AALERT 4 DM - Art and Artists in Landscape and Environment Research Today for Decision Making

The Arts and the Artist in Landscape and Environmental Research Today for Decision Making (AALERT 4 DM) project aims to explore and enhance the impact arts research, can make in decision-making related to landscape, land-use and land assets. It builds on the legacy of the AALERT workshop (NEC05173), held in 2018, and considerable contributions of artist practice & research in existing research projects (e.g. projects funded by the Valuing Nature Programme). A key focus is to understand how perspectives from the arts and humanities can be used to navigate the complex territory of cultural values in landscape and decision making.
Landscapes are dynamic entities resulting from long and multifaceted interactions between natural forces and human actions that reflect wider socio-economic circumstances and values. Informed decisions about land should appreciate simultaneously environmental, social, economic, cultural, and wellbeing values. This requires multidimensional approaches to decision-making and interdisciplinary collaborations between a broad range of different researchers, stakeholders and decision-making groups with interests in landscape management. It is in this context that perspectives from the arts and humanities can make distinctive contributions.
While there is already much activity from the arts and humanities practitioners that involves artists, communities and landscape decision making there is scope to align these more centrally with the work of planners, economists and other stakeholders involved in landscape. There is a need for a broad cross-section of decision makers to understand how critical reflections and creativity can enhance landscape decisions. It widely accepted that artists can articulate emotions and moral judgements and contribute to our understanding of values. However, understanding the ability of artists to create new knowledge, is not a trivial undertaking. It needs to be incorporated into models of decision making that accommodate other specialists such as economists and ecologists and requires engagement with underlying philosophical, ethical and political discourses across diverse subject areas.
The AALERT 4 DM programme will provide an opportunity for constructive dialogues to take place by cutting across disciplinary perspectives and professional practices. It will engage a range of actors from different traditions who share an interest in landscape and land assets management including artists, arts organisations, geographers, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, philosophers, ecologists, social scientists, designers, policy-makers and landscape managers, planners and regulators as well as land owners. It will bring artists into dialogue with wider academics and stakeholders through a programme of events consisting of five workshops (a Scoping workshop, three Regional Case Studies workshops, and one Synthesis workshop) and aligned with wider pathways to impact activities (e.g. writing retreats to produce outputs and actively promote findings in social media). In a period of twenty four months the network will critically reflect on emerging interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary examples from this country and abroad to create a shared understanding of the different aspects within landscape and land use management and will develop a clear articulation of the various roles (conceptual, practical, communicative) that arts and artist researchers can play in support of a new holistic land decision-making framework.
In sum, this programme will consolidate existing initiatives, break new ground, and be relevant to diverse academic audiences as well as policy development and practical landscape management in the long term.

The beneficiaries of AALERT 4 DM include all those concerned to develop holistic approaches to landscapes and land use decisions. In the 'Outcomes and Impact' (see CfS) we outlined how the project will forge collaborations and yield impacts for a range of key stakeholders e.g. artists, arts organisations, landscape and land assets managers, landscape partnerships, local authorities, government departments, advisory bodies, local communities and wider publics. In particular, AALERT 4DM will cultivate and sustain professional relations with a number of organisations, networks and initiatives who can support us further in disseminating outputs, including: art.earth, Arts Council England, Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council Wales, Birmingham City Council, CANW, CIWEM, Climate Cultures, Creative Scotland, Defra, Forest Research Scotland, Greenspace Scotland, Historic England, Historic Scotland, HLF, IALE, IUFRO, LRG, National Trust, Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage, Ramsar and the Valuing Nature Network. Impact will be delivered in the following four areas:
1. Creating best practice guidelines for policymakers, landscape and land managers, planners and other groups interested in a holistic interdisciplinary decision making framework.
2. Supporting artists to take more strategic and significant roles (e.g. as Co-Is and PIs) in landscape and environmental research and enhance their contribution to decisions.
3. Enhancing knowledge and collaborations within a transdisciplinary community committed to involving artists in landscape and environmental research.
4. Promoting understanding within artists and arts organisations of land issues and scientific practices of disciplines e.g. ecological science, economics, enabling their integration into transdisciplinary research and land decisions contexts.
Impacts will be generated by project outputs (see CfS and Outputs), engagement events, and the promotion of the project activities. We will create and maintain a project website to act as a platform of communications and knowledge exchange in the UK and internationally. We will produce journal articles, reports, briefing papers, commentaries, blogs, videos, webinars and social media (using #aalert4DM) in close co-ordination with network participants and other relevant organisations.
Collaborations and engagement of land management stakeholders with artists, their artworks and networks will yield 'conceptual' impacts by changing the way in which landscape problems are understood, framed and discussed in the land decision making process at local and national levels. We will monitor views expressed in publications produced by stakeholders and the media.
Publicity of outputs can potentially reorient the discourse within wider social contexts in which decisions are made, and lead to instrumental impacts on policy, decisions, land use practices and the behaviour of local communities (not always predictable). Impact on individual attitudes and institutional cultures can generate enduring connections and trusting relationships that bridge disciplines and stakeholder groups and provide a 'capacity building' legacy. To measure impact during and beyond the lifetime of the project we will monitor and keep records of: newsletter items carried by partner organisations; retweets, sign-ups to @aalert4DM Twitter; downloads of resources; artists work referenced in policy documents; numbers of artists involved in landscape decision-focused projects in the long term.