate modes of media-making, and reflect on our connection to the ecosystems we live in or visit.

This practice-led dissertation centres around facilitating intergenerational critical media-making programs and developing a citizen science and community art project to harbour dialogue and action around local environmental concerns. Through hybrid online and in-person workshops, meetups, and interactive installations, I investigate the prospects and problems of participation. With the premise that DIY citizenship can create a framework for visual communicative practices, this research aims to build a new methodology at the intersection of critical-making and community-based design. There are four activities I facilitate that inform the dissertation: Extemporal media arts meetups; Futures2051 workshops, a collaboration with the University of Colorado Environmental Center; an online Maker Space with youth in foster care developed through my participation in the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars with the University of Colorado Office of Outreach and Engagement; and Ecomedia Colorado, a citizen science and community art project utilising the citizen science platform, CitSci.org.

Socially engaged arts practitioners usually have some experience in public engagement and facilitation, and reflecting critically on their work is valuable. My approach exemplifies some of these roles concerning social intricacies. I discuss how I familiarised myself with the identities of the communities to enable meaningful participation. Researchers’ roles and positions are rarely discussed and questioned regarding how their values and assumptions inform the construction of research sites or the framing of research questions. I aim to highlight the importance of creating safe spaces where people can feel comfortable sharing their stories, experiences and knowledge.