AALERT 4DM

The arts and artists already contribute to landscape decisions in diverse ways, yet there is scope to align more centrally existing activity from the arts and humanities practitioners with models of decision making that accommodate specialists such as economists, ecologists, land managers, planners and other stakeholders.

Additionally, while some environmental art and artists already engage with nature and the environment, arts organisations are less engaged, with few having a focus on programmes connected with landscape decisions. There is a further need therefore, to engage the arts organisations that could potentially be critical players, with land decision-making circles.

AALERT 4DM will fill these gaps by facilitating an in-depth, cross-disciplinary examination of the distinctive significance of creative contributions to decisions about landscapes, land uses and land assets. It will bring arts perspectives alongside those disciplines and stakeholders to reflect and engage with diverse values in order to develop new and more appropriate ways of managing ecosystems, human well-being and the economy. It will also make explicit the contribution of artists in creating new knowledge enriching like that scholarship across multiple scientific disciplines as well as policy and practice spheres

It will do so through a programme of meetings and case-study workshops, aligned with wider networking activities and the production and exchange of written and visual documentations of these experiences.

The project will seek to address the guiding questions:

• What can arts contribute in inter- and trans- disciplinary research and under what circumstances?
• How can different disciplines and decision makers communicate with artists under diverse landscape and decision contexts?
• How can we define the diverse impacts of the arts in order to make better decisions?