Five interdisciplinary projects using arts-based research were selected to receive funding from the TRIF Water, Environment, and Energy Solutions initiative, administered by the Arizona Institute for Resilience, and the College of Fine Arts in the form of Arts|Humanities|Resilience grants.
“These five interdisciplinary collaborations illustrate the inherent ability of arts research to transcend disciplinary silos and create meaningful connections with communities,” said Ellen McMahon, associate dean for research in the arts.
Projects include a collaboration between an internationally renowned environmental artist/philosopher and a museum studies scholar on Tumamoc Hill, a documentary film project about how communities across the U.S. are improving their lives by taking their healthcare into their own hands, and the co-creation of a “living” multimedia archive with Tucson’s Southside residents.
“The TRIF-WEES initiative supports projects that enhance knowledge exchange about water, environment, and energy within and across our Arizona communities, in addition to research,” said Sharon Collinge, Director of AIR. “Fine Arts have a history of deeply-embedded interactions with communities and provide both unique and relatable ways for people to connect and interact with environmental issues and solutions.”
Deepening Foundations for Science in Motion, Arts Research, Coalition Building, and Groundwork for UArizona Art & Science Resilience Synergies of the Future
- Principal Investigator | Nicole Antebi (School of Art)
- Co-Investigators | Aaron Bugaj (Biosphere2), Dr. A. Elizabeth (Betsy) Arnold (College of Science)
Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside
- Principal Investigators | Jacqueline Barrios (College of Humanities), Meg Jackson Fox (Center for Creative Photography), Kenny Wong (College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture)
Southwest Field Studies in Writing
- Principal Investigators | Susan Briante (Department of English), Francisco Cantú (Independent Author, Department of English)
The Nature of Change: Experiments in Societal Transformation Through Environmental Art in Tucson and the Sonoran Desert
- Principal Investigators | Carissa DiCindo (School of Art), Jonathon Keats (Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill)
America’s Health: Welcome to the Game
- Principal Investigators | Yuri Makino (School of Theatre, Film & Television), Christine Ryan Harland (Documentary Filmmaker)
There will be public workshops on Tumamoc Hill in May and a symposium in the fall on campus, where all the recipients will speak about their projects.
Arts | Humanities | Resilience Grants
Deepening Foundations for Science in Motion, Arts Research, Coalition Building, and Groundwork for UArizona Art & Science Resilience Synergies of the Future
- Principal Investigator | Nicole Antebi (School of Art)
- Co-Investigators | Aaron Bugaj (Biosphere2), Dr. A. Elizabeth (Betsy) Arnold (College of Science)
Researchers and faculty from the School of Art, Biosphere 2, and the School of Plant Sciences will conduct foundational research to reimagine a synergistic art-science framework that explores, interprets, and disseminates “parables of resilience science”. The team’s research will begin with site visits to institutions of varying scales in New York, Boston, and Rhode Island that offer different models and aspects of the art-science intersection. Exposure to and community building with diverse practitioners, institutions, research, and innovative approaches to developing these resilience synergies will inform both arts practice and coalition building phases of project development. Investigators will develop a diverse interdisciplinary team of UArizona faculty and partnering faculty/institutions in Mexico. They will work together, using enhanced animation, film, and microscopy equipment, to produce new works that embody resilience themes and incorporate wonder and awe through new forms of art/science synergies. These works will manifest themselves in short documentary film, animations, and recordings from microscopy while leaving room for new forms and mediums that arise through research.
Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside
- Principal Investigators | Jacqueline Barrios (College of Humanities), Meg Jackson Fox (Center for Creative Photography), Kenny Wong (College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture)
This project, “Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside,” pilots a co-creative visual engagement program with community image makers and archivists to support a key leader in community advocacy for Tucson’s Southside, the Sunnyside Foundation. The project will establish a team of two local videographers/photographers, a community archive advisor and a public librarian to begin a “living” archive of community reinvestment projects run by Sunnyside, specifically sited at El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. Supported by an interdisciplinary team of UArizona scholars, the photographer and videographer will document El Pueblo activation programs (gatherings, exhibitions, knowledge sharing, community archiving, celebrations, and so forth) by producing media deliverables (photo-essays, short film). At the same time, the community archival advisor and librarian will begin to explore and propose community archiving protocols and possible platforms for storing and displaying media produced by this image-making team, and other media that comes out of Sunnyside’s El Pueblo-based projects within the timeframe of the grant. Overall, this project lays the groundwork for a future “living” archival infrastructure for Southside communities to continue to add their own multimedia histories and stories made at and with the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Sunnyside Foundation. The project recognizes the need for partnership among contemporary image makers, public archival efforts, and university resources to collaboratively translate privately held memories and experiences into a collective, continually renewed, publicly legible, and visible narrative of place. The construction and preservation of this narrative of place fosters the arts and humanities dimension of Southside resilience, developing leaders uniquely positioned to interpret and imagine ongoing and emerging forms of adaptability operative in a desert community.
Southwest Field Studies in Writing
- Principal Investigators | Dr. Susan Briante (Department of English), Francisco Cantú (Independent Author, Department of English)
Since 2017, the Southwest Field Studies in Writing program (Field Studies) has been amplifying voices and expanding dialogue on environmental issues relevant to Southern Arizona. By coupling creative writing and community engagement, the Field Studies program aims 1) to make the public aware of the environmental and social justice challenges that face our region through the creative work of University of Arizona graduate students and 2) to develop the capacity of southern Arizona youth to craft and share stories about their ecosystems and communities. The AIR Arts | Humanities | Resilience grant will enable the program to expand in scope and impact, while developing a strategy for securing sustainable external funding. Each year, the program sends three UA Creative Writing MFA students to engage in reciprocal place-based learning during a two-week research residency in Patagonia, Arizona. These students study the environmental challenges and opportunities unique to the borderlands while giving back to border communities by offering storytelling workshops and participating in restoration fieldwork in collaboration with the Borderlands Restoration Network’s Borderlands Earth Care Youth Program (BECY).
With this new funding the program will broaden community partnership, enhance the interdisciplinary exchange between the graduate fellows by adding a graduate fellow in visual art, and promote undergraduate research through a new Field Studies course. The program has previously received support from the Agnese Nelms Haury Program, an RII TRIF grant and private donors. To stabilize and scale the program, they will expand their donor base (preferably into an endowment) as well as pursue foundation and federal grants.
The Nature of Change: Experiments in Societal Transformation Through Environmental Art in Tucson and the Sonoran Desert
- Principal Investigators | Carissa DiCindo (School of Art), Jonathon Keats (Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill)
Climate change and mass-extinction are wreaking havoc on the biosphere and human wellbeing. Although there is general awareness of these environmental challenges, the motivation to address them and the capacity to act with wisdom will depend on the translation of scientific abstractions into grounded experiences activating individuals and communities in the places they call home. This is especially urgent in the fragile desert ecosystem of Tucson, where decisions about resource usage will determine whether the environment remains habitable for humans and other beings in the near future. Primarily based on Tumamoc Hill, “The Nature of Change” enlists environmental art as a means of enhancing people’s sense of place, and sensitizing people to change, in order to augment regional resilience and sustainability. Four thematically interrelated scientifically informed art installations by visiting artists and Desert Lab research associate Jonathon Keats will engage visitors at Tumamoc Hill and surrounding locations, encouraging people from the University of Arizona and the Tucson community to observe environmental change from the perspective of weather conditions and local flora, as well as human activity. Four artist-led activities will provide the public with the opportunity to engage these issues more deeply.
“The Nature of Change” is a transdisciplinary research initiative investigating the efficacy of art as a mode of ecological engagement and environmental responsibility. Led by University of Arizona art education professor Carissa DiCindio, with graduate students, the research will not only evaluate the activations and activities on Tumamoc Hill but will also articulate a replicable methodology for activating any natural environment through art.
America’s Health: Welcome to the Game
- Principal Investigators | Yuri Makino (School of Theatre, Film & Television), Christine Ryan Harland (Documentary Filmmaker)
Building resilience in our communities requires transforming healthcare by providing equitable access to health and wellness care. Medicine was once based on an intimate relationship between doctor and patient. But behind the scenes, a gigantic industry emerged: buying, selling, and trading our medical services. Healthcare industry stakeholders are playing a game, marking up prices, then secretly discounting them, depending on who’s paying. The profits are big, but the casualties are great.
There is hope. A growing movement of industry disruptors are fighting back. Through new models, these disruptors have transformed the way thousands of Americans access and pay for care. The documentary film supported by the grant is about the people and communities who are restoring healthcare to its noble mission; one that is based on the needs of the people it serves. It opens the conversation on healthcare access, humanizing the struggles of average Americans. It tells the story through the eyes of those most affected, American workers struggling to pay for care, as well as people who’ve benefited from successful healthcare models; an African American community whose children attend college on scholarships funded by healthcare savings, and tribal communities successfully reducing disease by localizing clinics in villages across Alaska and building resilient culturally centered community health centers in Arizona.
We need to reposition the healthcare discussion and to advance pragmatic solutions working today. We all know healthcare is broken; but the most profitable industry in America will not change without a catalyst: AMERICA’S HEALTH: WELCOME TO THE GAME is that catalyst.