Sharing insights on art and arts-based participatory research with the Transformation Community
We are increasingly reflecting on, and writing about, our transferable learnings from art-based participatory research on the ocean that can inspire other action-oriented researchers who wish to support transformations to a sustainable and regenerative future. This blog post reflects on key insights arising from a webinar that One Ocean Hub researchers presented at in collaboration with the Transformation Community, a global community of action-oriented researchers and reflective practitioners who support transformations to a sustainable and regenerative future.
On 5 November 2024 One Ocean Hub Director Elisa Morgera, Hub Deputy Director Philile Mbatha and one of the Hub’s other co-founders and artists, Dylan McGarry presented on “The Role of Art and Arts-Based Participatory Research”within the One Ocean Hub program and how it is reshaping ocean governance.
The webinar opened up with snippets of the animated films ‘Lalela uLwandle’ as well as Indlela Yokuphila to demonstrate the power of art to bring transformation to ocean governance. As co-producer of these films, Dylan reflected on the role of arts in challenging knowledge hierarchies and for enabling social call-and-response and scholar activism. He described how he and his team created new legal objects (film and theatre productions) that were used in a court case to support living testimonies against offshore oil and gas exploration by Shell. Philile then spoke about equity and the use of art-based approaches for knowledge co-production with coastal communities, including women and youth, in South Africa (see Mapping for Justice). Elisa then discussed the vision of the arts in the Hub, making it a form of thinking and theorising about different knowledge systems as well as engaging artists as researchers in their own right.
Webinar participants were then asked to speak to their own experiences of how the use of art has shaped them as researchers and the work they do as well as how arts based approaches can be used more to promote dialogue between different actors in ocean governance. One of the main insights that came from this discussion was working with champions and building trust with both communities and authorities to carry out art. Watch the Webinar recording here >>
To find out more about arts-based methodologies, social justice, and transformative ocean governance read up more here and visit the One Ocean Hub One Ocean Learn platform and engage with upcoming Learning Pathways on participatory research, arts-based methods and Transdisciplinarity.
This webinar is part of the Transformation Community’s Transformations Catalysts Dialogue Series and is a build up towards the Transformation Community/ESG 202 conference in Kruger National Park, South Africa (August 2025). One Ocean Hub in collaboration with Empatheatre is looking to support the conference by bringing two plays that will stand as new social spaces that act as amphitheaters for empathy.
The One Ocean Hub would like to give special thanks to Thomas Haselbock, Monta Martinsone, Bruce Goldstein and Sarah Lewis for their support in helping to develop, promote and host this webinar. Read up more here about the role of arts-based research in the Hub.
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