2017 Emerging Creatives Student Summit

For a brief few days at the recent a2ru Emerging Creatives conference in Gainesville, I was able to participate in a perfect example of interdisciplinary design process at work. Throughout the course of the conference boundaries between faculty and students dissolved, opening up space for some profound exchanges of ideas and experiences. I found myself to be both witness and participant during the course of planning sessions, as teams grappled with complex problems and explored possible solutions.

Through unplanned lunch conversations, walks across campus to the library, breaks in the sun on the patio outside the gallery, the bus ride out to Sweetwater Wetlands, observations on the boardwalk as Coots and Gallinules paddled by… This is where we became both teachers and learners. We shared experiences, thoughts, and questions. What we all had in common was a love of the natural world and a desire to find some way to make meaningful work—whether as artist or designer, natural or social scientist— and a passion to share information and explore innovative and creative approaches to understanding critical ecological issues.

From my viewpoint as a designer, the power of this type of teamwork is less the actual solutions (although many of these were wonderfully inventive and intriguing) and more the process. I was one of the faculty at large circulating around the library dropping in on group sessions. As an observer, I saw my role change with each group dynamic. One group had hit the ground running and, while working through a technical issue, generously shared their process but clearly needed no outside intervention. Another group when asked how they were doing, shared that they felt they had reached a standstill. I thought they were getting lost considering possibilities for a public awareness activity without a focus and helped them break down the larger issue of water conservation into smaller problems to address. We talked about the importance of empathy as a way to connect with an audience, giving them a tool to move forward. Another group was making beautiful objects, but hadn’t fully addressed how to engage an audience. A simple question open this up for discussion.

All were playing some role in the design process: breaking down large complex issues into smaller problems. We often launch into a solution without taking time to ask enough questions to better understand a problem: why is this important? how does it function? how does it connect? what do we want our audience to do? Act? Think? Both? Good design process is asking good questions, and then doing good research. There are no “right” or “best” questions just as there is normally not a single solution to a problem. In Gainesville we saw a perfect example of how each team, with a unique mix of experiences and areas of strength, had a unique way to address a very complicated problem of over-consumption and poor management of limited water resources. It requires multiple approaches and solutions to tackle such a large problem. What we saw at the Emerging Creatives Student Summit was a demonstration of how the solutions may be as varied as the possible make ups of teams working to find a solution.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect going into the a2ru Summit. I was asked if I wanted to go about four days before the deadline, I thought “why would I pass up a sponsored, interesting-sounding, educational opportunity?” and quickly responded “Yes!”. I couldn’t be happier that I decided to go.

a2ru 2017 Emerging Creatives Student Summit was a phenomenal experience. It was interesting talking to students from other schools and seeing the diverse skill sets, interests, and backgrounds brought together by this event. I think we were all blown away by how quickly we collaborated and created big, bold, and yet, simple solutions to a very broad, important topic, like water conservation.

On the second day, it was awesome being able to go to the Sweetland Water Park and see a working solution in action. Here, we got to experience land and water preservation and see people restoring an ecosystem. This field trip helped us see how our solutions really are potential realities; it’s just a matter of building connections and acting on the idea. I think a2ru makes it clear that they want to support projects in becoming solutions by offering opportunities like this.

I hope to be a part of future initiatives like a2ru and can see many great solutions coming out of opportunities like this. It is by putting diverse, intelligent and creative minds together that the most impactful solutions are attained. a2ru and ArtsEngine are pushing students to positively change our future in big ways and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of one of their summits.

After arriving fashionably late and slightly disoriented after a long drive to Gainesville from Athens, GA, our University of Georgia crew arrived at our final destination on the massive University of Florida campus. I was not used to being in a room full of artists and scientists together, and the synergy of all of these great minds together hit me immediately after surveying the room as I hurried to sign in and quietly take my seat. Struggling for a few moments to get my mind focused again, I realized that the first speaker was talking about climate change and big picture water issues, and this was a time and place where we would be facing these challenges head-on. The salient timing of this conference was clearly evident, seeing as many parts of the country are struggling with drought, water quality threats, and conflicts over water supply.  Of course, there is a measure of complexity and enormity to these issues, but the creativity and willpower that was present and in good supply, helped ease any nerves throughout the week.

My project group comprised students from a diverse geographic background that included Florida, Virginia, Nebraska, Missouri, and Georgia. We exchanged anecdotes and issues about our local water, and they differed from place to place. This led to eye-opening discussions on our perspectives on water because though we all relied on water, we derived them from different sources, from rivers to aquifers. We realized just how interconnected we were when we related culture to water consumption, and specifically at the industries that took a big toll on water quality and supply in our area. Our project theme was not about the responsibility of corporations for water conservation, however, but about our personal responsibility for water. Interestingly, the two dovetailed into a discussion about water consumption in the sports sectors of our college campuses, especially football, and how the public had a role to play in that. Being at an SEC school, it seemed fitting to address this elephant in the room that consumes a large amount of energy and contributes to water pollution and consumption. The large influx of people into college towns can seem unsustainable and too large to tackle, but we saw it as an opportunity for outreach on water conservation. We had the idea of creating a tailgate station that would have games, foods, and educational elements about water. For instance, we designed games to teach people about water use of common at tailgate foods and created a concept for an artistic structure that demonstrated water filtration while highlighting the impacts of trash that litters the local watershed after football games. The collaborative process was enjoyable and inspiring, and I hope collaborative initiatives such as a2ru can lead us to a happier present and more sustainable future.

As a musician, while performing in a concert hall for an audience in and of itself can be a beautiful, meaningful experience, the experiences I have found to be most meaningful as an artist are the ones where I am placed directly in the community – singing at fundraisers or events trying to raise awareness about different issues, performing in outreach concerts for groups of people who wouldn’t normally walk into a concert hall, etc. I have seen firsthand the ability the arts have to make a powerful impact and affect real change, so the concept of the a2ru Emerging Creatives Summit was just the kind of experience I’m interested in. The issues we discussed regarding water are very real for so many people around the world and I was excited to attend the conference and see how students from across the country who were both artistically and scientifically inclined could engage with this topic.

There were many valuable takeaways from this conference. Panelists from both the arts and sciences gave us insight into what it’s like to work collaboratively across disciplines in the professional world and gave examples of the kind of meaningful work that can come out of those collaborations. I loved the constant theme throughout the weekend that listening leads to empathy which leads to trust, and that that is how collaboration happens. The panelists pointed out that there is no need to separate emotion from reason when engaging with problems in our world. For example, truly engaging with the issue of water means both looking at water samples in a lab and thinking about the families affected by water issues and what they’re going through and having an emotional response to that. We need both artists and scientists addressing problems like this together.

When working in our groups, it was clear that interdisciplinary collaboration is tricky sometimes and takes practice! As an “artist” in my group, I struggled sometimes to keep up with some of the scientific facts and concepts discussed by some of my group members, and I’m sure the same is true for them as we discussed artistic concepts. However, as the weekend went on, we hit our stride and came out with a final project that we were all happy with. The more exposure we had to collaborative work as the days went by, the easier it became. Our group had members from 5 different states who had different majors, different ages, and different backgrounds to bring to the table, and it was such a valuable experience to navigate how to make all of our voices and ideas work together in a setting like this conference. At our own universities, it’s easy to get stuck in the bubble of your own individual coursework within your department. This experience inspired me to seek out more interdisciplinary collaborative experiences at my own university and in my own life and to continue striving to find ways to use my talents and ideas in ways that can affect real change in the world.

The a2ru Emerging Creatives Summit on water sustainability in Gainesville, Florida was my third a2ru event. I brought a student who is researching water desalinization for her PhD at MIT. She is also an active performance and installation artist. In short, she was well prepared to engage in the summit as both a scientist and an artist. a2ru has excelled at creating spaces where scientific research and an artist’s flexibility of mind can come together. The conference, hosted at the University of Florida, was another wonderful example of this new and active space.

The water summit proved exceptionally useful in addressing a concern I have- the tendency for research to happen in a bubble. Over the three day summit, students were given the opportunity to share their research in a format driven by creativity, an artist’s way of thinking, and a strong faculty and staff support structure.

Though the problems presented at the emerging creatives summits may not be solved in one weekend the connections made and the plans hatched certainly move the problems along in a way unlike one would find in the lab or the classroom. The opportunities for students to get to know one another, ample space and time to problem solve, and a receptive audience for reporting back on progress all add up to a student experience that is both engaging and productive.

As a visiting administrator, I also found space for networking and further collaboration. I enjoyed contributing as a guide for the many student teams, and also learning from and chatting with other faculty and arts administrators from peer schools. a2ru summits are fertile grounds for creating relationships based on the arts and research, furthering important conversations about global issues using creativity and data as fuel, and seeding intellectual connections that at the least help inform future decisions and at best can help connect dots between important science happening throughout the academy.

Working in a bubble surely has its benefits, but venturing out, visiting other campuses, experiencing new research, and meeting like-minded people, all with the permission that the arts gives us to experiment, is a brilliant move and one I will continue to support.

I see three major related imperatives for education: 1) we need to enhance inquiry-driven learning across disciplines, 2) we need to give our students multiple models for integrated-thinking and mixed-methodologies, and 3) for some of our biggest issues, we need to teach (and demonstrate) art and design practices as centrally located in creative research-based problem solving. With a growing recognition that our educational systems should move in the direction of cross-disciplinary learning, the most productive will be through the inclusion of the arts and design. Climate adaptation, food and water quality, and economic and social equity, to name a few global challenges, need a diverse range of research methods that focus on the shared-nature of our problems. Creative disciplines uniquely integrate diverse knowledge from the sciences, technology and humanities to invent responses to these shared problems as new futures, that might not happen without these creative practices. With this as my philosophical basis, I jumped at the chance to attend the a2ru Student Summit on Water.

And it was amazing. The experience confirmed my growing understanding of how an interdisciplinary learning and engagement model might address the above stated challenges and desires. Students arrive to the summit from diverse academic backgrounds and interests, from across the arts and sciences; however, they quickly plunge into issues and topics that “put to work” what everyone brings to the table. Our first evening together was launched with a session on ‘d.school’ design-thinking that introduces students to an empathize-define-ideate-prototype-test framework. Students utilized that methodology as an open-ended, inventive design process to conceive and develop team projects together. In just three days, teams of five students tackled big water issues such as water quality and health, the ethics of clean water access, and environmental education around water, through discreet project ideas. Creative projects emerged such as exquisite 3-D printed coral-replacement habitat reefs; billboard-style graphic visualizations for real-time community water monitoring; and new water-immersive pedagogic programs for school children. All fifteen projects presented highly-informed ways of addressing water issues through technology-integrative environments and inventive knowledge-building. a2ru invited the design research teams to submit follow-up grant applications to see their projects through to ‘development’ such as through prototyping and installation.

Each morning of the Summit started with a panel of critical artists, scientists and educators whose research-based creative works generate new understanding and engagement with water. For example, we heard from a leading climate physicist who forewarns about climate through theatrical musical performances, and a filmmaker/photographer whose research has taken her to travel with scientists to extreme water and ice landscapes of the planet. One of the leading researchers on the Flint water crisis spoke about the policy gaps between science and social justice. In telling their stories, panelists spoke both within their core-disciplines and way-outside those boundaries; in doing so, they shared the challenging but ground-breaking work they achieve through their collaborative research. In the afternoon and evening work sessions that followed, it became apparent that students were rigorously bridging each other’s disciplinary differences, and that creative practice was central to the process of shared knowledge-production.

Coming away from a2ru, and now with major threats to eliminate our federal agencies that fund research in the arts and humanities, more than ever our home institutions may need to look inward for new creative potential across our programs. Although large research universities have capacity to address some of our biggest issues through a vast range of disciplines, collaboration doesn’t happen though magic. We need educational models such as a2ru’s to break through barriers, and I’m excited about the potential to adapt its framework within my home university. As a landscape architecture professor, I can attest that our design practices create unexpected connections and relationships among fields of research, but that we need to begin these collaborations earlier and to make these new models of integration the norm.

My senior year at Tufts University, I saw Orchids to Octopi by Melinda Lopez, a play about evolution. It was my “eureka” moment, proving that my two majors, chemical engineering and drama, could work together in harmony. Fast-forward two years to a chemical engineering Ph.D. student, struggling to find a community of people who were interested in both STEM and the arts. I went to the MIT Hacking Arts Festival and found scientists and artists who were interested in turning art on its head. But after a quick 24 hours, it was over, and I was back in the real world, hungry for more. When I touched down in Gainesville for the A2RU Emerging Creative Students Conference, I really wasn’t sure what to expect (I don’t think anyone really is), only thinking that I was ready to be open to all sorts of ideas. There. Were. So. Many. Ideas. Every conversation I had, from geological modeling, farm houses being turned into galleries, different meanings of access, to the carbon footprint of art and science, was so refreshing and unexpected. Throughout the three days I just kept repeating to myself, “I found my tribe,” these people, who were not just artists and scientists exploring this intersection because it was cool, but to actually inspire activism. I think that the most important takeaway from over those three days we spent exhaustingly deep design thinking, was that both STEM and the arts heavily relied on the process of trying and failing and tweaking until finding success. I found it really interesting that in both fields the finished piece is considered most important to the general public, but both scientists and artists respect the process and will to get there. This realization has inspired me to integrate art into my Ph.D. thesis. I’m thankful to have been part of a weekend that brought together so many inspiring people into the same room.