DRAFT DOCUMENT: please send comments to cjk@saltspring.com

Resources, Approaches and Key Concepts Linking Creativity with Social and Environmental Concerns

As you explore the ideas below, can you identify where they fit on the matrix below? Which place on the matrix are you most comfortable working? How could an activity be redesigned so that it fits into a different place on the matrix? How could these resources, approaches and key concepts be applied to design problems in your home community?

James Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, (New York: Simon and
Shuster, 1993) is an important book on the tragic sprawlscape of junked cities and ravaged countryside.

Alternative Development Standards:

"Alternative development standards (ADS) allow for more flexible requirements and can encourage more compact growth patterns and developments that support smart growth goals. ADS can address road widths, building specifications, zoning uses and densities, and stormwater management. Alternative development standards can also be more cost-effective in infrastructure and land development costs." Retrieved March 21, 2006 at  http://www.smartgrowth.bc.ca/index.cfm?Group_ID=3380 

The Local Government Commission works to build livable communities through alternative development standards and other means. They have a library of free resources with information on land use, energy and waste prevention. http://www.lgc.org/

See also Smart Growth, below.

Tiny solar cells-"Pentads" are solar batteries that mimic the leaf's reaction center. Molecular in size, they could one day be used to split water into clean-burning hydrogen gas and oxygen

Natural Systems Agriculture is a new paradigm for food production, where nature is mimicked rather than subdued and ignored.

Biomimicry:

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example....The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth....

[With biomimicry] we humans are imitating the best and brightest organisms in our habitat. We are learning, for instance, how to harness energy like a leaf, grow food like a prairie, build ceramics like an abalone, self-medicate like a chimp, compute like a cell, and run a business like a hickory forest. (from "Biomimicry Explained: a Conversation with Janine Benyus," retrieved March 21, 2006 from http://www.biomimicry.net/faq.html)

Janine Benyus and the Biomimicry Guild are online at: http://www.biomimicry.net. Her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, is the groundbreaking work on this topic.

The CBC broadcast a two-part special on biomimicry and maintains and informative and interactive website on the topic at: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features.html# (scroll down to Biomimicry)

Visit the Bioneers Website at http://www.bioneers.org to further explore this topic via articles, videos and audiotapes.

Wes Jackson of The Land Institute, Kansas, is a leader in applying biomimicry to agriculture. http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/04/17/3aa80bec9

The University of Manitoba maintains an extensive website describing Natural Systems Agriculture: http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/naturalagriculture/index.html

Water, like air, is a necessity of human life. It is also, according to Fortune magazine, "One of the world's great business opportunities."  (CBC News feature: Water for profit)

This diagram from "Project for Public Spaces"  shows measurable and intangible elements that  make a great place. Use it to evaluate your public spaces. Learn where they fail how they need to be improved.

Claiming the Commons:

"In our cities and towns, public spaces are the primary source of local identity and a vital component of the commons -- those areas of the civic realm that are shared by all citizens. In the countryside and between urban centers, the commons include our public lands and scenic vistas that give character and identity to the national landscape. Increasingly, these two distinct aspects of our shared wealth -- our public spaces and scenic landscapes -- face a common threat: commercial intrusion and usurpation of the public interest. You see it every day in commercial events that restrict access to our parks and squares, and in the proliferation of billboards that obscure natural beauty and destroy the character of our historic and scenic landscapes" http://www.pps.org/info/placemakingtools/issuepapers/preserving_the_commons

Claiming Public Space is an information commons and archive for the public-interest art, architecture and design community: an on-line participatory design and collaborative works network whose aim is to stimulate dialogue, debate, and exchange from an international perspective. http://www.claimingpublicspace.net 

In South America, private companies have taken over municipal water supplies in at least half a dozen countries, but there's one city where the takeover didn't go as planned. http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. http://www.pps.org/

In 2003 artist Erica Fielder created an interactive community experience in her own watershed. For six consecutive weekends she sat quietly in a public site while wild birds came to eat from her hat. She then invited others to share in the experience by offering them an array of  birdfeeder hats to wear on their own heads.

Hundreds &Thousands was a year-long community art project by Salt Spring artist Diana Thompson. She attempted to number every leaf on five trees, and wrote poems on the leaves of many others. She collected, sorted and arranged natural materials for an installation where viewers   added their own thoughts and responses.

Community Art:

"Community art is a generic name for a contemporary practice involving co-creative actions by artists and non-arts groups. New genre public art, art in the public interest, art for change, collective art making, cultural democracy, civic dialogue, activist or social-action art are other terms applied to this type of activity. While collaboration in artistic phases of conception, perception, production, dissemination and evaluation is key, community art has been contested, at times, by the "high" art world for its radical processes of inclusion. However, the practice is already recognized as being a lab situation for possible patterning of extended social action." - c.j. fleury and Elizabeth Sheehey, Templates for activism project, at http://www.templatesforactivism.ca/communityart.html

Examples of community art addressing environmental concerns include the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival - an art, community building and environmental awareness project. "The festival first took place during the Spring and Summer of 2003 with numerous workshops and work parties in mosaics, environmental issues, stewardship (weeding, watering, garbage removal), lanterns, stilt-walking, shadow puppetry, hand puppets, fire spinning, creative writing, and event management. Participants ranged in age from 3 to 90 years old and some workshops were held in Cantonese." http://www.moonfestival.net/

Other environmental community art projects are described by Patricia Watts, "Ecoartists: Engaging Communities in a New Metaphor," http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2005/01/ecoartists_enga.php

The Community Arts Council of Vancouver has built an online resource for community artists. It has different definitions of community art, many examples, along with practical tips, procedures and potential funding sources. http://www.creativecommunities.ca/index.html

Community art employs (whether consciously or unconsciously) a philosophy of community development. An asset-based approach to community development is described by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight:

""Each community boasts a unique combination of assets upon which to build its future. A thorough map of those assets would begin with an inventory of the gifts, skills and capacities of the community's residents. Household by household, building by building, block by block, the capacity mapmakers will discover a vast and often surprising array of individual talents and productive skills, few of which are being mobilized for community-building purposes. This basic truth about the "giftedness" of every individual is particularly important to apply to persons who often find themselves marginalized by communities. It is essential to recognize the capacities, for example, of those who have been labeled mentally handicapped or disabled, or of those who are marginalized because they are too old, or too young, or too poor. In a community whose assets are being fully recognized and mobilized, these people too will be part of the action, not as clients or recipients of aid, but as full contributors to the community-building process."

From pp. 1-11, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research (1993), online at http://www.artsonline.ca/2ndPages/resources.shtml

"The language begins with patterns that define towns and communities. These patterns can never be designed or built in one fell swoop - but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it."

Design Patterns:

Pattern Language is a practice developed by Christopher Alexander and colleagues (1977) to assist in planning towns and buildings. Alexander et. al. (1977) describes patterns in this way: “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice” (p. x).  Each pattern also incorporates a visual image suggesting the archetypal nature of the pattern and a diagram presenting the solution. Small and large-scale patterns are linked together to create a Pattern Language that can be used as a vocabulary by designers. Pattern Language is a way to integrate abstract with  concrete, conscious with unconscious elements, and overall principles with specific strategies.

http://www.patternlanguage.com/

Alexander, C., S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King and S. Angel. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Design Problems: 

The Crofton Pulp Mill,  above, spews poison into water and air as it chews up ancient forests. The wasp nest below may suggest an alternative way to design for pulp production.

David Orr writes, "Frank Lloyd Wright once commented that he could design a house that would cause a married couple to divorce within a matter of weeks. By the same logic it is possible to create buildings and cities so badly as to cause a culture to disintegrate socially and come unhinged from nature." http://www.designshare.com/Research/Orr/Loving_Children.htm

William McDonough is a celebrated architect, designer, and author with M. Braungart of Cradle to Cradle, a book which argues that "the conflict between industry and the environment is not an indictment of commerce but an outgrowth of purely opportunistic design. The design of products and manufacturing systems growing out of the Industrial Revolution reflected the spirit of the day-and yielded a host of unintended yet tragic consequences. Today, with our growing knowledge of the living earth, design can reflect a new spirit. In fact, the authors write, when designers employ the intelligence of natural systems—the effectiveness of nutrient cycling, the abundance of the sun's energy—they can create products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist." McDonough has applied these principles to redesign large-scale manufacturing processes so that they do no harm to the environment. "While this may seem like heresy to many in the world of sustainable development, the destructive qualities of today’s cradle-to-grave industrial system can be seen as the result of a fundamental design problem, not the inevitable outcome of consumption and economic activity. Indeed, good design—principled design based on the laws of nature—can transform the making and consumption of things into a regenerative force." http://www.mcdonough.com/

Massive Change: The Future of Global Design is a project by Bruce Mau Design and the Institute Without Boundaries, organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Their premise is that "design has emerged as one of the world's most powerful forces. It has placed us at the beginning of an new period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected." http://www.massivechange.com/ : "No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes...Design ...has placed us at the beginning of a new, unprecedented period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected."

Napkin sketch by Bruce Mau that began the Massive Change Project from http://www.massivechange.com/whatisMC_02.html

Lynne Hull, Raptor Roost

Founded in the mid-1990s by historian T. Allan Comp, AMD&ART works in former coal- mining communities that are  suffering economically and environmentally from acid-mine drainage (AMD).

Ecoventions:

"Coined in 1999, the term ecovention (ecology + invention) describes an artist-initiated project that employs an inventive strategy to physically transform a local ecology." Spaid, S., Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies. http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect1.html

Lynne Hull is the inventor of trans-species art (art created for animals). She  collaborates with wildlife specialists, environmental interpreters, landscape architects, and local community members to create sculptures and installations that "provide shelter, food, water or space for wildlife, as eco-atonement for their loss of habitat to human encroachment." http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect4.html#habitat Lynne Hull's webpage is at http://www.eco-art.org/

Artist Betsy Damon initiated the "Keepers of the Waters" project, which groups around the world are invited to join. See http://www.keepersofthewaters.org/resources.cfm#principles for Living Water Garden design principles. Living water projects elegantly solve multiple problems using nature as a model. They are unique to their culture and geography, but share certain characteristics. A living water project cleans, protects and restores water, blends art and science, educates about water in a visible and experiential way, reflects the local culture, and is developed using an inclusive and public process.

"Science is the information; art is the way to communicate that information in an accessible and inspiring way. These two inherently creative disciplines are natural allies. By bringing them together, we can derive elegant and potent designs that are grounded in practical application. This multi-functional idea is modeled all around us in nature... For long term solutions to our water problems we must utilize all of our vast intelligence. Projects should bring together diverse groups and bridge diverse issues. Ideally, they will support and accelerate the work of government agencies, environmental groups, indigenous people, public artists, scientists, and industry."

How in the next 40 years, we as citizens can learn to live within the limits of natural ecosystems, while improving human well- being in the Georgia Basin region on the west coast of British Columbia?

Students at Gladstone Secondary School Montessori Program envisioning the future at Trout Lake.

Envisioning Futures:

The Project aims to increase the level understanding of how complex ecological, social and economic systems interact and to discover new ways of achieving a sustainable future for the region, using a powerful computer model, to engage the public in creating sustainability scenarios to 2040. Computer simulation provides a rich picture of the kinds of futures we can live with and the policies needed to get there, enabling people from all walks of life to construct alternative futures of the Georgia basin and view the trade-offs and consequences of their choices.

The connected Georgia Basin Digital Library  project aims at developing an on-line web resource that promotes awareness and understanding of sustainable development issues within the Georgia Basin region http://www.georgiabasin.info/

Envisioning Futures can also happen in a very simple way. As part of the Trout Lake Community Mapping Project coordinated by Caffyn Kelley, students at Gladstone Secondary School came up with the idea of making two maps presenting alternate visions of the future at Trout Lake. One map would show the best possible future: restored lakes teeming with fish, lots of trees and an engaged community. A second map would show the worst possible future: pollution, dead plants and animals, social problems. Grade 9 student Emily Nixon spoke passionately to the general public at the community centre:

"I see that we have two choices, one: to continue this way and lose the hope of restoring Trout Lake forever, or two: through hard work and determination to bring back what we have lost. To have Trout Lake be pure and clean, to be able to sit on a bench and feel like you're right inside a forest, to go out for a morning walk and see a deer drinking from the lake. Do you even need to think about which future you want? I think we all know, but are we willing to put work into it? I hope so."

Trout Lake Community Atlas (link when posted)

Making  a Treasure Map is a basic visualization technique that is extremely powerful, as well as fun. Shakti Gawain writes: "A treasure map is an actual, physical picture of your desired reality. It is valuable because it forms a clear, sharp image which can then attract and focus energy into your goal.... You can make a treasure map by drawing or painting it, or by making a collage using pictures and words cut from magazines, books, cards, photographs.... Don't worry if you're not artistically accomplished. Simple, childlike treasure maps are as effective as great works of art!" Gawain writes of creating treasure maps for personal goals; they can also be effective tools for social goals and community process. http://www.innerself.com/Meditation/treasure_11142.htm

Diana Thompson, image from Gesture,  "Momentary installations made between the tides
on the beaches of Vancouver, Victoria, and Salt Spring Island. 
April to October 2003"

Ephemeral Installations

Tap water before and after remote prayers.

Hidden Messages in Water

Book excerpt at: http://www.cygnus-books.co.uk/features/hidden-messages-water-masaru-emoto.htm

Photographs and interviews with Dr. Emoto http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm

In "Making Art/Making Home" ROOTS' educational arm, Resources for Social Change, created a project to examine the changing meaning of home in the region. Workshops included a showing of "Shared History," a documentary narrative among the black and white families descended from the slaves and slave owners of Woodlands Plantation, followed by a discussion on "Race: A Defining Factor."

Home Places:

Artists have called people home in a number of ways, including Mapping, sharing stories about food and medicine in the world around us, and drawing attention to seasons and cycles.

Basia Irland initiated a project called "A Gathering of Waters: Rio Grande, Source to Sea.” This five-year long grassroots project developed to increase awareness of the plight of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo and connect people along the 1,875 mile length of the river. The resulting sculpture and video documentary served to raise consciousness about the rich cultural diversity that exists among the communities along the river and to establish a dialogue and common ground for discussion on water issues. http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/enterchange/artists/irland/

This article describes some of Irlands's other water projects: http://research.unm.edu/quantum/waterlibrary.html

Suzanne Lacy, "Latitude 32° – Navigating Home"

http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2003/10/latitude_32_nav.php

"This project focuses on creating civic discourse on the future of Charleston, S.C., and the region. Artist Rick Lowe and I are working with regional grassroots and institutional leaders and teachers to contribute to the progressive discourse and daily life of residents in the area. They are grappling with a complex of interrelated issues: property ownership (seen through the lens of land and housing), family (seen in representations of heritage that fuel the region's economy) and education (especially public education of youth)."

Viet Ngo/Lemna International, Wastewater Treatment Pond, 1993, Cleveland, Georgia

Patricia Johanson,  sewer project at Candlestick Cove, San Francisco. Johanson's art is designed   as functioning infrastructure, including sewers, water treatment systems and highways. It also provides wildlife habitat and parks for people.

Infrastructure Projects:

Wells suggests that a great earthen roof could be built over the lifeless pavement at BC Ferry terminals. He writes, "Picture massive earth cover with thousands of tiny fir seedlings planted there. Picture ground covers and fish hawks. Think about the nutrients that would enrich the surrounding sea in the run-off from each rain. The solar engine would be back in business above the trucks and buses, and the land would once again be at peace."

Part bio-engineer, architect, and artist, Viet Ngo first began designing and building wastewater treatment plants that use his patented LemnaTM System (lemna is popularly known as duckweed) in 1983. Rather than use mechanical or chemical processes, Ngo's system uses small floating aquatic plants grown in specially designed ponds to treat waste to a very fine degree.

A review of several artists working on infrastructure projects can be found at http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect5.html#urban

Mierle Laderman Ukeles describes landfills as social sculptures and accessible earthworks. She has been the artist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977. She first made headlines with "Touch Sanitation," a performance piece in which the artist shook hands with 8,500 sanitation workers.  She is now working on a huge landfill site on Staten Island, which will be closed and gradually made into a park incorporating a memorial to victims of the World Trade Centre bombing Sept. 11, 2001 (whose remains, mixed with mountain of debris, were buried in this landfill). See Cabinet Magazine Issue 6, Spring 2002, It's About Time For Fresh Kills.  http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/6/freshkills.php

Robert C. Morgan, Touch Sanitation: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, High Performance Archives,  http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/touch_sanitatio.php

In the community of Bear River, Nova Scotia, solar aquatics technology is used to process sewage in the center of town. With this technology sewage treatment occurs in tanks containing a variety of ecosystems, including bacteria, algae, floating plants, snail and fish, that process the sewage before it goes through an artificial marsh similar to a natural wetland. Children play in the clean water at the end of the process. Sewage is not seen as a waste product, but as food that is used by the biological community. The Bear River facility has made the town proud and hosted visitors from all around the world, including “environmental tourists.”

http://www.rachel.org/bestPrac/detail.cfm?bestPrac_ID=35

"Consider a water based project: Water-based projects to protect shorelines and create wildlife habitat ...  include half logs; brush shelters and log cribs; boulder clusters and rock piles; root wads and brush bundles; artificial reefs; in-stream structures; planting aquatic vegetation like rushes."

Living by Water:

The Living by Water Project was initiated in 1997 by two shoreline residents from British Columbia. The mission of the Project is "working towards healthier human and wildlife habitat along the shorelines of Canada". They have information and resources for individuals and groups who want to work on fresh water or marine shoreline issues.

http://www.livingbywater.ca/main2.html Tips from their website include: "Work with an expert to "soften" your shoreline; improve erosion protection with native trees, shrubs, grasses and beach logs. Resist the urge to "tidy up"; let organic debris like beach logs and fallen trees act as a natural seawall; "Mow it high and let it lie" - leave grass 8 cm (3") high to retain moisture, mulch clippings for fertilizer; Start a buffer - leave some grass uncut along the water's edge; restore with deep rooting native plants....

"Much of our current work is based on the concept of linking normally unconnected sectors of society's infrastructures. This stage has been labeled industrial ecology. In broadest terms, industrial ecology creates symbiotic systems throughout society which share and exchange resources internally just as ecosystems do in nature. Industrial ecologies can have high overall efficiencies because of resource sharing. Also, pollution can be mostly, if not completely, eliminated as one component's waste is another component's energy, nutrient or materials source."

- Ocean Arks International

Living Machines:

"John Todd and Nancy Jack Todd, husband and wife, and founders in 1981 of the Center for the Restoration of Waters at Ocean Arks International (OAI), a not-for-profit global center for water awareness and action. OAI's goal is to introduce sustainable alternatives to conventional waste disposal, fuel production, heating and cooling, air purification, and food production. The key to accomplishing these tasks is through ecological engineering. By combining living organisms - chosen specifically to perform certain functions - in contained environments, OAI has created what John Todd calls Living Machines. http://www.oceanarks.org  

"A Living Machine's size, shape, and casing vary according to function..... Toxic compounds from Superfund sites, for example, require a different array of organisms than does human waste. Says John: "A Living Machine is basically a home for a wide variety of organisms, in some cases thousands of species, which serve a function that helps assist human needs." Mary Guterson, Living Machines, Putting human waste back in its place: at the bottom of the food chain. http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC35/Guterson.htm

See also:

http://www.time.com/time/reports/environment/heroes/heroesgallery/0,2967,todd,00.html

Saille Abbott, Precious Resource

As part of the installation mapping the False Creek shore in Tideline, Abbott made a moving map of her own body. She found a way of making land, weather, nature and history into embodied experiences

As part of a community map at Trout Lake, students and community participants were invited to find an animal living in the park today with which they felt a strong affinity, and to contribute a drawing of this animal. Tony Thieu chose a dragonfly as his power animal: "It is just a small insect in a small lake, just like I'm a small speck of dust in a big world."

Community Map of Trout Lake including "power animals" around the borders. 70" x 85".

Mapping:

There is a Zen koan that pertains to mapping: "Without surroundings, there can be no place." Mapping engages us in a process of "coming home" to the places we inhabit. When we map, we pay close attention to both inner and outer worlds, as we search for images and words to describe their connections.

Doug Aberley* talks about the spiral of dissociation that comes when we have no ways to defend, document and celebrate the places we inhabit. He writes, "If land, weather and nature are invisible abstractions, we tolerate the destruction of the web of life more easily."

Maps can create community knowledge, charting the future as well as bringing the past to life. Maps that are personal and communal descriptions of space can also depict process and relationship. Maps are about "Giving the Land  Voice" - the title of a book by Sheila Harrington on Community Mapping. Maps can be painted on paper, stitched in fabric, woven, sung, and danced. They can illustrate, in intimate detail, a particular tree or patch of ground, or show how each place is connected - physically and culturally - with the entire globe. Maps empower communities. They help us find our way." from Caffyn Kelley, Trout Lake Community Atlas, (link when posted).

*Aberly, Douglas. Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment. New Society Press, 1993 

The contemporary community mapping movement was initiated in the 1980's with the Parish Maps project of Common Ground. This organization maintains a rich website at http://www.commonground.org.uk/

Sue Clifford, one of the originators Common Ground, writes: "Making a Parish Map is about creating a community expression of values, and about beginning to assert ideas for involvement, it is about taking the place in your own hands. It begins with, and is sustained by, inclusive gestures and encouraging questions. What is important to you about this place, what does it mean to you? What makes it different from other places? What do you value here? What do we know, what do we want to know? How can we share our understandings? What could we change for the better? Turning each other into experts in this way helps to liberate all kinds of quiet knowledge, as well as passion, about the place. Making a Parish Map can inform, inspire, embolden." http://www.commonground.org.uk/parishmaps/m-ppp.html

"The growing momentum of community mapping is largely associated with the on-going legal and planning processes in the province.... And it is largely First Nations who are leading the way in community mapping within this context."  http://www.nativemaps.org/abstracts/tek.html

The Southern Gulf Islands Atlas is a partnership project between Parks Canada, Community Mapping Network and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. http://www.shim.bc.ca/gulfislands/about_us.cfm

In Victoria, B.C., "Common Ground is a broad-based initiative involving academics, municipal governments, neighborhood associations, schools, conservation and community groups in the creation of education and training opportunities, and in the production of maps and learning resources which lead to community-based networking, dialogue and action for sustainability." http://www3.telus.net/cground/lydon%20article.htm

Want a one-pager on how to approach community mapping? This workshop sheet gives some basic pointers: http://gworks.ca/site/?q=node/view/477

Social Mess Maps: R. Horn describes "Social messes" as problems that have no straightforward solutions. "Social messes are more than complicated and complex. They are ambiguous and contain considerable uncertainty – even as to what the conditions are, let alone what the appropriate actions might be. They are bounded by great constraints and are tightly interconnected, economically, socially, politically, technologically. They  are seen differently from different points of view, and quite different worldviews, contain many value conflicts, and are often a-logical or illogical.

"Our project has been designing and developing highly visual "cognitive maps" that facilitate the management and navigation through major public policy issues. These maps have benefits for policy analysts and decision-makers similar to those of geographic maps. They provide patterned abstractions of policy landscapes that permit the decisionmakers and their advisors to consider which roads to take within the wider policy context. Like the hundreds of different projections of maps (e.g. polar or Mercator), they provide different ways of viewing issues and their backgrounds. They enable policy makers to drill down to the appropriate level of detail. In short they provide an invaluable information management tool."

Horn, R. (2001). Knowledge mapping for complex social messes. Retrieved online at http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/spchknwldgPACKARD.pdf

Life Mapping: Caffyn Kelley and Anne Zeller undertook a community project on Salt Spring Island that developed the concept of "Life Mapping." Participants used both words and images to document stories and meanings of gay and lesbian lives. http://www.queermap.com/lifemaps/lifemaps.htm

See also "Treasure Maps" (under Envisioning Futures) above.

On Mayne Island a Japanese Garden was built to honor Japanese Canadian pioneers who were incarcerated, and had their properties stolen, by the Canadian government during World War II.

Water Dream / Water Memory was designed to provide habitat for birds, small mammals and amphibians. Grass in the area of the sculpture was allowed to grow long, and native shrubs were planted along the line of rocks, creating a “river” of wildness flowing along the line of a buried creek, in a park where nature was buried, simplified and overbuilt.

Memorial:

Lyotard urges us to practice memory outside the paradigm of progress. He writes: “to fight against forgetting means to fight to remember that one forgets as soon a one believes, draws conclusions, and holds for certain. It means to fight against forgetting the precariousness what has been established, of the re-established past; it is a fight for the sickness whose recovery is simulated.”**

*Huyssen, A. (1988). "monument and memory in a postmodern age. Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 2.

**Lyotard, J. F. (1990). Heidegger and ‘the jews’. trans. A. Michel & M. Roberts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Since 1992, a Valentines Day March has been held to honor the murdered and missing women of Vancouver's downtown eastside. Native women and their supporters gather to remember with a healing ceremony and a march which stops periodically at sites where women have died violently. The Valentine's Day demonstration works on multiple levels: It is at once art, social analysis, ceremony and media event. The occasion is one of solidarity and community resistance that asks us to see patterns and take sides. At the same time, the event reveals the city as a whole community, where some profit and others die because of their class, race and sex.

(link to pdf when posted) http://www.missingpeople.net/vancouver_missing_women_re.htm

Paula Jardine is the artist-in-residence at Mountainview Cemetery in Vancouver. Night for All Souls at the Mountain View Cemetery is designed to provide opportunities for the public to commemorate their dead through a series of workshops, culminating in a family oriented community art event. For some people observing All Souls Day is a regular tradition, and for many this will be a new experience. The Night for All Souls at the Mountain View Cemetery is a non-denominational sacred event, and opportunity for people to share their own customs and experiences. The project includes public workshops in Memorial Lantern Making, Prayer Flags and shrine making.

Image from the main shrine at Night for All Souls in Mountainview Cemetery

 http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvcs/nonmarketoperations/MOUNTAINVIEW/allsouls/index.htm

 In Underground Suzanne Lacy and Carol Kumata worked with battered women from the Greater Pittsburgh Women's Center and Shelter to create a sculpture with three "getaway" cars. The sculpture commemorated murdered and missing women. In addition, it marked the site of a buried river and drew attention to the history of the Underground railroad, active in Pittsburgh during slavery. http://www.suzannelacy.com/1990sauto_underground.htm

Caffyn Kelley worked with the community of Trout Lake to create a 400-foot long environmental sculpture commemorating a buried creek. The piece was built out of plants, earth, and river rocks. It was an image of Trout Lake in a natural or restored state,. Engraved rocks incorporated into the sculpture formed a poem about water.  http://www.saltspring.com/hideaway/Caffyn/environmental%20art.htm

 

Create rock piles for reptile habitat.

Leave downed, decaying logs for small mammals, salamander and invertebrate habitat.

Let natural understory develop to provide shelter and food for birds and insects.

 Create brushpiles for reptile and amphibian habitat.

Naturescaping:

"Naturescape British Columbia empowers private citizens to end the loss of habitat and to create green spaces for wild creatures in urban and rural communities. Imagine the transformation of urban and populated rural areas as private yards, and community areas are naturalized by you, neighbors, friends, and community groups. Habitat yards will link together and areas of wildlife habitat in adjacent neighbourhoods will become connected. Over the years, a patchwork quilt of wildlife habitat will extend across entire communities." http://www.hctf.ca/naturescape/about.htm

"Safe wildlife shelter takes many forms and includes places where wildlife can escape danger, rest, retreat from the elements, and raise young. By creating a diverse landscape filled with varying heights of vegetation, planting thickets and hedges, leaving a brush pile, and including mossy logs and wildlife trees in your landscape you provide places of refuge for wildlife. Every species of wildlife requires certain types of food. To encourage the use of your outdoor space by many species, plant a diverse selection of indigenous plants which provide sources of food for wildlife in the form of seeds, nectar, berries, and associated insects. Food for birds may also be supplied from feeders; however, remember that different types of seeds attract different types of birds. Water transforms the ordinary wildlife habitat into an extraordinary one. Clean, fresh water in often difficult for wildlife to find." http://www.hctf.ca/naturescape/principles.htm

Fire dancers at the False Creek Solstice celebration.

Public Dreams:

This saying inspired Paula Jardine when she, with Dolly Hopkins and Leslie Feilder, founded "Public Dreams" in Vancouver. Public Dreams is an arts organization that brings art and celebration to communities by creating participatory events, traditions and rituals. The Public Dreams" society holds workshops on lantern-making, stilt-walking and fire-dancing, creating huge events that integrate artists, performers and the public with ritual, myth, celebration and activism. http://www.creativecommunities.ca/project/project.php?ProjectID=14

The Public Dreams homepage is at http://www.publicdreams.org

In a kindred spirit, THE ANNUAL WINTER SOLSTICE Lantern Procession in Vancouver started as a three-month Park Board-funded artist-in-residence project with artist Naomi Singer - and is still going, stronger than ever, 10 years later. http://www.creativecity.ca/resources/project-profiles/Vancouver-Secret-Lanterns.html

Slow Islands:

Katherine Dunster, "Cultural survival and the slow islands movement," in G. Brazier and N. Doe, Islands of British Columbia 2004: Conference Proceedings, Denman Island: Arts Denman, 2005.

Katherine Dunster, Slow Landscapes and Small Towns, http://www.comoxvalleyvalue.com/communityresources.htm#sstc3

Smart Growth

Current land use practices, zoning and development standards result in increasing sprawl, the destruction of farmland and the natural environment, excessive reliance on automobile transportation, and expensive infrastructure. Our islands become more pricey and less livable with every new development.

"Smart growth refers to land use and development practices that enhance the quality of life in communities, preserve the natural environment, and save money over time. These practices range from demand management strategies for transportation, water provisioning and energy (decreasing the demand for services before increasing the supply), to development practices that minimize environmental damage and foster vibrant communities. The aim is to limit urban sprawl, use tax dollars wisely, and save taxpayers money. Developments that conserve resources (land, infrastructure, and materials) cost less and increase property values." From Deborah Curran and May Leung, Smart Growth: A Primer, Retrieved online March 21, 2006 at http://www.smartgrowth.bc.ca/index.cfm?group_id=3470

Smart Growth BC is a provincial non-governmental organization devoted to fiscally, socially and environmentally responsible land use and development. http://www.smartgrowth.bc.ca/

West Coast Environmental Law at http://wcel.org/ has numerous resources for people interested in Smart Growth. Two of particular relevance to island communities are:

Protecting the Working Landscape - a document that sets the direction for local governments wanting to protect farmland, and reduce conflict between urban land users and farmers at http://wcel.org/wcelpub/2005/14233.pdf

Smart Bylaws Guide at http://www.wcel.org/issues/urban/sbg/

Smart Growth is a US-based group with a strong environmental ethic and nuanced views of growth. http://www.smartgrowth.org

Cut parking subsidies: one of the most lucrative untapped sources of energy may be antiquated parking policies. Eliminating requirements to supply free parking would reduce dependency on foreign oil, encourage alternative forms of transportation, and reduce the number of cars on the road.

The following is excerpted from SUBURBAN NATION: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000): "To what extent is automobile use a "free" good? According to Hart and Spivak, government subsidies for highways and parking alone amount to ... the equivalent of a fuel tax of approximately $3.50 per gallon. If this tax were to account for "soft" costs such as pollution cleanup and emergency medical treatment, it would he as high as $9.00 per gallon. The cost of these subsidies-approximately $5,000 per car per year-is passed directly on to the American citizen in the form of increased prices for products or, more often, as income, property, and sales taxes. This means that the hidden costs of driving are paid by everyone: not just drivers, but also those too old or too poor to drive a car. And these people suffer doubly, as the very transit systems they count on for mobility have gone out of business, unable to compete with the heavily subsidized highways.... Because they do not pay the full price of driving, most car owners choose to drive as much as possible."

Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), writes: "The need for tax shifting—lowering income taxes while raising levies on environmentally destructive activities—in order to get the market to tell the truth has been widely endorsed by economists. For example, a tax on coal that incorporated the increased health care costs associated with breathing polluted air, the costs of damage from acid rain, and the costs of climate disruption would encourage investment in renewable sources of energy such as wind or geothermal. With this concept in hand, it is a short step to tax shifting." http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/PB2ch12_ss2.htm

"Northwest Environment Watch's 1998 book Tax Shift--available in a full-text download-- explores the possibilities of tax shifting in the Northwest. Some of the options they suggest might be helpful, while others might be harmful to the environment of the Islands. http://www.northwestwatch.org/reforms/taxes.asp

Traditional Ecological Knowledge:

Photograph of a Cowichan River weir with latticework visible.
© RBCM - pn1461

"Weirs are fence-like structures made of a row of wooden stakes that have latticework woven in-between them. They were constructed in estuaries, streams, and shallow rivers. Water was able to flow through these fences, but the salmon that were trying to swim upstream to spawn could not pass through them."

Brian Thom's Coast Salish bibliography: http://home.istar.ca/~bthom/salish-rev.htm

Northwest Coast knowledge base: http://vaughan.fac.unbc.ca/anderson/

Nancy Turner http://www.coastsunderstress.ca/arm2/turner.html at the University of Victoria studies traditional ecological knowledge and traditional land management.

"A well-known facet of ecosystems is that the edges—the boundaries or transitions from one ecosystem to another—often exhibit high levels of species richness or biodiversity. These transitional areas often show features of species composition, structure, and function representative of the ecosystems they transcend, as well as having their own unique array of species and characteristics. Cultural transitional areas—zones where two or more cultures converge and interact—are similarly rich and diverse in cultural traits, exhibiting cultural and linguistic features of each of the contributing peoples. This results in an increase in cultural capital, and resilience, by providing a wider range of traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom on which to draw, especially in times of stress and change." Living on the Edge: Ecological and Cultural Edges as Sources of Diversity for Social–Ecological Resilience, Nancy J. Turner, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt, and Michael O’Flaherty

Image from Tideline, a walking project coordinated by Caffyn Kelley and Karen Stanley along False Creek in Vancouver. Two hundred participants explored the shoreline with a series of walks over a several months, documenting its history and imagining its future in a mixed-media installation.

Walking:

PLATFORM has long used the walk as an important form for public space work. The interdisciplinary art collective writes: "We have explored walking as a research tool, as a ritual, as performance, as intervention, as a political tool, and as a tool for sharing insights and information. Their project Critical Walks in The City (of London, England) is described at http://www.platformlondon.org/fitc.htm