What’s your most innovative idea to solve an environmental problem? The University of Waterloo faculty of environment asked all its students this question with a $1000 incentive and the Jack Rosen Memorial Award for Environmental Innovation. I submitted my idea of Art + Science Alchemy as my best solution to address complex environmental change. The poster submission is below. I draw on my doctoral research, my proposal for a non-profit and I linked it to some of the music I have been composing with Post-Normal. Sure enough, my submission has been chosen as one of the top 10 in the Faculty and I will continue to present my idea in front of a panel of Judges on March 21st. You can check out the other competing posters, vote for your favorite poster (hopefully mine!) and details about the Jack Rosen Memorial Award here.

1. Art + Science Alchemy
to navigate complex environmental
change
How can Art and Artistic process help
society navigate environmental change?
Starting a Not-for-profit
1. Art can invoke imagery and innovation to Kaitlyn Rathwell My innovative idea to contribute to social-
guide collectives into alternative futures ecological change is to start up my own
not-for-profit organization that will engage
2. Artistic processes and art open space for in and support Art + Science Alchemy.
MUSIC
multiple languages of expression Please click on the
speaker icon (left) to Art + Science Alchemy will combine
3. Art and artistic processes can bridge listen to ‘Stand Up!’ a networks of scientists and artists to
knowledge systems is by nurturing the song I composed to collaborate on creative projects for
creation of artistic boundary objects inspire sustainability.
sustainability.
4. Art connects to the emotional capacity of
individuations, offering an alternative means
to inspire innovation and change Stand Up!
Written and performed by Post-
Normal; sound engineering by
The making of ‘Strictly Albacore’ Brennan Galley
This summer I had the opportunity to Lyrics:
collaborate with a local visual artist,
Dave Fox, on Art + Science Alchemy “Maybe one way to see it
I had come up with the metaphor of an Is to look the other way,
‘onion’ and complementary framework Maybe someday we will find it
to guide my understanding of how From with all the courage comes
scholars interested in social-ecological to play
sustainability are engaging with the
depth and dynamism of knowledge But you stand in your place, its
systems. Dave Fox painted the idea all you have ever known
(Figure 1)! you stand in your place, its all
Lessons: you have ever known
1. Articulating scientific understandings Stand Up!
in alternative mediums (e.g. poetry, You lonely people gather up all
painting), and in doing so making your strength and calm,
complex ideas intelligible to a wider Call for freedoms reign
audience
I’ll be making some show of it in
2. Leveraging the imaginative and my way
creative capacity of artists as a mirror
to reflect on scientific ideas Stand Up!
You broken people gather up all
3. Creating a feedback process your strength and calm,
between art and science to stimulate Call for freedoms reign”
innovation and insight.
Figure 1 Strictly Albacore by Dave Fox 2012 Acrylic on Canvas
Inuit Sculpture Scientific Graphs and Images
Bridging Knowledge Systems
Different knowledge systems, e.g. Inuit and scientific,
may have different means to understand a changing
environment and different experiences of that
. environment and change.
Bridging knowledge systems to collectively make
sense of environment change can both improve
environmental assessments, and also generate/
implement better decisions (Reid et al. 2006).
Art may offer a particularly robust seting for bridging
Inuit and scientific knowledge systems. Art and
artistic engagement facilitate the emergence of
cultural nuances of indigenous ecological knowledge
(Cruikshank, 2005); compliment adaptive processes Figure 2 (right) demonstrates two ways of expressing information and sharing a narrative. The first image is an Inuit Sculpture,
Memories: An Ancient Past, by Abraham Anghik Ruben, Whale skull, Brazilian soapstone, and cedar. (Kipling Gallery/American
by bridging knowledge systems and supporting Indian Museum). The second image is a collage of graphics about sea ice change taken from AMAP 2011
collective visioning (Goldstein 2008), and support Works Cited
Cruikshank, J. (2005). Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC
emotional and social cohesion during periods of Press; Goldstein, T. (2008). Performed ethnography: Possibilities, multiple commitments, and the pursuit of rigor. The
Methodological Dilemma: Creative, critical and collaborative approaches to qualitative research (pp. 86–102). New York:
rapid change (Vancouver Art Gallery 2006). Routledge; Reid, W., Berkes, F., Wilbanks, T., & Capistrano, D. (eds.). (2006). Bridging Scales and Knowledge Systems:
Concepts and Applications in Ecosystem Assessment. Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington: Island Press; Vancouver
Art Gallery. (2006). Raven travelling: two centuries of Haida art. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, Douglas & McIntyre. pp. 182.