This presentation was designed to support a professional development workshop nurturing liberating creativities, introducing environmental education researchers to arts-based educational research. Together we explore justice and empathy, surface and value diversity through multiple ways of knowing, and engage with arts-informed ways of researching. The slides have an accompanying briefing paper. The experiential dimension of the planned workshop is captured with recommendations for practicing hands-on, interactive infusions and collaborative inquiry. Affirmations, motivations for the work, lenses for the research, approaches, and research examples are included. Emergent movements such as just sustainability arts in research, arts and humanities in environmental educational research, and arts-STEM all highlight the importance of arts-based educational research methods.

1. Liberating Diverse
Creativities:
The Future of Arts-Based
Environmental Education Research
North American Association of Environmental Education
14th Annual Research Symposium - Research Workshop
45th General Conference - Interactive Symposium
October 18, 2017
Marna Hauk, PhD, Mandy Leetch, Mandisa Wood, Rachel Kippen
Prescott College

2. Abstract
This presentation was designed to support a professional development
workshop nurturing liberating creativities, introducing environmental education
researchers to arts-based educational research. Together we explore justice
and empathy, surface and value diversity through multiple ways of knowing,
and engage with arts-informed ways of researching (areas of research design
& quality criteria). The slides have an accompanying briefing paper. The
experiential dimension of the planned workshop is not detailed in these slides,
which involved practice with hands-on, interactive infusions and collaborative
inquiry. Emergent movements such as just sustainability arts in research (Hauk
& Kippen, in press 2017), arts and humanities in environmental educational
research (McKenzie, Hart, Bai, & Jickling, 2009), and arts-STEM (Flowers et al,
2015) all highlight the importance of arts-based educational research methods.
Related Briefing Paper Available
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CHhoCoxV_eVjQf_9l421m5XjRSxis_EKrCqdcs0Fj
M8/edit?usp=sharing

3. Session Questions
1. What is arts-based educational research historically and what is possible
as a method in environmental educational research?
2. How can arts-based educational research expand the possibilities for
a. inclusion and multiple ways of knowing and learning
b. nurturing critical lens and creative capacity
c. while generating liberating brave space creation?
3. How can researchers assess quality in this form of research?
4. What are the different dimensions of application for arts-based methods?
5. What are resources for further inquiry?
6. How could I apply this in my own research and practice?

4. Introduction to Arts-Based Research
and Arts-Based Environmental
Education Research

5. Sites & Phases of Arts Based Environmental Educational Research
Research
Design,
Including
Research
Ethics and
Ethical
Reflection
Researcher
Process,
Self-Data
Gathering
and
Reflections
Sampling
Processes
and
Recruitment
Data
Gathering
Participants
& Co-
Researchers
This can have
multiple layers if
school systems,
administrators,
faculty, teachers,
staff, students, and
families are involved
in the active
research system
Data
Analysis
and Sense-
making
Findings,
Results,
Conclusions
&
Represen-
tations
Arts-based research design includes infusing arts-informed approaches in one or more of the 8 main sites
or processes of educational research design. These are not intended to suggest linear processes. Some
arts-based researchers believe that the most rigorous methods involve using arts-informed approaches in
more, most, or all phases of the research process.
Content
(Art or
art-making in
the curriculum
being studied,
if relevant)
Quality Considerations

6. ABER Methods Highlights

7. Four Motivations for ABER in EE Research
INCLUSION & MULTIPLE WAYS OF KNOWING
Diversity and inclusion in ESE requires multiple ways of
knowing in the classroom and in research (Kagawa & Selby,
2010; Selby & Kagawa, 2015) to generate what have
been described as pedagogies of invitation
(Keating, 2013) featuring interconnectedness.
Arts-based research methods increase
awareness of and adoption of
multiple ways of knowing.
TBILISI CONFIRMATION
In resonance with the Tbilisi Accord (1977),
environmental education should [empower]
“interpreting complex phenomena that shape the
environment, encourage those... aesthetic values
which…will further the development of conduct
compatible with the preservation and improvement of
the environment” (#6).
CRITICAL LENS
Graham (2007) argues that arts-based methods
can nurture critical capacities in learners, researchers,
and those they reach and serve. This critical lens is
resonant with indigenous, CRT, critical place inquiry
and land pedagogy approaches as well as some post-.
Ecofeminist and feminist materialist lenses in
environmental and sustainability education.
LIBERATION THROUGH CREATING
BRAVE RESEARCH SPACES
Arts based methods support intersectional
(Collins & Bilge, 2016; Hankivsky, 2014) research and
researcher positions and brave space facilitation (Arao &
Clemens, 2013; Hauk et al 2016a,b). Just sustainability
arts is one example of an emergent set of approaches for
arts-based research inquiry with liberatory intent and with
the process of emergent social sustainability learning
(Kippen & Hauk, 2016; Hauk & Kippen, 2017).

8. Creating Generative Space for Arts-Based Encounters
Pedagogies of invitation and radical interconnectedness (Keating, 2013) provide
inspiration for creating generative space for arts-based environmental and
sustainability educational encounters and research approaches. Affirmative inquiry
nurtures creative capacities and helping researchers and participants remember and
connect with their internal wellsprings.
“There is a need for the complementary and recursive use of artistic, embodied,
experiential, symbolic, spiritual, and relational learning, especially in the vital
educational task of reconnecting learners to the earth while enabling them to discover
their (connected) identity and realize their full potentials.” - Kagawa & Selby, 2010, pp. 242-243
Selby and Kagawa (2015) emphasized the importance of experiential education approaches in sustainability education,
requiring “lively and messy...emotional, imaginative, and creative
entanglement with the world” (p. 278) to generate critical, transformative sustainability education.
(Hauk, in press)

9. Dimensions of Arts-Based
Environmental Education Research
Each set of slides in the next section explores a combination of affirmation, lens, approach,
and examples of research from the literature and our own environmental education
research to bring vibrant possibilities to life…
As an act of appreciative inquiry, we start with affirmations to help build cultural momentum
for the brave, beautiful work of creativity - many of us find that some cultural and academic
contexts are hostile or critical or threatened by creative and arts-based approaches. Our
aim is to generate a supportive and nurturing context for inviting fully-dimensioned
perception, interaction, generative response, and insight.

10. Affirmation: Art is Activism
“In challenging narrow definitions of art and activism, we reframe art as activism.
Whether the modes are verbal or non-verbal, artmaking that unites people’s
creativity, recovers repressed histories, builds community and strengthens social
movements is in itself a holistic form of action.” Deborah Barndt, 2006, p. 18 in
Wildfire: Art as activism
Holocene meets
Anthropocene, Rachel
Kippen, 2014
The Unintended
Consequences of a
Warfare Economy,
Rachel Kippen,
2014

11. Lens: Environmental Justice
● Grew from its predecessor theory of Environmental
Racism and the Civil Rights Movement
● It believes that people are entitled to the necessities of
their survival including clean air, clean water, and
healthful food.
● Evaluates the ethical and moral considerations that lead
to the suffering of individuals and communities based
on the condition and quality of their environment.
● It argues that environmental injustices are based on the
same social indicators that signify other forms of
oppression including historically disenfranchised
groups, communities of color, women, indigenous
peoples, and impoverished communities.
● Check out these scholars: Dorceta Taylor, Robert
Bullard, and Julian Agyeman
Plasticides, oil on canvas with agricultural
plastic film mulch, Rachel Kippen, 2016.

12. Motivation: Critical Lens
Graham (2007) argued that arts-based methods can
nurture critical capacities in learners, researchers, and
those they research.
“Learners who receive art education that
neglects contemporary art and visual culture
deprives the prospect of becoming
conversant in emerging forms of the issues of
social and ecological justice, and hinders
them as artists in fostering social and
ecological justice” (Graham, 2007, pp.
375-376).
Graham, Mark A. (2007). Art, ecology and art education: Locating
art education in a critical place-based pedagogy. Studies in Art
Education, 48(4), 375-391.
Eye of the Beholder, oil on canvas with Scotch tape, Rachel Kippen, 2016.

13. Approach: Socially Conscious and Socially
Engaged Art
● Socially conscious and socially engaged art are two similar
approaches that share overlap, but can be made distinct as
socially conscious is based on intention of incorporating social
issues, while socially engaged is more centered on engagement
process.
● Socially conscious art “emphasizes the art (e.g., as object,
installation, performance, or action), and the artist’s intention,
which distinguishes it from the broader applications inherent in
visual culture and material culture studies and media literacy
studies” (Cruz et al., 2015, p. 11).
● Socially engaged art is process focused. While the majority of
art-making, if not all art-making, could be considered social, this
practice incorporates the deliberate intention made by the artist
to address social issues in the art-making or resulting art form.
The resulting art may or may not convey specific social
messaging, but deliberately addressing social issues with others
through the art is essential.
● “What characterizes socially engaged art is its dependence on
social discourse as a factor of its existence” Helguera, pg. 2
● Major theorists: Pablo Helguera, Deborah Barndt, Grant Kester
Climate change themed, socially engaged and socially conscious
mural-making in Watsonville, CA, photo by Rachel Kippen, 2017.
Suggested application: noticing your surroundings, consider
how you might involve your physical space and materials
present in your physical space into collaborative artmaking.
Are there spaces where you can dance? Make a mural? Found
materials in nature that you can collaboratively arrange? How
do your places and the people in your places contribute to art
every day?

14. Research Example
from the Literature
Teacher and artist Graham (2008) described the process of
incorporating art-making into his classroom by asking his
students guided, critical thinking questions about their
connection to place in their specific community and how
those associations were influenced and defined. Coupled with
daily drawing, the students embarked on a meditative and
repetitive practice that challenged the history they had been
taught and the forces influencing their perspectives. Students
were prompted to use photography and drawing to illustrate
stories about their home, school and their community as they
saw fit. As the project evolved, students began naturally
shifting perspectives for the storyteller in the portrayals they
shared, describing depictions from the viewpoint of the forest,
the ocean, and inanimate objects. These became
conversation pieces in the classroom that morphed into
discourse on broader social issues including immigration,
environmental justice, and family dynamics.
Photo:https://pixabay.com/en/children-drawings-coloring-houses-716334/
Graham, Mark A. (2007). Art, ecology and art education: Locating art education in a
critical place-based pedagogy. Studies in Art Education, 48(4), 375-391.

15. Research Example from our Work
The Hawaiian cultural practice of weaving is imbued with cultural significance. In the traditional art form of Lauhala, Hawaiian
women weave together leaf (lau) from the hala tree into mats, clothing, and other textiles. The researcher shares her personal
artworkings and those from environmental justice research, particularly Lauhala created by participants who wove pieces of
agricultural plastic while discussing the weaving of perspectives during a multi-day environmental justice Monterey Bay walk
covering issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and plastic waste in industrial agriculture. The weaving imbricated these
multivocal perspectives influencing shifting women’s roles, naming stories, the naming of places, the erasure of indigenous names
by settler-colonizers. Creating the weavings enabled re-envisioning what the original Ohlone landscape looked like and countered
values enforced by patriarchy that lacked respect for weaving, often minimized as “women’s work.”
Agricultural plastic retrieved at
Elkhorn Slough, Monterey Bay.
Agricultural plastic (drip tape)
prepared for participant weaving
Patches woven together by
participants and curated with
researcher weavings
All photos by
Rachel Kippen,
2016

16. Affirmation: I am creative…because I am
connected... We are creative… and connected
This affirmation is inspired by a feeling of fear or trepidation that I
am “not enough of an artist” to do arts-based inquiry or invite that
kind of response in others. Our co-emergence with the creative
earth makes us all artists. This is medicine for those whose second
grade teachers unwittingly squashed or slighted their creative
impulse, as well as making space to surface collaborative
creativities. This work heals internalized or external voices of
suppression and domination. Liberating creativity is an act of
resistance, resilience, and regeneration… (For more, see Hauk,
2014, Gaia E/mergent)
EarthEmpathy:SkinasSubtleWilderness,Hauk,2012
Try This Practice: Use methods of collage, montage, or assemblage in which
participants are invited to focus on composing multilayers of imagery, which
can free us up from having to “create something beautiful.” Alternately, play
with this and do a warm up that involves making intentionally ghastly things.

17. Lens: Gaian
● Which ontoepistemic orientations - indigenous, biocentric, ecocentric,
biophilic, more than human, kinship, animist, relationality, biocultural
embedment, new materialist, ecofeminist, etc. - support research
approaches with a recentering of biocultural nature as researcher and as
teacher?
● What confluence of methods demonstrate an increasing use of this
research meta-approach?
● What are the guidelines for practice, vigor, and authenticity for Gaian
Methods?
● From terrapsychology and living systems research ethics, to the
explorations of “Earthvox,” Gaian methods are groundswelling.
● How can researchers ethically and multiply entangle scales such as local
places and the planetary without reinforcing settler-colonial erasures,
conflations, and abstractions?
The messy convergence of the creative, collaborative, co-arising, diffractive,
poetic, shamanic, depth-dimensioned, and planetary-emergent animate the
resurgence of the living earth system as researcher. The four mandates of
Gaian Methods (Hauk, 2010, 2012, 2016) relate: connect and collaborate,
extend and extol, embed and embody, and thrum and thrive.
(Passage from Hauk, 2017 Manuscript)
Earth Regeneration Collage,
Community Climate Justice Ecosocial
Incubator,
G. Artemisia, 2016
Resources: earthregenerative.org/gaiamethods

18. Motivation: Inclusion, Equity, and Justice
Diversity and inclusion in environmental and sustainability education
requires multiple ways of knowing in the classroom and in research (Kagawa
& Selby, 2010; Selby & Kagawa, 2015) to generate what have been
described as pedagogies of invitation (Keating, 2013) featuring
interconnectedness. Arts-based research methods increase awareness of
and adoption of multiple ways of knowing (Hauk & Bloomfield, 2016; Hauk &
Kippen, 2017).
Image Excerpt, Dream
Image, Mighty Sludge -
The Little Rio Grande
River, Mixed Media,
Hauk, 2017
“Openness and connected thinking (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Clinchy,
1996) are preconditions for creativity (Hauk, 2011) and for all three activities: transdisciplinary
inquiry, creativity, and dismantling domination. Empathy, compassion, and social justice are
connected and connective (Dolby, 2012; Rifkin, 2009). These might be parallel intra- and
cross-scale descriptions of the same qualities, how openness and connected thinking
short-circuit close-mindedness, racism, dogmatism, and prejudice to produce empathy,
creativity, ethics, and liberatory behavior personally and within groups. Further, follow-up
research inspired by this insight has explored how creativity, openness, and connected thinking
at the societal level can dismantle systems of domination and support justice and ecocultural
flourishing (see Hauk, 2013, 2014a, 2014b).” From Hauk in Hauk & Bloomfield, 2016, p. 372

19. Approach: Just Sustainability Arts
From Hauk & Kippen, 2017:
The arts and imaginative engagement in these examples of just sustainability arts provide openings to the
transdisciplinary imagination, honoring and inviting multiple ways of knowing, viewpoints, and insights to
break through dominant culture’s compartmentalization, to build solidarities and possibilities. Just
sustainability arts wrenches us out of limiting habits of mind and towards open-ended collective inquiries. In
parallel with movements in ecofeminism, place- and land-based learning, and biocultural diversity, in
community organizing and research against environmental racism and for climate justice, and by utilizing
systems thinking, just sustainability arts generate a space of transdisciplinary imagination. What is possible
becomes unbounded by silos of approach, to generate what Keating (2013) has called post-oppositional,
connective pedagogies of invitation. Such possibility spaces depend on close perception, connective and
relational thinking, and lateral imagination to honor and metabolize current states and possible futures, while
lifting us out of the paradigm that generated the structures of inequity we aim to deconstruct, in order to
regenerate the vibrant just sustainabilities within. Just sustainability arts offer a fusion that fulfills the promise
of just sustainabilities, in alignment with the strength Agyeman and Crouch (2004) observed environmental
justice bringing to sustainability education:
Pedagogical implications of this perspective...include, among others, emphases on experiential
learning, participatory research, teamwork, reflection and discussion, contextualized learning, and
straddling boundaries not only between disciplines, but between theory and practice. (pp. 113-114)
Marine Debris Art
Program, Participant,
2016 from Hauk &
Kippen, 2017
Resources: Prezi, Kippen & Hauk, 2016 - includes a bibliography

20. Research Example from the Literature
Just Sustainabilities through the Arts Example: Kramer’s Garden the City Interventionist Art Project in Toronto, Canada.
Art as a platform for meaning making among learners and as a methodology for researchers is not limited to drawings and
paintings in classrooms. A good example of this is the Garden the City Project in Toronto, Canada. This project illustrated a form of
interventionist art, or one meant to disrupt the norm through “a chance encounter” (Kramer, 2006, p. 121). The intentional
disruption of the norm in interventionist art supports the ideals of social justice work (Hackman, 2005). Kramer contended that
“unlike advertising that reflects wealth, power and hegemony in our society, interventionist art does not require the resources of a
wealthy corporation or organization to effectively communicate a message” (2006, p. 123). Bringing together a variety of interests
and issues, Garden the City catalyzed graffiti murals, used puppets as characters for protest and thus protest art, and incorporated
a photo collage and text on postcards for participant’s expression. Postcards were shared, distributed, redistributed, and created
into collages. Through this collaborative and creative effort, citizens were asked to re-envision the city with food growing in
urbanized environments while challenging people’s notions of public and private space (Kramer, 2006). The layered network of
sharing postcards effectively intervened with community members’ everyday lives in a form that supported their individual voice
and provided accessibility to a larger audience. The act of writing messages on the postcards by the participants empowered and
supported individual agency related to food justice and urban greening initiatives within the City of Toronto. This successful project
exemplified a socially engaged process where envisioning just sustainabilities visionary content that resulted in socially conscious
art.

21. Research Example from Our Work: WE-CAN
In Portland, Oregon at the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies, Women Empowering
Climate Action Networks (WE-CAN) community-based climate justice and Gaian
resilience incubator, co-researchers used place immersion, collage-making, and
ecofractal engagements to explore and express emergent themes.
Read more in the Hauk, 2017 Article “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in the free
practitioner ebook, Community Climate Change Education: A Mosaic of Approaches (Hauk
& Pickett, 2017)
M. Hauk, © 2017 - Spring 2016 WE-CAN Session, with digital artworking by M. Leetch, 2017

22. Affirmation: Science and art are in me in
equal measure as harmonious partners
“...a science of the living realm calls for art, that it must be infused with the artistic-and this means something far more than artistic
practice as a kind of adjunct to the otherwise totally inartistic procedures of science. It calls upon human artistry and scientific discipline to
reawaken to each other in such a way that the whole human being engages in the act of cognition.” (Hoffman, 2007,p. 6)
“The metamorphosis from the
mechanical to the creative, which
is the genesis of living form, is
also the metamorphosis which
scientific thinking needs to
undergo to attain to a living form
of thinking.” (Hoffman, 2007, p.
19)
GoldenSpiralGalaxy:LINK
DanausdoublehelixbyRafaelAraujo:LINK

23. Lens: Feminist Materialisms, Vibrant Agencies,
and Participatory Matter
Feminist materialisms are threaded through the
quantum entanglement of matter across scales (from
quarks to quasars, and everything in between). An
embodied ethico-ontoepistemology centering
relationship and responsibility amongst the temporary
and contingent agencies which emerge from
intertwined complex systems of diffracting material
detritus over spacetime
Feminist materialisms queer the constructs of space
and time, history and causality, agency and objectivity
to imbricate a “critical practice for making a difference
in the world. It is a commitment to understanding
which differences matter, how they matter, and for
whom. It is a critical practice of engagement, not a
distance-learning practice of learning from afar”
(Barad, 2007, p.90), making them a natural lens for
liberating diverse creativities.

24. Motivation: Tbilisi Confirmation
Data is already breathtaking.
The world is full of sense-making opportunities
outside letters
and numbers.
“In accord with the Tbilisi Accord (1977), environmental education should
[empower] “interpreting complex phenomena that shape the environment,
encourage those... aesthetic values which…will further the development of
conduct compatible with the preservation and improvement of the environment”
Images from www.visualcomplexity.com: Flight Density, Cinematic Particles, Unreal Art, The Geography of Tweets

25. Science
Technology
Engineering
Art(and design)
Mathematics
Approach:
Data visualizations by Adrienne Segal: California Water Rights, Wind at Ravenswood Slough
STEAMLogoretrievedfrom:LINK
STEAM integrates art and design into science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
curriculums and disciplines.
STEAM allow researchers, practitioners, and
participants to understand and encounter
information in visceral ways that transcend
traditional data gathering and data visualization
techniques.
STEAM empowers communication and exchange
between scholars and laypeople, and amongst
the transdisciplinary methods humans use to try
to understand, communicate, and shape the world
around us.
STEAM troubles academic assumptions about
rigor, complexity, and creativity.

26. Example: STEAM in EE Research
Flowers, A. A., Carroll, J. P., Green, G. T., & Larson, L. R. (2015). Using art to
assess environmental education outcomes. Environmental Education
Research, 21(6), 845-864.
“Drawings create a learner-centered method for evaluating environmental
attituådes and awareness and the efficacy of EE programs - helping
researchers and practitioners better understand children's cognitive grasp of
complex environmental issues through creative expression. Despite these
inherent advantages over types of assessment tools, our results suggest that
an approach that integrates both innovative (i.e. art-based) and conventional
(i.e. survey-based) strategies might be the most effective means of evaluating
children’s environmental attitudes and awareness. Such a mixed-methods
model could effectively capture a broad range of cognitive and affective EE
program outcomes, encourage multiple fonns of expression and stimulating
participant engagement, and minimize misinterpretation associated with
potential measurement bias” (p. 861).
When coupled with developmentally appropriate practices, art
can help children to deepen their understanding of and ability to
convey complex concepts related to environmental education,
especially with regards to science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEAM). (p. 847-848)
Art assessment has been used in EE
STEAM research to study children’s:
● Environmental attitudes
● Knowledge of local wildlife
● Understanding of ecological
processes
● Concepts of home and habitats
● Relationship with animals
ImagePixabay2017,CC0:LINK

27. From our work: Woven Data Terrains
● A section of coded data that maps complex and emergent
phenomena
● Visual, tactile, & more-than-textual coding
● Fibers, weights, colors, and weave all become symbolic codes
● Record types of knowing that elude and elide traditional
methods by transgressing the confines of letters and numbers
TerrainWeavingsbyAmandaLeetch:ElementalVisionsandInmergence(2016)
“Arts based placehosting is a method of weaving meaning that holds
transformational potential for the way cultural patterns are
encountered and reproduced. Techniques like terrain weaving allow
for the sublimation of ecotransference, and can help place educators
to become more effective when liberating meaning from the
infrastructural limitations of alienating and retraumatizing cultural
narratives” (Leetch, 2017, p. 166)

28. Try this practice:
Utilize Hauk’s ecofractal cards to help catalyze regenerate creativity in environmental education! When working
on a creative design process (like drafting research questions, designing permaculture gardens, or dreaming up
creative solutions to multiplex environmental issues) draw a card alone or with a group of collaborators. Focus on the
pattern and what bubbles up amongst you as you reflect on the rich ecofractal associations. Leverage the concepts
embodied by the pattern as a way to better understand your question or problem. Write down your associations, and
draw another card.
Ecofractal Patterns
Hauk (2013, 2014) identified ecofractal patterns
(and metapatterns) that emerge from the earth and
resonate with different facets of the human learning
experience. Patterns include branching, radiance,
nest/womb, web/matrix, spiral vortexes,
honeycomb/packing, tapestry, and flow, and
represent concepts like connectivity,
transformation, harvest, balance and more. Hauk’s
research found that ecofractal patterns (which are
observable across scales and phenomena with
fractal self-similarity) can catalyze complex
regenerative creativity.

29. Affirmation: Dance
Wood, 2013, Batucada do Leste.
Oakland, CA. Parade.
Dance to the rhythm of your soul
resonate a transformative energy
to inspire
and
ripple
awake
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated
through you into action, and because there is only one of you in
all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never
exist through any other medium and be lost. - Martha Graham

30. Arts as a Pathway to Brave Space
Wood, 2015, See the World Healing.
Acrylic on Canvas
● Safe spaces have been understood to foster open
dialogue and guarantee a certain amount of physical,
emotional, and psychological comfort (Holley &
Steiner, 2005, p.50).
● In brave space there is a willingness to take the
initiative and responsibility to do deep work on
issues of diversity and social justice (Arao &
Clemens, 2013, p. 136).
Even after taking extra precaution, people have been unintentionally triggered when dialogue moved “from polite to provocative” and also by content that
left them feeling raw and vulnerable (Arao & Clemens, 2013, p.135).
Can arts-based approaches expand the possibilities
for inclusion and multiple ways of knowing, nurture a
critical lens and creative capacity, while also
generating liberating brave spaces?
Suggested application of arts-based brave space approach:
Write, paint, or dance the ways you move from personal self-reflective and creative
practices as tools for transformation and extend this form of deep engagement to
your work in the world which may be academic research, education, community
organizing, advocacy, politics, agriculture, activism, the arts, etc.

31. Research Examples
Productive Discomfort - Women’s Center at UMBC
The Women’s Center at UMBC uses a brave spaces approach to social justice
organizing. “Now more than ever we need to revel in our discomfort and tackle these
issues in our community. In order to affect change we have to take this discomfort we
feel and create an opportunity for productivity. This practice will allow us to rebuild our
community from the inside, to tackle the discrimination and oppression that exists in
our community” (Levin-Manning, 2015).
Personal Research Example:
Movement invited girls in Oakland
to tap into their body as a site of
wisdom. As a dancer, I am very
compassionate in inviting others to
move their body as some people
resist dance depending on their
relationship to self and body. I see
dance as a fluid counter action that
disrupts violence perpetuated within
structures of society.
Halprin, D. (2002). The expressive body in life, art, and therapy: Working with movement, metaphor and meaning.
London, United Kingdom: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Levin-Manning, J. (2015, September 15). Productive Discomfort. Critical Social Justice. [Blog]. Retrieved from
https://critsocjustice.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/productive-discomfort/#more-646
“The body, movement, and art all call us into an active and creative relationship
with ourselves, with one another, and with the world. The integration of the
body, movement, art and healing is rightly part of our ethical criteria for a
sustainable life” (Halprin, 2002, p. 231).
Wood, 2015, Youth Grow A New Future
and Rainbow Chard. Hoover Elementary
School Garden. Oakland, California.

32. Art as a Spiritual Practice
Wood, 2014. Ms. Mary Black. Acrylic on Canvas.
Art Heals Trauma in the Ecological Borderlands
Practitioners of earth-based traditions have created counter narratives to disrupt
heritable trauma that resulted from state sanctioned systems of oppression and the
destruction of the earth. “Our bodies remember what our minds might rather forget”
(Devaney, 2016). Engagement with the arts has been used as a positive coping
mechanism and a way to bring awareness to social issues. Community art can bring
healing and incubate collective consciousness.
Author Christina Holmes (2016) suggested the incorporation of black and brown
voices could expand outmoded ideas about women in relationship to nature and
decolonize ecofeminist scholarship. She highlighted an ecological borderlands and an
“ecological consciousness and expansion of self that is at the heart of Chicana
feminist and Mexican American art activsm” (Holmes, 2016, Loc 96). Art as a
spiritual practice can heal trauma, provide coping skills, and connect people to the
more than human realm of spirit so they may access guidance, clarity, and hope.
Devaney, J. (2016, August 17). Can art heal cultural wounds? Uplift. Retrieved from
http://upliftconnect.com/can-art-heal-cultural-wounds/
Holmes, C. (2016). Ecological Borderlands: Body, Nature, and Spirit in Chicana Feminism.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

33. Gallery Walk and Synthesis
Session participants are invited to spend a minute after each of the earlier presentations
crafting and art-making insights. Then there was envisioned a period of combining the
artworkings. This phase of the workshop involved appreciative inquiry walking and viewing the
artworkings in a Gallery Walk as participants sense connections and physically connect and
inspire.

34. Teams Working with
ABER Motivations
New breakout teams constellate around each of the four motivations for arts-based approaches in
environmental education research (see slide 6) to engage with the discussion questions: diversity and
inclusion, including multiple ways of knowing, Tbilisi Confirmation, critical lens, and brave spaces.

35. Research-Palooza
Session participants break into interest groups and imagine the future of arts-based research
methods, both possible near-term research collaborations and future possibilities.

36. Stay in touch...
Marna Hauk, PhD
Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies
PO Box 55995 Portland, Oregon 97238
earthregenerative@gmail.com
www.earthregenerative.org
And
Prescott College
Mandy Leetch
Prescott College
mleetch@gmail.com
Mandisa Wood
Napa Valley College
Prescott College
mandisa.wood@student.prescott.edu
A. Rachel Kippen
City of Watsonville
Prescott College
amanda.kippen@student.prescott.edu

37. References

38. Barndt, D. (Ed.). (2006). Wild fire: Art as activism. Ontario, Canada: Sumach Press.
Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts based research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Cole, A. L. & Knowles, J. G. (2008). Arts-informed research. In J. G. Knowles & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in research: Perspectives,
methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 55-69). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Cruz, Barbara, Ellerbrock, Cheryl R., & Smith, Noel M. (2015). “I have never witnessed students so engaged”: The art of democracy in schools. Art
Education, 68(6), 9-15.
Finley, S. (2008). Arts-based research. In J. G. Knowles & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples,
and issues (pp. 29-53). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Galvin, K. T., & Prendergast, M. (2016). Poetic inquiry II-Seeing, caring, understanding: Using poetry as and for inquiry. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Knowles, J. G., & Cole, A. L. (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. New York, NY: Guilford.
Liamputtong, P., & Rumbold, J. (2008). Knowing differently: Arts-based and collaborative research methods. Happague, NY: Nova.
McNiff, S. (2013). Art as research: Opportunities and challenges. Bristol, GBR: Intellect.
McKenzie, M, Hart, P., Bai, H., & Jickling, B. (Eds.). (2009). Fields of green: Restorying culture, environment, and education. New York, NY:
Hampton.
O'Donoghue, Donal. (2009). Are we asking the wrong questions in arts-based research? Studies in Art Education, 50(4), 352-368.
Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Leggo, C. (Eds.). (2007). Being with a/r/tography. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense.
Sunday, Kristen. E. (2015). Relational making: Re/imagining theories of child art. Studies in Art Education, 56(3), 228-240.
Walsh, S., Bickel, B., & Leggo, C. (Eds.). (2014). Arts-based and contemplative practices in research and teaching: Honoring presence (Vol. 131). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Arts Based Research - General Resources

39. Arts-Based ESE Research - Mentioned References
Graham, Mark A. (2007). Art, ecology and art education: Locating art education in a critical place-based pedagogy. Studies in Art Education, 48(4), 375-391.
Hauk, M. (2014, October). WE-CAN (Women Empowered for Climate Action Network) fly the winds of change: Community-based curricula in climate justice
and resilience [Poster]. Forty-third annual conference of the North American Association for Environmental Education, Ottawa, Canada.
Hauk, M. (2017). Somewhere over the rainbow: Women empowering climate action network (WE-CAN) as a social incubator for climate justice and Gaian
resilience. In Author & E. Pickett (Eds.), Community climate change education: A mosaic of approaches (pp. 91-95). Ithaca, NY and Washington, DC: Cornell
University, EE Capacity, and North American Association of Environmental Education. Retrieved from naaee.org/mosaic
Hauk, M., & Pickett, E. (2017). Surfacing unheard voices: Catalyzing collaborative writing for climate change. In Authors (Eds.), Community climate change
education: A mosaic of approaches (pp. 173-178). Ithaca, NY and Washington, DC: Cornell University, EE Capacity, and North American Association of
Environmental Education. Retrieved from naaee.org/mosaic
Kagawa, F., & Selby, D. (2010). Education and climate change: Living and learning in interesting times. New York, NY: Routledge.
Keating, A. (2013). Transformation now!: Toward a post-oppositional politics of change. Urbana: University of Illinois.
Kippen, A., & Hauk, M. (2016, August). Bioculturally responsive curricular transformation catalyzing art and community action for climate justice and to
redesign the toxic cycle of plastics from farm to ocean’ presented [Presentation and Prezi]. Just Sustainabilities Conference, Seattle. Prezi retrieved from
https://prezi.com/ph7nxfssgtzd/just-sustainability-arts/
Kramer, Melanie. (2006). Garden the city: Activism through interventionist art. In D. Barndt (Ed.), Wildfire: Art as activism (pp. 121-131). Toronto: Sumach.
Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E. J., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of
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Selby, D., & Kagawa, F. (Eds.). (2015). Drawing threads together: Transformative agenda for sustainability education. In Authors (Eds.), Sustainability frontiers:
Critical and transformative voices from the borderlands of sustainability education (pp. 277-280). Toronto, CN: Barbara Budrich Publishers.

40. Activism Affirmation & Critical Lens Motivation References
Barndt, Deborah. (2006). Wildfire: Art as activism. Toronto, Canada: Sumach Press.
Burns, Leah. (2006). Seriously… Are you really an artist? Humor and integrity in a community mural project. In Barndt, Deborah (Ed.),
Wildfire: Art as activism (pp. 25-34). Toronto, Canada: Sumach Press.
Cavanagh, Chris. (2006). The strawberry tasted so good: The trickster practices of activist art. In Deborah Barndt (Ed.), Wildfire: Art as
activism (pp. 68-74). Toronto: Sumach.
Graham, Mark A. (2007). Art, ecology and art education: Locating art education in a critical place-based pedagogy. Studies in Art Education,
48(4), 3
Kim-Cho, Yukyung. (2006). Jamming with women’s rights activists in East Asia: A process of critical reflection. In Barndt, Deborah (Ed.),
Wildfire: Art as activism (pp. 99-108). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Kramer, Melanie. (2006). Garden the city: Activism through interventionist art. In Barndt, Deborah (Ed.), (2006). Wildfire: Art as activism
(pp. 121-131). Toronto: Sumach Press.

41. Arts - Socially Conscious and Socially
Engaged Art Approaches - References
Helguera, Pablo. (2011). Education for socially engaged art: A materials and techniques handbook. New York, NY: Jorge Pinto Books.
Kester, Grant H. (2004). Conversation pieces: Community and communication in modern art. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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141-150. https://dx doi:10.1080/09528822.2013.753196
Ulbricht, Jarvis. (2005). What is community-based art education? Art Education, 58(2), 6-12.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. (2015). Art rethought: The social practices of art. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

42. Arao, B., & Clemens, K. (2013). From safe spaces to brave spaces. In L. M. Landreman (Ed.), The art of effective facilitation: Reflections from social
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Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge, GBR: Polity Press.
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Emergent gender research in environmental education. Featured selected research panel. 13th
Research Symposium of the North American
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practice. 45th Annual Conference of the North American Association of Environmental Education, Madison, Wisconsin.
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Brave Space & Intersectionality References

43. Environmental Justice References
Agyeman, J. (2005). Sustainable communities and the challenge of environmental justice, New York, NY: University Press.
Agyeman, Julian. (2013). Introducing just sustainabilities: Policy, planning and practice. London, UK: Zed Books.
Agyeman, Julian, Bullard, Robert D., & Evans, Bob. (Eds.). (2003). Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Bullard, Robert D. (2000). Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Hauk, M. & Bloomfield, V. (2016). Blanking out “[ ]” (whiteness): Decolonizing systems of domination, connecting with ancestral
place-cultures for reinhabitation. In V. Stead (Ed.), RIP Jim Crow: Fighting racism through higher education policy, curriculum, and cultural
intervention (pp. 259-278). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Hauk, M., & Kippen, R. (2017, In press). Just sustainability arts: A vibrant convergence. Special issue on Environmental Justice and Sustainability.
International Environmental Review.
Kippen, R., & Hauk, M. (2016, August). Bioculturally responsive curricular transformation catalyzing art and community action for climate
justice and to redesign the toxic cycle of plastics from farm to ocean. Just Sustainability: Hope for the Commons Conference. Seattle,
Washington.
Sperling, Erin, & Bencze, Lawrence. (2015). Reimagining non-formal science education: A case of ecojustice-oriented citizenship education.
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education 15(3), 261-275.
Taylor, Dorceta E. (2000). The rise of the environmental justice paradigm: Injustice framing and the social construction of environmental
discourses. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(4), 508-580.

44. Feminist Materialisms References
Barad, K. M. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 28 (30), 801-831
Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2012a). Intra-actions/Interviewer: A. Kleinman. Mousse, 34, 76-81.
Barad, K. (2012b). Nature’s queer performativity. Women, Gender and Research, 1(2), 25-53.
Barad, K. (2012c). On touching: The inhuman that therefore I am. Differences, 23(3), 206-223.
Barad, K. M. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168-187.
Bennett, J. (2004). The force of things: Steps toward an ecology of matter. Political Theory, 32(3), 347-372. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148158
Bennett, J. (2016). The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dolphijn, R., & Tuin, I. . (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press.
Haraway, D. J. (1992). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, & P. A. Treichler (Eds.),
Cultural studies (pp. 295-337). New York: Routledge. Retrieved from http://lib.znate.ru/docs/index-151099
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Jackson, M. A. (2017). Process and emergence: A topographic ethnography of the embodiment of place and adventure tourism in Khumbu, Nepal. (Order
No.
10277933). Available from Dissertations & Theses @ Prescott College; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The Humanities and Social Sciences
Collection (1906303252). Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.prescott.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1906303252?accountid=28426
Juelskjaer, M. (2013). Gendered subjectivities of spacetimematter. Gender and Education, 25(6), 754-768.
Kirby, V. (Ed). What if culture was nature all along? New materialisms. Edinburgh, UK: Edingurgh University Press.
McKenzie, M. (2005). The ‘post‐post period’ and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 11(4), 401-412.

45. Gaian Lens, Creativity, Invitation References
Hauk, M. (2012). WWGD - What Would Gaia Do? Gaian methods: Researching as earth--Planetary qualitative methods. Presented at
the 2012 Conference for the Association for the the Study of Women and Myth.
Hauk, M. (2014). Gaia e/mergent: Earth regenerative education for empathy, creativity, and wisdom (Doctoral dissertation). Proquest
(UMI 3630295). Link.
Hauk, M., DeChambeau, A., & Landsman, J. (2010, May). Gaian methodologies [Website]. Retrieved from
http://www.earthregenerative.org/gaiamethods/
Hauk, M., & Landsman, J. (2010, October). Gaian methodologies –An emergent confluence of sustainability research innovation
[Presentation]. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Conference theme, “Campus
Initiatives to Catalyze a Just and Sustainable World.” Denver, Colorado. Retrieved from Link
Hauk, M., Landsman, J., Canty, J., & Caniglia, N. C. (2010, October). Gaian methodologies: An emergent confluence of sustainability
research innovation. Proceedings paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of
Sustainability in Higher Education Conference, Denver, CO. Retrieved from Link
Macy, J., & Brown, M. Y. (2014). Coming back to life: The updated guide to the work that reconnects. Gabriola Island, BC: New
Society Publishers.
Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active hope: How to face the mess we're in without going crazy. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Mertzner, R. (1993). The split between spirit and nature in European consciousness. ReVision, 15(4), 177-185.
Mies, M., & Shiva, V. (2014). Ecofeminism. London, UK: Zed Books.

46. Science, Art, and Feminist Materialism:
Affirmations and
Activities
Affirmation:
Hoffman, N. (2007). Goethe’s science of living form: The artistic stages. Hillsdale, NY: Adonis Press.
Data Terrains:
Leetch, A. (2017). Weaving meaning: Terrapsychological inquiry and the historic industrial placefield of Lowell Massachusetts. (Unpublished Thesis
Manuscript). Prescott, AZ: Prescott College
Ecofractal Patterns:
Hauk, M. (2013a). Five fractal geometries for creative, sustainable, and just educational design. [Conference paper]. Paper presented at the 2013 annual
meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Franscico, CA.
Hauk, M. (2013b, July). Leaf, fire, river, hive, and storm: Catalyzing regenerative education in small group collaboration through complex ecological fractals.
Abstracts to the Annual International Conference, 23, 9-10. Retrieved from https://www.societyforchaostheory.org/conf/2013/abstracts.pdf
Hauk, M. (2014a). Gaia e/mergent: Earth regenerative education for empathy, creativity, and wisdom (Doctoral dissertation). Proquest (UMI 3630295),
http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1563382491.html?FMT=ABS.
Hauk, M. (2014b). Regenerative complex creativity. In D. Ambrose, B. Sriraman, & K. M. Pierce (Eds.), A critique of creativity and complexity -
Deconstructing clichés (pp. 97-121). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Hauk, M. (2015a, June). Catalyzing natural pattern innovation and Gaian collective creativity [Extended abstract in peer-reviewed proceedings, poster].
Collective Intelligence, 3, 1-4. Abstract: http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/collectiveintelligence/wp-content/uploads/sites/176/2015/02/Hauk-CI-2015-Abstract.pdf
Poster: http://www.earthregenerative.org/pdf/Gaian-Collective-Creativity-June-2015-Hauk-Poster-FINAL.pdf
Hauk, M. (2015, October). Fractal bodies: Experiential approaches for teaching deep sustainability design using embodied and complex biomimicry [Paper
and presentation]. Conference theme: Social Justice: Creating Change. Special Selected Paper of the Research Symposium of the Association for Experiential
Education, Portland, Oregon. Retrieved from https://aee.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/SEER/2015%20seer%20booklet.pdf
Hauk, M. (2017b). Matrixial snatch: Ecofractal poetic inquiry processes midwifing regenerative Earth. In P. Sameshima, A. Fidyk, K. James, & C. Leggo (Eds.),
Poetic Inquiry: Enchantment of Place (pp. 255-265). Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press.
Hauk, M. (In press). Ecofractal poetics: Five fractal geometries for creative, sustainable, and just educational design. In S. Gerofsky (Ed.), Contemporary
environmental and mathematics education modelling using new geometric approaches: Geometries of liberation. New York, NY: Palgrave/Macmillan.

47. Flowers, A. A., Carroll, J. P., Green, G. T., & Larson, L. R. (2015). Using art to assess environmental education outcomes. Environmental Education Research,
21(6),
845-864.
Hall, J. (2016). From STEM to STEAM: Integrating the Arts and Revolutionizing Education. Urban Views Weekly.
Robelen, E. W. (2011). STEAM: Experts make case for adding arts to STEM. Education Week, 31(13), 8.
Jolly, A. (2014). STEM vs. STEAM: Do the Arts Belong?. Education Week, 18.
Madden, M. E., Baxter, M., Beauchamp, H., Bouchard, K., Habermas, D., Huff, M., ... & Plague, G. (2013). Rethinking STEM education: An interdisciplinary
STEAM curriculum. Procedia Computer Science, 20, 541-546.
Peppler, K. A. (2013). STEAM-Powered Computing Education: Using E-Textiles to Integrate the Arts and STEM. IEEE Computer, 46(9), 38-43.
Robelen, E. W. (2011). STEAM: Experts make case for adding arts to STEM. Education Week, 31(13), 8.
Seiler, G., Elmesky, R. (2007). The role of communal practices in the generation of capital and emotional energy among urban African American students in
science classrooms. Teachers College Record, 109(2), 391-419.
Sharapan, H. (2012). From STEM to STEAM: How Early Childhood Educators Can Apply Fred Rogers' Approach. YC Young Children, 67(1), 36.
Sousa, D. A., & Pilecki, T. (2013). From STEM to STEAM: Using brain-compatible strategies to integrate the arts. Corwin Press.
STEAM References
Websites for STEAM education in the classroom:
● http://steampoweredclassroom.com/category/steam/
● https://steamedu.com
● http://stemtosteam.org/resources/

48. Wishing you all the best in your own adventures with
arts-based environmental and sustainability education
research...