Search Results (4)

The loss and damage transpiring because of anthropogenic climate change is a confronting reality, especially for frontline communities of the Pacific Islands. Understandings and assessments of loss and damage often fall short on coverage of intangible and noneconomic dimensions, such as losses to culture, place, Indigenous knowledge, and biodiversity, among others. In responding to this knowledge deficit, this paper turns its attention to the burgeoning Pacifika arts community because creative and cultural expressions have been critical avenues for sharing experiences, navigating loss, and exploring grief throughout history, including in the context of climate-driven loss. We analyse a series of Pacifika spoken, written, and visual items (n = 44), including visual art, poetry, song, film, documentary, and theatre, to identify the key categories and themes of noneconomic loss and damage (NELD) that emerge, better understand their nature, indicate their levels of prominence, reflect on them in relation to existing NELD frameworks and categories, and identify strategies for processing and coping. Our findings add to existing understandings of losses to territory, cultural heritage, human mobility, and health while also putting forward identity and agency as additional prominent NELD types. We emphasise that loss occurs within an interconnected and complex system that is centred on the critical relationships between people and their land, and greater attention must be paid to this interconnectivity as the foundation of identity and wellbeing. These perspectives enable stakeholders to better integrate experiences of NELD into future planning efforts so that they are not skewed (i.e., considering only economic loss and damage) or discounting people’s experiences. This will be critical for holistically building greater resilience and for communication in international fora and climate negotiations. Full article

The present paper discusses the presence and vitality of peasant poetry as an expression of the peasant way of life in Sertão do Pajeú (Brazil), and it seeks to understand to what extent it can play an important role in the territory, such as agroecological organizations considering work from the concept of “coexistence with the semiarid” as a communication and popular education tool. We performed semi-structured interviews, participant observation and bibliographic and documentary research. In addition, we filled in a field journal and took photographic and audiovisual records. We understand peasant poetry as an expression of the popular culture of that territory, produced by peasant poets to interpret, communicate and reaffirm their way of life and their relationship with nature. Peasant poetry is part of the identity and is currently present in the collective memory of Sertão do Pajeú, and it has been guided by agroecological organizations and can become an instrument capable of enhancing the search for environmental sustainability in the territory. Full article

This article examines how documentary poetics—particularly as employed by Muriel Rukeyser—use a montage of images to form a visual landscape. This visual landscape is wielded effectively by politicians during the Whistle Stop Tour electioneering. In Rukeyser’s “Campaign”, one section in her long-form poetic biography of Wendell Willkie, entitled One Life, she describes the journey of the 1940 Republican presidential candidate as he campaigns from the observation car of a train. The visual landscape created by the Whistle Stop Tour and described through documentary poetics contains Willkie, his audience, and the train itself. It is a unified spectacle, one that contains the rider, the reader, and the onlooker. Rukeyser’s documentary poetry and sensory-rich verse delimit the observation car as the mechanism through which this spectacle forms. The documentary poetics genre is one aptly suited for the description of the landscape through this railcar—a high velocity railspace that relays information by montage, which is to say, through a filmic collage of information assembled into a readable layout of the perceived world. Full article

Being an informal caregiver to a loved one with an illness, disease, or chronic disability is a rewarding but frequently stressful experience. In this design research project, caregivers participated in a half-day workshop to (1) share their caregiving experience, (2) reflect on the potential of a mobile smartphone ‘app’ for carers and (3) co-design this app, as well as in-depth interviews. Our design research process used multiple arts-based methods, including visual experience mapping tools, storytelling, photo-elicitation, documentary photography, cartoons, drawing, and research poetry, to provide rich and empathic insight into daily life as a caregiver and illuminate the potential of technology. Workshop activities included creating a visual collage of lived experience, annotated visual maps illustrating the reality and misconceptions of caregiving, pathways of care, and mapping a day in their life using the visual metaphor of a clock. Carers then trialled and provided feedback on a prototype app, creating a collective map of desired features. This co-design feedback informed the final app design, which was formally launched at a public exhibition showcasing stories collected from our arts and design-led processes. This paper outlines the value of arts and design methods in the design of future health technologies, which provide a critical space for an informed, reflexive, and empathic dialogue about illness and caregiving, resulting in designs that truly met consumer’s needs. Full article