Landfill Adaptations
Age Groups: 10+
No. Staff per children necessary: 1 adult per 10 children
Approximated time: Minimum 60 minutes: 20 minute briefing, 30-60 minute task
Required Materials: Recycled paper with at least 1 blank side, pens, crayons, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, newspaper, plastic waste, masking tape.
Overview:
This exciting, creative workshop will engage participants with the growing issue of waste disposal in our water, air and soils through a non-human perspective. Using speculative biology, participants will explore how human impact on the environment might affect the evolution of all sorts of critters. The workshop grows empathy with the more than human world, and directly discusses the violent impact of waste on the more-than-human world without falling into nihilism, but rather inspiration in nature's incredible ability to adapt and regenerate.
After a brief explanation of adaptations, natural selection and symbiotic evolution, students will be encouraged to research the environmental effects of excessive waste and imagine how critters will adapt to new biomes such as landfills, the great pacific garbage patch, or a carbon rich atmosphere. They will be encouraged to use rubbish to draw, collage, or build a model depicting their evolved critter, labelling at least 3 Anthropocene-specific adaptations.
Workshop Plan:
The workshop will begin in an open discussion of what adaptation and natural selection is, providing explanations should the group require it. We will then discuss Gaia theory of interconnectivity and inter-reliance and its vital part in evolution. We will move to a discussion of the ‘Anthropocene’, explaining that human impact is so extensive it has embedded itself into rock – that we are changing the literal planet. Landfills will be pitched as a ‘biome’ like jungles, forests, or deserts, that host their own unique ecosystems. As these biomes are very new in terms of evolutionary history, animals have not yet had time to adapt fully to this biome, which is where the students' speculation comes in.
Students will be asked to think purely from the perspective of creatures, put themselves into the shoes of something trying to survive within landfills, the pacific garbage patch or a pollution rich sky, and imagine how the creatures might adapt. They will be encouraged to use a mixture of research and imagination, and to consider creatures not only as individuals but as communities surviving, inside one another, in packs, colonies, etc. They can start with an animal/plant/fungus that exists now, or imagine something completely alien.
They will have extensive time to speculate and produce an image of their critter which they will present to the class with explanations of at least 3 adaptations.
Intended Impact:
This class aims to educate regarding extensive environmental impact without focusing on complete annihilation and subsequent dread. It also aims not to think of how humanity can survive, how humanity can further prioritize itself, but rather extending this empathy towards the critters we share this planet with and are highly dependent on. This workshop engages with narrative, a powerful tool in growing empathy, thinking outside of one's situation without constraints of highly human-centric, mechanised scientific practice. It also aims to grow excitement and curiosity in the field of biology, a centric field for empathising, relating to and caring for non-human creatures.
Supporting Texts: Hyperobjects, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Extreme Fabulations, Journey to the Micro Cosmos, Staying with the Trouble, The Symbiotic Planet, We Belong to Gaia, A Cyborg Manifesto, The Second Body.
No. Staff per children necessary: 1 adult per 10 children
Approximated time: Minimum 60 minutes: 20 minute briefing, 30-60 minute task
Required Materials: Recycled paper with at least 1 blank side, pens, crayons, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, newspaper, plastic waste, masking tape.
Overview:
This exciting, creative workshop will engage participants with the growing issue of waste disposal in our water, air and soils through a non-human perspective. Using speculative biology, participants will explore how human impact on the environment might affect the evolution of all sorts of critters. The workshop grows empathy with the more than human world, and directly discusses the violent impact of waste on the more-than-human world without falling into nihilism, but rather inspiration in nature's incredible ability to adapt and regenerate.
After a brief explanation of adaptations, natural selection and symbiotic evolution, students will be encouraged to research the environmental effects of excessive waste and imagine how critters will adapt to new biomes such as landfills, the great pacific garbage patch, or a carbon rich atmosphere. They will be encouraged to use rubbish to draw, collage, or build a model depicting their evolved critter, labelling at least 3 Anthropocene-specific adaptations.
Workshop Plan:
The workshop will begin in an open discussion of what adaptation and natural selection is, providing explanations should the group require it. We will then discuss Gaia theory of interconnectivity and inter-reliance and its vital part in evolution. We will move to a discussion of the ‘Anthropocene’, explaining that human impact is so extensive it has embedded itself into rock – that we are changing the literal planet. Landfills will be pitched as a ‘biome’ like jungles, forests, or deserts, that host their own unique ecosystems. As these biomes are very new in terms of evolutionary history, animals have not yet had time to adapt fully to this biome, which is where the students' speculation comes in.
Students will be asked to think purely from the perspective of creatures, put themselves into the shoes of something trying to survive within landfills, the pacific garbage patch or a pollution rich sky, and imagine how the creatures might adapt. They will be encouraged to use a mixture of research and imagination, and to consider creatures not only as individuals but as communities surviving, inside one another, in packs, colonies, etc. They can start with an animal/plant/fungus that exists now, or imagine something completely alien.
They will have extensive time to speculate and produce an image of their critter which they will present to the class with explanations of at least 3 adaptations.
Intended Impact:
This class aims to educate regarding extensive environmental impact without focusing on complete annihilation and subsequent dread. It also aims not to think of how humanity can survive, how humanity can further prioritize itself, but rather extending this empathy towards the critters we share this planet with and are highly dependent on. This workshop engages with narrative, a powerful tool in growing empathy, thinking outside of one's situation without constraints of highly human-centric, mechanised scientific practice. It also aims to grow excitement and curiosity in the field of biology, a centric field for empathising, relating to and caring for non-human creatures.
Supporting Texts: Hyperobjects, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Extreme Fabulations, Journey to the Micro Cosmos, Staying with the Trouble, The Symbiotic Planet, We Belong to Gaia, A Cyborg Manifesto, The Second Body.