I have a new post on ClimateCultures website that reflects on community drawing approaches to uncovering shared emotional connections and promoting dialogue about 'home' as both 'place' and 'process'.
It's about the Hokianga Community Drawing Project that I ran in November 2023, which deployed the creative agency of collective drawing to achieve a non-textual rendition of how the climate crisis is affecting communities located to the north and south of the Hokianga ferry link in Northland, Aotearoa New Zealand. The drawing project aimed to uncover lived experience connections between people, place and location at a time of climate crisis.
In these challenging times, art can help to focus perspectives on uncertainty about living in places that are changing, offering forms of connection that complement, challenge, and expand understanding. Socially engaged approaches especially offer unique opportunities to share that can help people process complex emotional experiences, and establish ways to imagine and act together. For example, participatory drawing offers the participant a visual form of ‘being heard’ that can create insights into place between the people who live there, and also present different world views as a visual conversation. It provides a way to unpack assumptions about the emotional demands of the climate crisis by focusing on situated, localised and personal experiences towards developing shared emotional connection."
Solidarity in Place: The Hokianga Community Drawing Project
Ecological artist and researcher Laura Donkers reflects on community drawing approaches to uncovering shared emotional connections and promoting dialogue about ‘home’ as ‘place’ and ‘process’ — both aspects impacted by human-caused climate change, ecological breakdown, and biodiversity loss.
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