Regenerative Design of Biocultural Wisdom Seeds: Dense Process Storage in Graduate Education for Post-Transformation Persevering

• In Event: A Radical, Rooted Curriculum for Climate Catastrophe: Resourcefulness, Regeneration, Connection, and Community

Abstract

Objectives: The nature pattern of packing is embodied in the 3-dimensional teeth of the pomegranate, words stored in books in libraries, or the nutrient dense honeycomb and hives (Murphy, 1993). Inspired by the pattern of packing, this work proposes a pedagogy of wisdom harvesting and dense storage of ideas in a time of peril. The purpose is a cycle of poetic inquiry to develop biocultural wisdom distillations (see Table 2.1).

Theoretical Framework: As an act of STEAM, this work leverages the complex creativity of pattern formation in nature (Ball, 2012, 2016; Stewart, 2018) and deep biomimicry (Benyus, 2009, Mathews 2011) as part of regenerative design approaches (Lyle, 1996; Mang & Reed, 2012) to develop distillations for the future. It explores how we can apply design thinking processes and regenerative design and permaculture approaches for cross-generational refuge. This research prefigures and resonates with Harawayian (2016) future fiction efforts toward multispecies kinship.

Methods: Engaging the transdisciplinary imagination to notice and respond to the wicked problem of late industrial growth society breakdown (Brown et al, 2010), the research used arts-based methods in the development, sense-making, and articulation of findings, leveraging quality criteria for arts-based educational research (ABER; Cole & Knowles, 2008). Arts-based approaches are particularly promising for anthropogenic collapse (Tsing, et al, 2017). Poetic inquiry was the method of data analysis (Sameshima, Fidyk, James, & Leggo, 2017). Multiple rounds of initial thematic surfacing (Saldana, 2013) were distilled in found poetic fragments in the words of student texts and curated by the researcher. These were overlaid on micrographic seed imagery (Curtis, 2012; Kesseler & Stuppy, 2012).

Data Sources: Collaborative future fiction and regenerative seed design texts were the core material of analysis through poetic artworkings. Some were generated using adaptations of the Quiet Year post apocalyptic community-building prompts (Leetch, 2018; McDaldno, 2013), and others represented journal prompts of connective and resilience futurecasting (Macy & Johnstone, 2012). Text data were generated by graduate students and community activists in five contexts (described in Table 2.2).

Results: A sample thematic visualization appears in Figure 2.1. Process-content consonances and emerging themes included: intergenerational, intertextual continuities; embodied practice; matrixial nature fusions; cultural gathering practices (including processing collective feelings of loss, threat); collective practices of decision making; deep arts fusion in daily cultural practices; deep listening; story making and story sharing. The last data set was generated in May 2019, and further distillation and visualization will continue through November 2019. Table 2.3 shares examples of the themes.

Significance: This work breaks through denialism and the entrancement of business as usual in a time of climate crisis (Gardiner, 2011). The related curriculum and prompting for awareness expansion develops intergenerationally-aware insight and offers learners practice and design skills in regenerative cultural resurgence (Brown, 2017; Simpson, 2017). The imbrication of future selves’ agency in, through, and from nature supports co-creative and collaborative social decision making. Consonant with conceptions of societies of peace (Goettner-Abendroth, 2009), each of these affordances bears further study.

Author

• Marna Hauk, PhD, Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies and Prescott College