Introduction
Meaningful change is needed to limit the dire impacts of large-scale forestry practices such as industrial logging on biodiversity, the climate and communities (e.g., Price et al., Reference Price, Holt and Daust2020). Yet overlapping barriers impede community efforts to transform policy and practice. Issues of data complexity (Meitner et al., Reference Meitner, Gandy and Sheppard2005) and accessibility can make it difficult for communities to navigate policy and land use discussions to advocate for ecological and community needs. Community initiatives designed to engage broader publics in transforming policy and practice can be hindered by cultural and geographical disconnection from forests and the difficulty many people have in perceiving biodiversity loss and climate change as immediate, tangible global crises (Hawkins & Kanngieser, Reference Hawkins and Kanngieser2017; Springett, Reference Springett2022). Added to this, prevalent mis/disinformation tends to uphold business-as-usual forestry by framing it as sustainable, carbon neutral, and ecologically beneficial (e.g., Myers, Reference Myers, Pandian and Howe2020). Disaffect (Springett, Reference Springett2022) and disenfranchisement (Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Benford, Selby, Golembewski, Price and Giannachi2013) can further sabotage efforts for public action, and a sense of future foreclosure (Revell, Reference Revell2025) can narrow considerations of more just and resilient futures.
To interrogate the complex, intertwined needs for understanding, engagement and action on issues vital to ecological and climate futures, we turn to the growing body of research demonstrating the value of arts-based practices and art-science collaborations in fostering engaged and active learning (Hannigan et al., Reference Hannigan, Hradsky, Bellingham, Raphael and White2025; Xu, Reference Xu2025). Specifically, we draw from creative practices of data representation to reimagine how ecological and climate data can be represented across diverse formats, community contexts, and spheres of engagement.
To this end, we share three case studies from the project Forest Carbon Futures, which mobilises an approach to critical data literacies enacted through creative forms of data representation. Harnessing the situated and narrative possibilities of data-driven storytelling (Riche et al., Reference Riche, Hurter, Diakopoulos and Carpendale2018), these works surface affective, embodied and enacted ways of engaging with data to reframe commonly held assumptions and support people in drawing meaningful connections to their lives, communities, collective agency, and possibilities for more resilient futures. They draw from approaches within design and across related disciplines to complement rich contributions within environmental education, addressing key needs and deepening insights around the use of creative practices in responding to the overlapping crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Spanning a range of non-formal education contexts and engagement formats – from an online creative commons to a public data installation to a performing arts creation process – this multimodal inquiry offers insights into a variety of possible educational applications and considers what we might learn from reflections synthesised between them. We also position this research as a valuable facet within an emerging field of Critical Forest Studies that seeks to foster ecologically-attuned understanding and care relating to forest landscapes.
This research is situated primarily on the unceded traditional territories of Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, as well as the Katzie, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Qayqayt, Tsawwassen, and numerous Stó:lō Nations, on the south coast of the region colonially known as British Columbia. The broader focus of this work spans the ancestral territories of many more Nations across British Columbia – Nations who for millennia have stewarded the diverse forest landscapes at the heart of this work, yet who have also disproportionately experienced dispossession and other grave impacts in conjunction with these unfolding crises. In this work, we uphold a commitment to centring just, decolonial pathways as part of a shift to forest and climate resiliency, from addressing economic inequities to supporting Indigenous-led conservation initiatives.
The present work emerges from and is informed by the first author’s longstanding involvement within community-based forest stewardship initiatives. In collaboration with various communities of practice, the first author has undertaken the creative explorations described below. Through the second author’s engagement in a supervisory capacity, we have reflected together on the research insights emerging from these explorations. Throughout most of the paper we use “we” to describe our shared reflections from this process. At times, within specific project descriptions, “we” is used to describe the collaborators involved, and on occasion we discuss the primary author’s involvement in a particular work. We gratefully acknowledge the many collaborators who have inspired, informed and/or contributed to this work beyond its academic scope.
We begin by highlighting the critical link between understanding and care in fostering a shift to ecologically-informed models of stewardship. We then introduce the framework of critical data literacies enacted through creative practices, followed by the situated and narrative approach we leverage. Next, we describe the research process we mobilise through design and creation methodologies. This sets the stage for our three explorations, for which we offer reflections both within each avenue and, in concluding, across them. While each area of practice warrants in-depth attention, we offer these explorations as creative forays with the aim of contributing insights, inspiration, and points of synthesis.
Understanding, care, and eco-climate futures
When it comes to addressing critical environmental issues, understanding alone is not enough (Boehnert, Reference Boehnert2011) – engagement in terms of connection and care as well as active participation are also needed (Wibeck, Reference Wibeck2014). Considering that the barriers to meaningful change on such issues are multi-faceted and interconnected, Wibeck (Reference Wibeck2014) highlights the value of an integrated approach that considers these needs in tandem.
This intimate connection between understanding, care, and ecological futures is expressed by Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) in the context of human-soil relations: “what soil is thought to be affects the way in which it is cared for, and vice versa, modes of care have effects on what soils become” (p. 170). Likewise, how forests are understood informs how they will be cared for and consequently, what they will become. Public and political discourse has in many cases reduced nuanced engagements with forest complexity to a homogenised, abstracted notion of the forest, often by erasing long histories of ecological succession and Indigenous stewardship. These impoverished understandings of forests can sustain a landscape of mis/disinformation, upholding prescriptions of large-scale industrial logging and related practices as a necessary intervention for reducing risk, maximising value, and/or “tidying up” a seemingly chaotic landscape (Lindenmayer et al., Reference Lindenmayer, Burton and Franklin2008), and implying that “replacing” a forest is simply a matter of replacing trees. Similarly, Wibeck (Reference Wibeck2014) notes how pre-existing conceptions shape possibilities for coming to learn, care, and act on such issues, with mis/disinformation significantly shaping how people engage and even the learning context. An integrated approach is therefore key to ecologically-informed stewardship that can effectively preserve forest and climate futures.
A creative approach to critical data literacies
In considering this need, we turn to the term critical data literacies as conceptualised by Fotopoulou (Reference Fotopoulou2021), who seeks to enhance community efforts to leverage civic data for purposes of data activism (also discussed by Milan & Gutiérrez, Reference Milan and Gutiérrez2015) through a framework rooted in “agency, care and social responsibility” (Fotopoulou, Reference Fotopoulou2021, title). Responding to previous framings of data literacy (which have in many cases reinforced existing hierarchies and power structures (Data Pop Alliance, Reference Data Pop Alliance2015), this framework is part of a body of critical works that consider the power dynamics embedded in the ways data are collected, analysed, interpreted, represented and used (e.g., D’Ignazio & Klein, Reference D’Ignazio and Klein2020; Hall & Dávila, Reference Hall and Dávila2022) and aim to centre people as active agents able to effectively use, create, renegotiate relationships with, and enact meaningful change on the basis of data (Carmi et al., Reference Carmi, Yates, Lockley and Pawluczuk2020; Digital Democracies Institute, 2022). Critical data literacies as conceived by this framework broaden the focus from simply reading data to actively working with data, and from the technical aspects of data literacy practices to their social dimensions, critical considerations, and ethics of representation.
Importantly, this research highlights emergent themes such as “emotional engagement of audiences through data stories” (Fotopoulou, Reference Fotopoulou2021, 1650). Within environmental education, these needs are echoed through calls for greater integration of arts-based practices (Monroe et al., Reference Monroe, Plate, Oxarart, Bowers and Chaves2019; Xu, Reference Xu2025), including futuring practices that engage learners in imagining and creating a more resilient future (Hannigan et al., Reference Hannigan, Hradsky, Bellingham, Raphael and White2025). It is increasingly clear that the way data are expressed, engaged with, and leveraged matters deeply if we seek to counter systemic power inequities and facilitate meaningful societal change (Hall & Dávila, Reference Hall and Dávila2022). To this end, and building on calls for environmental education to take a more interdisciplinary approach (Monroe et al., Reference Monroe, Plate, Oxarart, Bowers and Chaves2019), we turn to creative practices of data representation: data visualisation (Hall & Dávila, Reference Hall and Dávila2022), which translates complex datasets into graphical forms; data physicalisation (Perovich & Offenhuber, Reference Perovich, Offenhuber and Gwilt (Ed.)2022), which renders data through material and spatial configurations; and avenues for ‘performing’ data (e.g., Wingren, Reference Wingren2018), which mobilise embodied, enacted modes of engagement.
Harnessing situated and narrative approaches
In seeking to foster creative modes of data representation that “brings the viewer closer to the data and the events transpired” (Dávila, Reference Dávila and Vodeb2023, 99), we undertook this research using an approach guided by ecological situatedness and narrativity.
Echoing the need expressed by Hawkins and Kanngieser (Reference Hawkins and Kanngieser2017) to make our association to such issues more sensory, proximate and entangled, Ardoin (Reference Ardoin2006) advocates for an integrated approach to place-based education that fosters connection in ways that can translate into environmental action. Building on this need, we explore how a guiding concept of ecological situatedness can help to surface strategies for better contextualising data, including fostering deeper connections between data often viewed as abstract and their living ecosystems and multispecies communities. These may range from in situ (Wingren, Reference Wingren2018) and embedded data representations (Willett et al., Reference Willett, Jansen and Dragicevic2017) to strategies that may be more feasible given remote, rare and/or endangered contexts such as old-growth forests. We consider, for instance, how works inspired through time spent in forests; narrative environments (Austin, Reference Austin2020); and material or conceptual linkages – such as Eliasson’s Ice Watch (Reference Eliasson2014) and Paterson’s Archive of Vatnajökull (Springett, Reference Springett2022) – may evoke a sense of place through their form (eg., through figurative metaphors (Cruz, Reference Cruz2015)) or in other ways nurture a more intimate connection to a distant or abstract context.
We also leverage a narrative approach to foster personal meaning-making, contextualising abstract data to highlight relevant stories about our interconnected lives and futures. The relevance of storytelling in change-making is supported by Haraway’s (Reference Haraway2016) testament to the role of “radical storying” in a shift to resilient futures, and Van Dooren’s (Reference Van Dooren2014) focus on the importance of “storytelling as a dynamic act of “storying” the world” (20). We consider narrative approaches across environmental education (Merl, Reference Merl2025), science communication (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024), design (Austin, Reference Austin2020) and data visualisation (Riche et al., Reference Riche, Hurter, Diakopoulos and Carpendale2018) as a means of fostering meaning-making in relation to personal contexts and possibilities.
Three creative explorations
InArt and Intervention in the Stewardship of the Planetary Commons, Triscott (Reference Triscott2017) proposes “a curatorial model of interdisciplinary co-inquiry, which can foster an ecology of practices, enabling curators, artists, scientists, specialist experts and people with situated expertise to coproduce knowledge around shared matters of concern…” (p. 2). In this spirit, we offer three creative forays that span disciplinary boundaries to leverage and engage with particular data narratives, community contexts, creative practices and spheres of engagement.
Informed by community collaboration and guided by narrative and situated approaches, we engage with a variety of data narratives in the public discourse and map relevant data into multimedia formats. Through involvement within and across these avenues of exploration, we examine varied affordances, design considerations and engagement possibilities within this increasingly contested space where ecological and climate resilience converge.
This research leverages methodologies of Research-Creation (Chapman & Sawchuk, Reference Chapman and Sawchuk2012), which incorporates creative practice as a critical “form of intervention” (21) and knowledge production, and Research-through-Design, which recognises design practice as a generative form of inquiry that orients meaningfully to complexity (Obrenović, Reference Obrenović2011) and can support reimagining and re-creating more just and resilient futures (Escobar, Reference Escobar2018). We also draw from co-design and co-creation methods, which rely on the co-production of knowledge through an iterative, unfolding practice, via critical reflection and reintegration of insights into the active process of making. Through focus group feedback, co-design/co-creation sessions and in-depth conversations, the input of practitioners and community members is woven iteratively into this work. These methods, attending to diverse perspectives while accounting for issues of power and privilege in order to reach solutions grounded in community needs (McKercher, Reference McKercher2020), can be integral to the generative thinking often central to addressing wicked problems (Sanders & Stappers, Reference Sanders and Stappers2013).
In the three sections that follow, we discuss three avenues of exploration spanning different modalities: (a) a process of co-designing data comics and related visual materials to counter forest carbon mis/disinformation and support pathways to sustainable forest stewardship; (b) a data installation created as an entry point to community conversations about the link between forests and climate action; and (c) research-creation into avenues for engaging with ecological and climate data within contemporary circus performance.
Co-designing a visual creative commons
Misleading rhetoric – such as the claim that replacing old forests with young replanted landscapes is better for the climate – tends to frame industrial forestry as a sustainable, carbon neutral practice that maintains forests by replacing the trees and that benefits forests, the climate and broader communities alike.Footnote 1 Such narratives obscure the large-scale loss of carbon irrecoverable in the narrow timelines of the climate crisis – particularly under the repeated harvest rotations of current industrial forestry practices – alongside impacts to biodiversity, clean water, Indigenous cultures and other factors integral to multispecies wellbeing.
As part of an effort to counter this mis/disinformation, the Hummingbird CollectiveFootnote 2 , of which the lead author is a founding member, is developing a creative commons of visual data-driven materials to inform ecologically-grounded needs for forest stewardship against the backdrop of forest and climate policy in British Columbia. This interdisciplinary collective brings together a wealth of experience spanning art, design and ecology and draws from the wisdom of a wider ring of advisors and collaborators to support a broader network of communities (together ranging from Indigenous community leaders to community forest managers, grassroots organisers, forest ecologists and advocates in environmental non-profits) to showcase pathways toward a stewardship economy that balances community livelihoods and wellbeing alongside ecological and climate resilience. The emerging open-source materials, ranging from infographics to a video and data comics, are intended to serve as a critical intervention, informing policymakers and supporting Indigenous and community-led land use planning initiatives, community forest operations and community organising, thereby bridging barriers faced by local communities to bringing about sustainable modes of forest stewardship.
This work draws on data visualisation and its documented value in not only conveying data complexity but also fostering personal meaning-making (Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, DeLorme and Hagen2014) and affective engagement (Gough et al., Reference Gough, De Berigny Wall and Bednarz2014). Within visualisation, we leverage data comics (Bach et al., Reference Bach, Boy, Drucker, Bartram, Wood, Ciuccarelli, Engelhardt, Riche, Hurter, Diakopoulos and Carpendale2018a), which offer exciting possibilities for integrating complexity – by unfolding data representations and explanations gradually through sequential panels – and conveying poignancy through storytelling techniques and illustrative context. Drawing from the rich practice of comic art (McCloud, Reference McCloud2006), data comics offer opportunities to include diverse voices and integrate rhetorical strategies such as humour, irony and juxtaposition.
The lead author has been contributing to this extended co-design process of conceptualising and iterating designs through ongoing input. The experience of each collective member, as well as feedback and insights from broader community conversations, are woven into this work, enriching it and grounding it in the need at hand. Over the span of several years, we (collective members) have considered how to convey intertwined data stories relating to forest carbon across a range of formats that can respond to the diverse perspectives, sensibilities and contexts of potential audiences. This work has been informed by a process (among collective members) of analysing an array of infographics and mapping key data narratives, stakeholders, audiences and possible design strategies; an early focus group with a local island community; as well as ongoing conversations and broader community feedback. We have explored strategies for conveying the nuance and complexity of ecological processes in accessible and engaging ways, including fostering a stronger sense of connection with forest landscapes and conveying the poignancy behind discrete data points. Common challenges have included navigating the tension between data complexity and oversimplification (discussed by Xu, Reference Xu2025) and balancing the inherent abstraction of data representations with overly reductionist tendencies that can homogenise forests in the eyes of stakeholders and potential advocates.
For these challenges, we have explored applications of many of the patterns for data-driven storytelling distilled by Bach et al. (Reference Bach, Wang, Farinella, Murray-Rust and Henry Riche2018b). Using familiar context, for instance, we can engage with the increasing frequency and/or severity of disturbances such as wildfire, flooding and landslides (with sensitivity to those impacted) to offer a relatable touchpoint for conversations on the overlapping impacts of forest degradation. Similarly, local case studies offer promise in empowering communities through tangible solutions pathways, while concrete forms of visualisation (Nieman, Reference Nieman2011) can convey often unrelatable units or quantities (e.g., hectares of forest or tonnes of carbon) while linking to the audience’s context. Ecologically-inspired layout, icons that express local nuance and diversity and ecological metaphors within forms of representation can assist in drawing stronger links between forest landscapes and audiences (Carpendale, Reference Carpendale2025). Alongside this process and informed by rich discussions with and design by other collective members, the first author is exploring ways to mobilise these storytelling patterns within a data comic (Figure 1) that weaves together key data narratives. Through multispecies perspectives, diverse “framings” of the forest and patterns for guided interpretation (Bach et al., Reference Bach, Boy, Drucker, Bartram, Wood, Ciuccarelli, Engelhardt, Riche, Hurter, Diakopoulos and Carpendale2018a), this work aims to counter mis/disinformation; evoke empathy for forests and their multi-species communities; and empower audiences to enact futures more conducive to forest resilience.
Figure 1. Excerpts from Forest carbon matters: A data comic about forests, climate change, and our collective futures (in progress). Photo: Hannah Carpendale.
This initiative offers a broad range of applications across formal and non-formal education contexts, from community-based environmental movements and land use planning to the creation and/or use of comics in classrooms (von Reumont & Budke, Reference von Reumont and Budke2023).
Curating a data installation as a catalyst to community dialogue
The major role of forestry emissions is often overlooked within climate change discourse. And yet relevant data, such as British Columbia’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions (BC Climate Action Secretariat, 2022), though publicly accessible, is not presented in a format that readily facilitates public engagement. Furthermore, the dataset highlights fossil fuel emissions while downplaying the large proportion of emissions from industrial forestry.
Created to foster more tangible, compelling engagement with these data stories, Suspended Responsibility/Tree Rings is a two-part data installation that conveys local greenhouse gas emissions data and leverages design possibilities afforded by the physical format and context to inspire reflection and dialogue. Through the exhibition of this installation in a public park, we highlighted the link between forest degradation and carbon emissions through an experiential, immersive display of public data often considered the purview of domain experts.
In this work, we make use of data physicalisation (Perovich et al., Reference Perovich, Offenhuber and Gwilt (Ed.)2022), which can range from the mapping of data into physical variables to the “staging [of] material traces and autographic phenomena” (46). Data has been represented in physical form over long timespans and across cultures yet is only recently emerging as a specific field of research, extending from that of data visualisation. By enabling contextual and tangible engagements with physical materials, physicalisation can offer affordances distinct from those of 2D visualisations, from choices relating to materiality to added options for in situ practice (e.g., Chemicals in the Creek (Perovich et al., Reference Perovich, Wylie and Bongiovanni2021)), immersiveness and multi-sensory perception, as well as change-making practices ranging from community-engaged ritual (Perovich et al., Reference Perovich, Wylie and Bongiovanni2021) to protest (Perovich et al., Reference Perovich, Offenhuber and Gwilt (Ed.)2022).
The installation’s first mode, Suspended Responsibility (Figure 2), features fabric braids suspended from a rectangular frame. Each row represents one year of the inventory, with the colour corresponding to different economic sectors and the length encoding the amount of CO2e emissionsFootnote 3 . Survey marker tape – commonly used to mark falling boundaries for logging – indicates emissions from forest land use as opposed to fossil fuel sources.
Figure 2. (a–b). Data installation: Part I Suspended Responsibility. Photos by: Hannah Carpendale.
The second mode, Tree Rings (Figure 3), includes the same braids arranged into a series of rings by year, in the likeness of tree trunks. These rings represent annual emissions totals, each surrounded by an outer ring indicating the amount of CO2e offset by net forest growth each year – an amount that shrinks drastically relative to a general trend of rising annual emissions.
Figure 3. (a–b). Data installation: Part II Tree Rings. Photos by: Hannah Carpendale.
The exhibition of this work in a public park invited broad public participation and engagement with a dataset not often explored in public contexts. Its location along a popular walking path led it to function for many as a critical intervention, an eddy in the stream of their daily lives.
Though such data can seem far removed from people’s realities and ecological contexts, several strategies served to foster a sense of connection to the forest landscapes in question. Firstly, the brightly coloured survey marker tape enabled a symbolic linkage with forest ecosystems and highlighted a crucial story within the data – the exclusion of a substantial proportion of forest land use emissions from official greenhouse gas emissions inventories,Footnote 4 alongside other carbon accounting conventions (Bysouth et al., Reference Bysouth, Boan, Malcolm and Taylor2024) that downplay the climate impacts of forest land use. In addition, the circular arrangement of Tree Rings was designed to evoke trees once present on the landscape, complementing the work’s staging within an urban greenspace. The installation’s suspended format and pathway of rings also allowed for an immersive, tangible experience of being within and amongst the data.
In line with the concept of narrative environment (Austin, Reference Austin2020), the installation unfolded elements of the content as part of an interpretive journey through a small section of the park. Visitors followed numbered signs leading up to and through the installations. These interpretive signs, along with a paper “map” (Figure 4), enabled layered engagement with the data stories, catering to differing levels of interest and prior knowledge. Offering guidance to structure and deepen visitors’ exploration, these interpretive materials also helped to counter misleading rhetoric that may frame visitors’ prior assumptions on this topic. The first author, as the event facilitator, offered to act as an interpreter if wanted, creating space for dialogue and deeper engagement according to interest.
Figure 4. (a–b). Data installation: Journey map. Photos by: Hannah Carpendale.
At the end of the interpretive walk, the map and signage invited visitors to imagine features of a more resilient future relating to values, stakeholders and livelihoods and to write these visions on survey marker tape and suspend them on a line hung between two trees. This public input, shifting the focus to imagining and enacting more resilient futures, was consequently passed on to local decision-makers.
In the context of museum exhibits, Xu (Reference Xu2025) underscores the value of “multisensory and immersive installations [in] making abstract scientific concepts tangible” (221). In addition to public exhibitions in indoor and outdoor contexts (public parks, biosphere reserves (Marks et al., Reference Marks, Chandler and Baldwin2017), future applications of this type of physical data art intervention might include town halls, community engagement sessions and land use planning processes.
Performing ecological and climate data
Broad and often abstracted topics such as climate change and biodiversity loss can be daunting issues around which to engage audiences (Boho Interactive, 2011). While embodied practices can evoke interest and care, connecting to particular facets of these issues may offer ways in for new audiences, supporting context-specific insights and informing action. But how might we create such linkages?
In relation to this question, the first author and a key collaborator are leveraging their shared practice of contemporary circus to explore embodied ways of engaging audiences around the ecological and climate crises through the layering of data representations and other tangible touchpoints.
Various ways of “performing” scientific data (e.g., Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Benford, Luger and Howarth2016; Wingren, Reference Wingren2018) offer rich possibilities for insight and active engagement. Such work can encompass elements of visual and physical data representation staged and performed in various ways, from active participation in designed experiences (e.g., A Conversation Between Trees (Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Benford, Selby, Golembewski, Price and Giannachi2013)) to the integration of data as part of a multi-layered performance. Including art-science collaborations and spanning diverse fields of research and practice, embodied ways of engaging with data may help to foster more palpable connections to the issue at hand. In this project, we turn to contemporary circus, a powerful art form that can explore poignant themes and storytelling through specific genres of movement practice and likewise probe at the boundaries of convention and possibility. In the context of current crises such as climate change, Robitaille (Reference Robitaille, Daigle and Hayler2022) forefronts the potential of circus practices and their orientation to hope.
This process began with a personal phase of movement exploration (by the first author), which informed the creation of ideation cards as boundary objects (Halpern, Reference Halpern2012), designed to translate data narratives into prompts for creative movement. One card linked the aerated soils of primary forests, highlighting water retention and carbon storage, to movement exploring unexpected spaces and possibilities for hope. Another drew on the presence of salmon isotopes in old-growth forest canopies, prompting reflection on the entanglement of our lives and futures. These explorations were then consolidated into a series of solo movement vignettes (e.g., Our roots tell stories; How to measure loss: An instructional guide and Unexpected spaces of hope). As the final and main phase, the first author and key collaborator, over a series of co-creation sessions (Figure 5) with creative direction support, have been exploring ways of layering multi-media elements within circus arts as part of a broader process (extending beyond the scope of this research) of creating a circus performance about climate change through the lens of our personal stories.
Figure 5. (a–g). Circus creation sessions, aimed at leveraging multi-media forms of data representation, layered with embodied expression, to explore themes around loss, entanglement, precarity, despair and hope in the context of biodiversity loss and climate change. Photos: Kasha Konaka (a–c, f), Hannah Carpendale (d, e, g). Circus artists: Hannah Carpendale and Kasha Konaka.
The emerging vignettes range from visual projection showcasing the names of extinct species; to movement exploring entanglement and the impossibility of fully quantifying loss (Figure 5e); to visual projections of anticipated sea level rise data told through a fantastical narrative of a puddle on a city sidewalk growing to become the ocean (Figure 5d). Such layerings (e.g., Figure 6) can set the stark realities conveyed by data alongside bodies to add evocative potential and a rich convergence of perspectives and possibilities: from data integrated as part of a soundscape (testimonies, narrated facts, news reports, etc.) to visualised data projected across or inscribed on bodies (e.g., Bilal’s and Counting… (Reference Bilal2010)), to performers engaging with materials encoding data and even enacting data via their bodies (Perovich & Zizzi, Reference Perovich and Zizzi2024). The relationships between performers and data representations can foster meaning-making, from performers simply being “written upon” to reacting to, juxtaposing, or even influencing the data. Together, this exploration probes at avenues for layering movement form and quality, dramaturgical strategies and data representations to foster evocative associations with concepts such as irrecoverable loss, interconnection and struggles between despair and hope. In this work as a whole, we consider how a “cascade of inscriptions” (Dávila, Reference Dávila and Vodeb2023, p. 96) – described in the context of visualisation – can be leveraged within a dramaturgical process to create a rich convergence of media in relation to moving bodies to deepen evocation via juxtaposition, emphasis and more – and ultimately, foster meaning-making beyond what each might support alone.
Figure 6. (a–b). Vignette “Geographies of loss” suggests how visualised data relating to the shrinking range of Western redcedar – an iconic tree species central to many Indigenous cultures – can be layered alongside movement, spoken word and other elements to contextualise themes around the shifting geographies associated with climate change. Photos: Gustavo Vasquez. Circus artist: Hannah Carpendale. Map (sourced from Data Basin) by Amanda Mathys, Nicholas Coops and Richard Waring, with some adaptation (cropping, adjusted map background) for use as projected imagery. Used with permission (Creative Commons license 3.0).
These explorations and ongoing reflection have informed the adaption of the initial cards toward their use as a resource to support our broader community of circus artists in creating works relating to climate change and ecological loss. These cards (Figure 7), trialled collectively during specific sessions, offer prompts that link to creative strategies in relation to different dimensions of these crises.
Figure 7. Selected ideation cards.
Though we explore a specific form of performing arts – itself rich with possibilities, as shown by initiatives such as Acting for ClimateFootnote 5 – we want to highlight this as just one possible avenue for engaging with data through a diversity of enacted practices. Lehtonen and Pihkala (Reference Lehtonen and Pihkala2021), for instance, speak to the potential of drama within an educational context to engage youth in embodied, enacted ways with environmental topics such as climate change. It is our hope that these avenues for layering data representation and enactment can support a range of practices and contexts according to the specific communities and needs in question.
Conclusion: Mapping pathways to meaningful change
In this work, we take up the concept of critical data literacies and leverage creative practices of data representation to reframe possibilities for understanding, engagement and action around biodiversity loss and climate change. These creative works span a broad spectrum of possible applications, including supporting communities in land use planning, informing policy makers, resourcing non-profit organisations, animating community engagement sessions, fostering dialogue through accessible public exhibits and inspiring the creative process of performing artists.
In connecting these creative forays to possibilities for meaningful change, we refer to the CreaTures Framework (Vervoort et al., 2022), which offers a set of dimensions for evaluating creative practices, from changing meanings (embodying, learning, imagining), to changing connections (caring, organising, inspiring), to changing power (co-creating, empowering, subverting). While we recognise the insights that formal evaluative studies may bring to gauging the impacts of such work, we also acknowledge their limitations, particularly in attending to the needs and sensibilities of diverse communities and the complex nature of change-making. In this research, therefore, we prioritise generative contributions to illustrate possible ways to put creative data representation practices into motion within particular practices and contexts, informed by a wealth of collective experience, in-depth conversations and careful reflection.
While described individually, these avenues offer many points of synthesis. The narrative staging of the installation, for instance, coincides with the data comic format, where data stories are revealed through an unfolding narrative that builds a deepening understanding of the data. In-situ exhibits or performances can map to the illustrative context within data comics or other visual materials, while data visualisations or physicalisations can be curated as part of an artistic performance. Designed concurrently, these works informed one another through interrelated data narratives, communities and strategies.
In distilling insights through these creative forays, collaborative processes and related reflections, we offer a conceptual diagram (Figure 8), which maps diverse pathways to meaningful change. It identifies an array of key barriers – from prevailing attitudes and common misconceptions to entrenched systemic inequities – and highlights strategies that we suggest can support more critical and impactful engagement with data.
Figure 8. Pathways to meaningful change conceptual diagram.
To synthesise broader elements of these strategies as they relate across these three projects, we also offer the following forest-linked themes as guiding concepts for future discussion and research.
Layers
Mapping to the rich overlapping of moss, ferns, understory plants and towering trees, layers can act as a “cascade of inscriptions” (Dávila, Reference Dávila and Vodeb2023, 96). Whether between visual projection and moving bodies, 2D data visualisations and illustration, or other re-combinations, layered content can corroborate and build meaning and evocation in relation to the rich context of data landscapes.
Linkages
In the spirit of mycelial networks, linkages can create connections with faraway impacts through transposition (e.g., in situ works or with elements of a relevant site transposed to an audience’s location), transference (e.g., Archive of Vatnajökull (Springett, Reference Springett2022)) and association (visual/physical metaphors, symbolism).
Perspectives
From the underground to the canopy, perspectives can allow for imagined situating, where unexpected views can surface new insights and awareness of places. Whether drawing focus to obscured stories or omitted data (e.g., the ‘shadow emissions’ of forestry, histories of carbon accumulation, or carbon stored within forest soils), perspectives can offer immersive and unexpected framings (relating to the choice of frame within comics (McCloud, Reference McCloud2006)) that may help to disturb commonly held views.
Pathways
In parallel with the tributaries created by forest waterways, trails and roots systems, pathways can query how to facilitate a way in to matters of concern and from there to collective agency and action through an experiential journey, whether facilitated with panels, text annotations, elements of a created space, etc. Pathways can also refer to the translations of discrete data points or explicit aspects of an issue into possibilities for creative, evocative content, including through boundary objects such as ideation cards.
Proliferation
Lastly, inspired by the ecological complexity of primary forests, proliferation as a guiding concept upholds the value of a diversity of formats and voices for catering to and including a wide variety of communities. Proliferation can range from including multispecies perspectives within comics to highlighting testimonies by human witnesses and stakeholders, to acknowledging the sensibilities of diverse publics through a range of materials that can also be transposed across formats – from live performance to video documentation to gallery, or from data installation to narrative environment to zine.
These concept mappings and themes are only a start and one possible way to conceptualise this space of inquiry within the many related and richly discussed fields involved. Nevertheless, we offer them here as a particular lens from which to understand and further interrogate needs for and avenues toward critical data literacies at the confluence of the ecological and climate crises. We hope that these creative forays and related reflections offer useful insights for creative practice in support of forest and climate futures and spark further conversation and action to this end.
Acknowledgements
With gratitude to all those who have supported, informed and inspired this research, including collective members, co-creators, colleagues and broader community members. Special thanks to the Imaginative Methods Lab (including Jihyun Park and Samein Shamsher), Gustavo Vasquez, Kasha Konaka, Dr Sheelagh Carpendale, the Hummingbird Collective (including Dr Allen Larocque, Anneke Rosch, Dr Briony Penn, Emily Clark, Julia Amerongen Maddison, Liljana Martin, Dr Robin June Hood and Sachia Kron), Kira Schaffer, Dreaming Rabbit Studio and The Underground Circus.
Ethical statement
The authors, whose names appear on the title page of this work, have obtained, for the research described in this work, human research ethics approval from the Simon Fraser University Research Ethics Board, approval numbers 30001757 and 30003419.
Financial support
This research is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Author Biographies
Hannah Carpendale is a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University (SFU) whose design-based research explores creative avenues for critical data literacies surrounding the issues of biodiversity loss and climate change. Drawing from a background in community-based forest stewardship initiatives and using an approach based in storytelling and connection to ecological place, she is leveraging creative practices to counter forest carbon mis/disinformation and foster meaningful change toward forest, climate and community resilience.
Gillian Russell is an Assistant Professor in design at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Vancouver, Canada. Working at the intersection of critical design, anthropological futures and narrative environments, her practice explores how design can be used as a method for exposing the entangled complexity of technology, culture and environment and open up space for new pathways towards more socially just and sustainable futures. Dr Russell is co-director of the Imaginative Methods Lab, an innovation hub for the development of research methods and tools to foster critical and co-creative transformational futures.
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