Description

Join Zoom Meeting 8:30AM CST Chicago // 15:30PM Central European Time - 25th February 2021

Engagement with the arts can have deep and lasting effects. While data and the sciences are key to understanding and, to some extent, implementing sustainable practices and frameworks, it is clear that many people are not touched by graphs, diagrams, and lectures. The arts have the potential to engage people in ways that allow them to explore their own orientation and identity. Through this arts-based workshop, people better understand what matters to them – as opposed to being told what should matter. Participants in the workshop will learn about “Sojourners,” a community-engaged dance/sustainability project that involves university students as collaborators. Project director Erik Stern leads the workshop – with support from students. The aim, as one student in the project wrote, is to see that “through the body we intuitively understand nature in ways the mind alone cannot.” The workshop takes an embodied approach to the conference question, “What have we done with nature?” Participants should bring a small human-made “indoor” object, and a small “outdoor” object found in nature. (If participants don’t have these two objects, attend anyway - ideas will be shared). Through accessible physical warm ups and short writing prompts, the objects are explored for their associations and simple movement possibilities. The results are combined with other participants, ending with individual and group reflections. No dance experience necessary. Please “arrive” at the online session on time, and plan to stay for the 45 minutes.

Erik Stern, Professor, Performing Arts, Weber State University, Utah, United States