Pollinator Pathmaker

Averting environmental crises and conserving biodiversity are grave societal challenges that require fundamental shifts in how we engage with the natural world. Despite increasingly widespread desire for change, the relationship between humans and nature is unprecedentedly dysfunctional. Through pioneering interdisciplinary collaborations between art, ecological science, social science and philosophy, our research aims to provide tools to reconceptualise our relationship with the nonhuman world.

Pollinators globally are in precipitous decline, despite providing critical ecosystem services. Pollinator Pathmaker (PP) is an award-winning living artwork that addresses the pollinator crisis by algorithmically generating planting designs optimised for pollinator diversity, rather than using human garden design principles. We will use PP as a model system to explore: (1) how living artworks can conserve pollinator diversity in limited and fragmented urban green spaces; and (2) how these artworks empower publics to engage in nature-positive actions. To address these questions experimentally, we will engage the public in applied ecological research through their creating, planting, caretaking and monitoring of a local network of micro living 'DIY artworks' designed by PP, and study the process, data produced, and outcomes of this engagement.

Specifically, our objectives are to: (O1) improve biodiversity of insect pollinators in residential garden settings; and (O2) transform human-nature interactions by enabling publics to engage in evidence-based disruptive methods for biodiversity conservation. These will both be informed by and inform (O3) philosophical analysis of the considerations central to PP pollinator conservation. To achieve these objectives, our project forges connections between ecological network theory, biodiversity conservation, citizen science, algorithm-based living artwork, and a fundamental re-evaluation of the role of humans in managing urban nature.

We will employ an experimental approach in a Cornish village in the UK embedded in an agricultural landscape. Participants will measure the DIY artworks' ecological impact on plant-pollinator communities. The data for plant-pollinator networks will be collected through citizen science and scientific monitoring, linking up study participants and creating a 'networked human community'. The sociological research components will make use of overlapping concepts of networks and communities across disciplines to study the value in nature and how value is thought of in the context of multiple species, including our own. By using interviews, digital diaries, multispecies methods and discussion groups to explore participants' experiences of converting their gardens into networked sites of biodiversity, the sociological component will examine the impacts of gardeners' individual and collective caring for living artworks through acting as citizen scientists.

Reflections on fundamental philosophical questions— such as: How should we think about the relations of humans to nature in modern urban societies? What is a garden? Given that gardens are bearers of value, who or what derives value from gardens? To what extent should we think of aesthetics as merely subjective, or as reflecting something more objective or instrumental?—will be integrated throughout and will inform new approaches to designing for nature and biodiversity conservation. Holistically, the research will contribute to iteration of PP as participatory conservation method as it spreads internationally. Through this process, we will (1) contribute to novel conservation methods; (2) inform 'environmental createch'; (3) shift the focus of art and technology to nonhuman species; (4) challenge traditional human-centred philosophical perspectives; and (5) demonstrate the necessity of interdisciplinarity for innovation both within disciplines and holistically to benefit both human and nonhuman worlds.