Susanne Moser has highlighted how Sustainability Science Communication (SSC) needs to be viewed as ”transformative work and itself transformational when compared to the often more formal and traditional forms and practices of communication” (Moser 2019, 148). She describes a more moving and poetic form of SSC as “a form of creating the future”, thereby connecting science communication with art in a radical way:

In the words of Marsha Meskimmon: “Art does more than reflect the world – it produces it” (Meskimmon 2013, 41). We humans can only create and do what we can imagine, and the arts therefore have a huge potential to affect the way we think, see and act. The arts might therefore be exactly what SSC needs to facilitate change.

The sensory and affective aspects of the arts has been found “to foster human connection and possibilities for deep listening, resonance, mutual learning, and affect” when combined with sustainability science (Heras et al. 2021), and science communication combined with storytelling is associated with longer lasting impact (Morris et al. 2019). Still, using the arts in SSC should not simply be to add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. As Heinrichs explains, the arts are not “tools for representation” but rather “a research approach in their own right” (Heinrichs 2018, 135-6). Heinrichs and Kagan have further described how the sustainability sciences need “an expansion of epistemological approaches” in order for the field to acknowledge “the qualitative complexity of human life, including its multisensorial and aesthetic dimensions” (Heinrichs and Kagan 2019, 431). The aesthetics, Heinrichs explains, might be what helps us to not only heighten the effectiveness of our communication, but also strengthen the data and methods of our science. According to Heinrichs, basing his work on Patricia Leavy’s thorough development of ‘art as method’ (Leavy 2015, 294), in adding the arts to SSC, we might be able to create resonance; a deeper understanding felt in our very core. The implications of SSC, however, changes dramatically, when we start combining it with the arts:

Where quantitative science works with measurements, and qualitative research with meaning, arts-based SSC work with evocation, meaning that emotional engagement and what a rhetorical analysis might describe as pathos would take a much stronger lead in the finished product than what we usually connect with science communication and the sciences in general. To begin this work, we need new concepts, models and ‘recipes’ for art-based sustainability science communication, and we need to be able to constructively critique such productions, their potentials, and risks. That is what my paper will begin to outline, more specifically by drawing up new categorizations of the “knowledge” we need to combine, and by developing the famous rhetorical tools of ethos, logos and pathos to the design and analysis of SSC.



References

Heinrichs, H. (2018). Sustainability science with Ozzy Osbourne, Julia Roberts and Ai Weiwei. GAIA, 27(1), 132-137. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.27.1.8

Heinrichs, H., & Kagan, S. (2019). Artful and Sensory Sustainability Science:
Exploring novel methodological perspectives. Journal of Environmental Management & Sustainability – Revista de Gesta~o Ambiental e Sustentabilidade, 8(3). 431–442. https://doi.org/10.5585/geas.v8i3.15734

Heras, M., Galafassi, D., Oteros-Rozas, E. et al. Realising potentials for arts-based sustainability science. Sustain Sci 16. 1875–1889 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01002-0


Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). New York:
Guilford. https://doi.org/10.33524/cjar.v18i1.322

Meskimmon, M. (2013). The precarious ecologies of cosmopolitanism. Open Arts Journal, Issue 1, Summer 2013. 15-25. https://doi.org/10.5456/issn.5050-3679/2013s03mm

Morris, B. S., Chrysochou, P., Christensen, J. D., Orquin, J. L., Barraza, J., Zak, P. J., & Mitkidis, P. (2019, 2019/05/01). Stories vs. facts: triggering emotion and action-taking on climate change. Climatic Change, 154(1), 19-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02425-6

Moser, S. (2019). Tasks of climate change communication in the context of societal transformation. In G. Feola, H. Geoghegan, & A. Arnall (Eds.), Climate and culture. Multidisciplinary perspectives on a warming world (pp. 141-167). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108505284