Researching Care for People, Nature and Place
From Sunday 25 to Monday 26 May, academics, community co-researchers, artists, and partners at the Highlands and Islands Climate Hub came together to collaborate on Building Sustainability on a Foundation of Care, a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) via the ACCESS Network.
The project aims to understand how care for people, nature, and place is being practiced in Badenoch and Strathspey. Focussing on three environmental projects in the region as case studies – the Carrbridge Community Orchard, Lynbreck Croft, and WildLand Ltd – the project team have been learning about what people think and do towards building better people-planet relations. Now that the fieldwork phase is almost over, the team gathered at the Highland Wildlife Park to share insights and findings from the research so far.
Exploring care as inter-human, inter-species, and inter-generational, the workshop delved into stories from fieldwork while Dennis Sisterston, digital animator, captured the discussions.
Meanwhile, Mhairi Hall shared her draft compositions – music that explores the case studies and findings through traditional Scottish stylings for a folk orchestra arrangement. This music will be taught and performed with the young musicians at Scotland’s National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music and Fèis Spè.
Dr Sarah Parry, Sustainable Households co-lead, said: “It was inspiring to hear from our community researchers about their first-hand experiences of researching and understanding their respective case studies through the lens of care. They told us how our project had shaped some of their activities, brought to the fore questions, challenges and gaps of practising care, and provided legitimacy to pursue particular ways of doing and knowing.”
The research team are now working with the findings to develop publicly available outputs that share insights from the region to help others further afield learn about and practice a caring approach to people, nature, and place. The outputs from the project will be academic, music and those written for a wider audience that focus on care. Stay tuned for further project updates!
