)
9. Create Something to Inspire Thought About Our Natural Habitat
Paint, write, sing, stitch, knit, rap, dance, or doodle on the back of a compostable napkin. Whatever your preferred medium, we are sure that after nine weeks of regularly engaging with nature, you will have something to express about it and share with others.
You might create a portrait of a species you have encountered along the way, or pose a few thought provoking questions on what our natural habitat really means. These are just examples. Let your imagination run wild!
The creations of previous participants might offer some inspiration. Owen Kelly created a self portrait out of home grown vegetables! Elijah Bahate (aka Kenwel Kayz) collaborated with me (aka Queen Beetle) to adapt a verse of one of his songs to pay tribute to bees, beetles, true bugs, the cliffs of Howth, and the Ring of Kerry! See here!
Sachita Suryanarayan and friends sang a love song to water around a melodic fountain in France. See here!
Gino Tolotra and his team built a seating area out of eco-bricks in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar.
And Kerkus Forest School built a miniature world of imaginary insects, such as the Budabu bug, and recorded videos about their ecology and habitats.
)
We celebrated the completion of the Biosphere Challenge by sharing songs, stories, poems and more at a Virtual Rambling House, something you could easily arrange with your local community.
In Drumcondra, in Dublin, there is a living, breathing work of art which has changed how I see land in our urban habitat. St. Anne’s Road Pocket Park was once an unremarkable wedge of grassland beside the Dart station. Then artist and landscape architect Sophie von Maltzan transformed it into an oasis, see here.
Now you can rest on a bench, play on the slide, explore the wicker tunnel, or even have a business meeting at the mosaic table, among buzzing pollinator plants, wildflowers and oak trees, while snacking on delicious passionfruit. Visit the park to gaze upon the colourful insect information boards we designed with the children of Lindsay Road National School.
The park demonstrates the multifunctional abundance that even a small patch of land is capable of holding. It proves that people and nature can coexist in harmony, when we challenge our preconceptions of what a public green space should look like and how it can be used.
At our fifth webinar, Nature and Culture Connect, Sophie shared the story of how the park grew from an idea, through public consultation, to the well established site of community recreation it is now. A couple of neighbours who originally said the park would never last are now some of its most loving caretakers.
What aspects of our relationship with the land we live on have you questioned during the Biosphere Challenge? Why not put them into words or imagery and share them with your fellow Biosphere inhabitants?
)