About

AtrtWorks for sustainable livelihoods is a project that aims to explore the various ways in which art and artistic methods can give us insight on sustainable living and can be used to advocate for such living.

Creator

I am Caroline Archambault, an assistant professor in anthropology and development at Leiden University College, The Netherlands. Among my various interests I love to teach and train students on research, fieldwork, and the ethics of engagement. And I really enjoy developing experiential and FUN methods for deep and lasting learning.

Project

ArtWorks developed unknowingly to me, yet now that is has a name it is a project I have been pursuing since the start of my teaching. It was a very gradual realization that in various teaching contexts I turn to the arts as a medium through which to make explicit and celebrate how knowledge is co-creation. Artistic expression is a powerful way for people to express and communicate the meaning and relationships they have to the environments they are part of. And internalizing and processing those expressions from others is also facilitated through artistic creation. Something new is created from both sides.

As a consequence I could fill this website with all kinds of different techniques I have explored and showcase the enormous collection of student creativity coming out of my courses, but, because of time and to help make it accessible and of interest for you, I have limited to a course I teach on First Time Fieldwork and the Search for Sustainable Livelihoods. See a more detailed description of the course HERE.

Sharing

I share these classroom exercises and student outputs in hopes that it will inspire other teachers to make space for the arts in their courses on societal challenges and sustainable futures. I have tried to give credit to the approaches and methodologies I have been inspired by and whose work I am building from. I hope you will do the same.

Credits

I would like to recognize my amazing students. I am so grateful for their curiosity and courage to explore and experiment with these artistic techniques. It is wonderful to see them connect with and release their creative energies and to see them have so much fun pursuing their studies.

I would also like to give a special thanks to the managing committee of Oerol festival (www.oerol.nl) for giving us our first official gig-applying our creative methods to studying art activists at the festival. This experience has given the project great momentum.

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Course Description


Across the globe humans face the challenge of building successful livelihoods, ones that not only bring them financial security and stability, but enhance their capabilities and provide them with other important aspects of well-being, be it good health, happiness, identity, and/or belonging. Such pursuits are arguably taking place in increasingly complex, dynamic, inter-connected and challenging environments. Population pressure, climate change, resource depletion, are only some of the forces pushing us to find innovative ways to adapt to changing ecologies, enhance livelihood resilience, and ensure a continued productive and healthy resource base.

In the Netherlands, for example, farmers and fisherman on the Wadden islands (a UNESCO natural world heritage site) are trying to find ways to retain their coastal livelihoods while accommodating growing tourism and a strong conservation movement aimed at mitigating the threats posed by mining, gas drilling and infrastructure developments. Meanwhile in The Hague, residents fight against physical and cultural displacements in the face of demographic changes, urban renewal policies, and complicated processes of gentrification.

If we want to play a part in facilitating and protecting sustainable livelihoods, be it in an urban metropolis or rural coastal village, we need to understand livelihood systems, the complex relationships between humans and the environments they inhabit or make use of.

Anchored in environmental anthropology and the approaches of cultural, political, and ethnoecology, this field course will train students in field methods; in innovative, participatory, playful and self-reflective methodological approaches and techniques to study human-environment interactions. While we will focus on applying such techniques to questions around sustainable livelihoods and how people engage with, make meaning from, and adapt to the environment, this field methods orientation can be applied to any field and any topic. It is designed for students from all majors.

Students will learn how to approach the field, with attention paid to the ethics of fieldwork and data collection as well as how to enter and be in the field, making use of all of our senses and taking the time to process and self-reflect on our integration and our learning. There is a strong focus in this course on art activism and the use of art and artistic techniques to not only provide insight into conceptualizations of sustainable livelihoods but also to advocate for them. Through this artistic lens we will focus on having fun in fieldwork and on playful ways to learn and listen and connect with people in new fields of inquiry and new spaces. We will try to bring out the inner artist in you.

The field methods of focus will include (participant) observation, drawing, social mapping, interviewing, and reflective journaling. The course will highlight the value of innovative, creative, mixed-method and participatory approaches.

One of the main assignments will be to experience and study artistic works in the city and at the Oerol festival and to develop new editions to the ArtWorks4Sustainable Livelihoods magazines. See last years’ edition are HERE. [Insert Link]

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