Hub Knowledge Associate becomes the Founding Member of the UNESCO IOC Blue Thread Initiative
Committed to ‘sustainable ocean stewardship, inclusive participation, and innovative approaches to solving ocean-related challenges’, the Blue Thread ‘recognises and celebrates individuals, organisations, and businesses that actively promote the principles of the Venice Declaration for Ocean Literacy’.
In November 2024, upon invitation from the UNESCO IOC, Hub Knowledge Exchange Associate Milica Prokic become a founding member of The Blue Thread: A Global Network for Ocean Literacy in Action.
Alongside convening One Ocean Learn knowledge sharing platform, and developing the Transdisciplinary Toolbox for Transformative Ocean Governance, as UN Ocean Decade Implementing Partner, the Hub’s researchers push the boundaries of approaching ocean literacy through academic the paradigm-shifting publications such Mia Strand’s and Sophie Shields’ call for for protecting children’s rights to development and culture through the plurality of understanding the ocean through ocean literacies, or Dylan McGarry and Jennifer Whittingham who contend that our weave of ocean literacy can be adjusted into ocean fluency when it comes to the familiarity of the ocean and the humankind, noting that:
“There are many ocean fluent people, from small-scale fishers, Indigenous Peoples, surfers, swimmers and children. We don’t need to make them literate, but support their ways of knowing and being with and in the ocean”
The collaboration between the IOC Ocean Literacy Dialogues and the Hub began last year (2024) at the UN Ocean Decade conference in Barcelona last year, where Hub researchers presented some of the contents for the Transdiciplinary Toolbox, including the Empatheatre work, the work in collaboration with the Topnaar community in Namibia, and pop-up legal clinics for women fishers in Ghana.
Since then, the collaboration extended and brought in new members and partners.
After sharing his view on ocean fluency in Barcelona last year, Dylan McGarry was invited to contribute to the re-framing of Challenge 10 of the UN Decade for Ocean Science on ‘Changing humanity’s relationship with the ocean.’ The e-course on ‘Art and the Stewardship of the Ocean’, developed by the Hub researchers in collaboration with UNITAR was launched on the UNCC:Learn platform that has since reached one million users. Recently, Milica Prokic was invited to speak for the upcoming for the upcoming Sea Beyond Ocean Literacy Centre that we will open on the island of San Servolo, Venice this spring.
The Hub is very much looking forward to the further endeavours as part of the Blue Thread Initiative.
Please consider applying to join the Blue Thread Initiative- for more see here!
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