This year, four Arts Research + Resilience projects were awarded funding through a continuing partnership between the Arizona Institute for Resilience and the College of Fine Arts.
Each project uses the tools of artistic inquiry to address pressing challenges in Tucson and beyond—from reimagining how we prepare future healthcare workers to listening for resilience in the city’s arid soundscapes. Projects were selected based on their ability to build resilient individuals and communities through practice-based arts research methods.
A fifth project involving the installation of two new Millennium cameras at the Santa Rita Experimental Range, funded last year, was completed in this academic year as well.
Resilience by Design: Crafting Artistic Pedagogies for the Next Generation of Healthcare Workers
PIs: Carissa DiCindio (School of Art), Denisse Brito (Center for Creative Photography), Amelia Kraehe (Arizona Arts), and Tarnia Newton (College of Nursing)
What if high school students preparing for careers in healthcare also learned to see through the lens of a camera? This project builds an arts-integrated framework for high school healthcare Career and Technical Education courses, using Photovoice Pop-up Pedagogy to place creative practice at the center of professional preparation. The work will culminate in freely accessible and replicable curriculum resources for dissemination at regional and national levels—putting powerful new tools in the hands of educators across the country.
Resonant Ecologies: A Sound-Based Study of Resilience in Tucson’s Environmental and Human Landscapes
PI: Ilayda Altuntas Nott (School of Art)
What does resilience sound like in the Sonoran Desert? Using sound art as research, this project employs field recording, embodied listening, and interpretive analysis to examine how resilience-related conditions—heat, water systems, and built environments—become perceptible through sound in Tucson’s arid urban landscapes. The project will produce curated works and a prototype digital sound study, creating new ways of knowing and engaging with the city’s environmental realities.
Building Low-Income Buffelgrass-Adobe Housing: Community-Student Partnership
PIs: Jacques Servin (School of Art) and Sarah Lisette Chiesa (School of Dance)
Buffelgrass is one of the Sonoran Desert’s most destructive invasive species—but it may also hold part of the solution to Tucson’s housing crisis. This project brings together community members and University of Arizona students to produce adobe bricks made from invasive buffelgrass and build a prototype low-income dwelling. Videos, books, and social media content will carry the work further, educating the public and city officials about this material’s potential to address Tucson’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.
Augmented Reality Mural: Tucson Village Farm and Illustration Students
PI: Jenn Liv (School of Art)
A new public art mural at Tucson Village Farm will do more than meet the eye. Digitally activated by moving images and audio, the mural will create an immersive viewing and learning experience—bringing to life the farm’s mission to empower youth, strengthen families, and provide a resilient community-centered food system. University of Arizona illustration students are partnering directly with the farm to design and realize the project.
The Ecology of Time: Activating Long-Term Environmental Stewardship on the Santa Rita Experimental Range
PIs: Brett Blum (Southern Arizona Experiment Station) and Jonathon Keats (Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, College of Fine Arts)
Two millennium cameras created by artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats will be Installed on the grounds of the Santa Rita Experimental Range in collaboration with Southern Arizona Experiment Station. Visitors will be invited to contribute a visual representation or textual description of what they expect to see in the Santa Rita in the year 3125. SRER will collect these materials, archiving them together with the repeat photography already underway. The shift in perspective encouraged by the cameras is intended to bolster adaptable desert communities, cultures, and ecosystems and to foster leadership in resilience.
Projects made possible by the Technology and Research Initiative Fund/Water, Environmental, and Energy Solutions Initiative administered by the University of Arizona Office for Research, Innovation and Impact and the Arizona Institute for Resilience.