Art Meets Science: A Webinar Series for Creative Collaboration

Art is a method for people to connect, reflect, and understand scientific concepts in different ways than traditional scientific outreach. Maryland Sea Grant and Cultivate are seeking to expand methods of outreach and engagement with alternative communities through the medium of art as a method of science translation. The project goal is to forge connections between artists and scientists and best practices particularly in response to: 

• How to use art as a medium of outreach
• How to bring Maryland's scientific environmental research to a larger audience
• How to partner and communicate with an artist or scientist and why
• What strategies make for successful collaborations
• How to create a local network/databank for collaborations

Art Exhibition Event

Maryland Sea Grant hosted an art exhibition event on December 16, 2024 from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. at their office in College Park, Maryland. This exhibition was presented as part of a project with Cultivate, an artist collaborative interested in environmental science art translation. This event celebrated their collaborative partnership and resulting three-part webinar series. For more information visit our announcement.

The Art-Science Collaboration exhibition features individual and collaborative artwork from a selection of Cultivate artists, including Maggie Gourlay, Katie Kehoe, Susan Main, Murat Cem Mengüç, MJ Neuberger, Elzbieta Sikorska, Lynn Silverman, and Sue Wrbican.

Creative Collaboration Webinar

Cultivate and Maryland Sea Grant hosted our third and final webinar on November 20, 2024. We worked through a creative drawing exercise to spark alternative ways of looking at art and conceptualizing participants' work. It is not too late to submit your bio to our template to share with potential collaborators! If you are interested in watching an abbreviated recording of this webinar, contact clark@mdsg.umd.edu or clcarmel@mdsg.umd.edu.

Virtual Seminar Q&A and Connections Webinar

In our second webinar, we continued conversations about collaborative relationships. Artists from Cultivate were also available to answer questions about their virtual seminars on Cultivate's YouTube channel. Participants discussed their experiences with establishing effective project relationships in breakout rooms. If you are interested in watching an abbreviated recording of this webinar, contact clark@mdsg.umd.edu or clcarmel@mdsg.umd.edu.

Networking and Collaboration Webinar

Our first webinar inspired possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration and project idea incubation. As a networking activity, interested artists and scientists gave brief lighting talks about their work. We also discussed what collaborations may entail and how to get started. If you are interested in watching the recording of this ASL accessible webinar, contact clark@mdsg.umd.edu or clcarmel@mdsg.umd.edu. 

Virtual Seminars

Cultivate and Maryland Sea Grant have released a series of short virtual seminars on how to collaborate with artists. The goal is to harness the qualities of art and science to help with outreach, education, communication, collaborative process, materials, perspective, and translation of research. The topics of the virtual seminars are:

• How to partner and communicate with an artist or scientist and why?
• Generative collaborations (i.e., opening up creative thinking to address questions)
• Lessons learned from art/science collaborations
• Climate change and sea level rise: adaptation, resilience, sustainability, action, empowerment. How can art and science work together when grappling with climate change?

Find the seminars on Cultivate's YouTube channel.

Cultivate

Cultivate is an evolving collection of interdisciplinary artists, writers, and researchers driven by investigations of land, place, and the commons. Projects include experimental and practical art explorations that wrestle with the qualities, perceptions, and layers of experience that inform and expand notions of landscape. Ideas from a full spectrum of voices across generations are supported using sustainable tactics. From the hyper-local to the global, Cultivate reflects individual and collective curiosity, intention, imagining, and engagement with the phenomena of landscape. (Excerpt from Cultivate)

For any questions, please contact Jenna Clark, clark@mdsg.umd.edu