Changing Treescapes: Making visible the cultural values at risk from tree pests and diseases through arts approaches

TREESCAPES旨在开发和试点一种新的社会科学方法，将社会科学研究成果从以前的UKRI项目UNPICK（了解与树木健康有关的公共风险）扩展到新的受众，包括多元文化群体。它还旨在通过与政策制定者以创造性的新方式进行合作，以进一步发挥影响力，将UNPICK的发现和艺术研究成果转化为更好地将更广泛的文化价值观纳入现有政策框架和景观决策，风险评估和关于树木健康的风险沟通中。UNPICK项目使用了一系列社会科学方法来调查英国公众如何看待，了解和理解入侵性病虫害对树木健康日益增长的威胁。近几十年来，树木病虫害流行病急剧增加，主要原因是全球化、植物材料和木材包装贸易、人类流动和气候变化。有证据表明，这些疫情可能对景观、生态系统服务以及树木和林地提供的福祉产生深远影响。树木病虫害的政策和管理通常依赖于技术风险评估技术，并得到科学证据和对所谓“风险价值”的经济分析的支持，以优先考虑监测和行动，防止新的入侵，发现新的爆发，并在新的害虫形成后进行控制。然而，正如UNPICK项目的调查结果所表明的那样，虫害爆发可能会产生更广泛的社会和文化影响，包括对文化价值观（包括文化生态系统服务）、地方感、福祉和地方认同的影响。然而，在决策中很少或仅部分考虑文化价值观，主要是因为它们往往是无形的、有背景的和定性的;对话往往限于政策-科学界面，但很少与社会利益攸关方对话。为了解决这些问题，TREESCAPES将探索艺术研究在揭示树木病虫害风险中的文化价值方面的潜在作用。通过社会艺术的方法，它将把UNPICK项目的学习带到新的受众中，包括黑人，亚洲人和少数民族群体（BAME），在对话和行动中，让人们反思和表达地方和景观对他们的意义，他们对这些景观或其中的元素的依恋，并使文化树的未表达的价值明确。通过将该项目带入文化与自然互动发生的环境中，并与他们自己环境中的人进行互动，它将为与公众进行更深入的互动提供可能性，这些公众可能不太可能参与更正式的社会科学活动，例如访谈或焦点小组，以及那些很少或从不参与这些问题的人。一个关键的能力建设目标将是通过与参与树木健康政策制定和实践的人员互动，促进对艺术在树木健康和景观决策中的作用的相互学习。这将涉及与政策制定者和从业人员的创意世界咖啡馆研讨会，以反映将艺术干预的成果与应用政策相关成果相结合的挑战，特别是围绕一系列“活”的政策问题，如树木病虫害爆发。成果将包括一份政策简报和一份创意参与工具包--一份关于创意过程和方法的反思性文件，它将作为创意参与的工具包，为其他寻求将艺术研究纳入更大的跨学科/跨学科工作或寻求确定当地景观中文化价值的公众社区的研究人员提供信息。

TREESCAPES aims to develop and pilot a new Socially Engaged Arts method to extend the results of social science research from a previous UKRI project, UNPICK (Understanding public risk in relation to tree health), by taking it to new audiences, including multicultural groups. It also aims to enable further impact by engaging with policy makers in creative new ways to translate the UNPICK findings and the arts research to better incorporate consideration of wider cultural values in existing policy frameworks and landscape decision-making, risk assessment and risk communication about tree health.The UNPICK project used a range of social science approaches to investigate how UK publics perceive, understand and make sense of the growing threat to tree health from invasive pests and diseases. Tree pest and disease epidemics have increased dramatically in recent decades, largely attributed to globalization, trade in plant material and wood packaging, human movement and climate change. Evidence suggests that these outbreaks are likely to have profound consequences on landscapes, and on ecosystem services and the wellbeing benefits provided by trees and woodlands. Policy and management for tree pests and disease generally rely on technical risk assessment techniques, supported by scientific evidence and economic analysis of so-called 'values at risk' to prioritise surveillance and action for preventing new incursions, detection of new outbreaks and management for control once a new pest becomes established. However, as findings from the UNPICK project suggest, there are likely to be broader social and cultural implications of pest outbreaks, including impacts on cultural values (including cultural ecosystem services), sense of place, wellbeing and place identity. Yet cultural values are rarely or only partially considered in decision-making, largely because they are often intangible, contextual and qualitative; and dialogue is often restricted to the policy-science interface, but rarely with societal stakeholders. To address these issues, TREESCAPES will explore the potential role of arts research in revealing cultural values at risk from tree pests and diseases. Through a Socially Engaged Art approach it will take the learnings of the UNPICK project to new audiences, including black, Asian and minority ethnic groups (BAME), in conversations and actions that allow people to reflect on and express what places and landscapes mean to them, their attachments to those landscapes or elements within them and to make the unexpressed values of cultural treescapes explicit. By taking the project into the environments in which culture-nature interactions occur and engaging with people in their own setting, it will open up the possibility for deeper engagement with publics who may be unlikely to engage in more formal social science engagements, such as interviews or focus groups, and those who rarely or never engage with these issues. A key capacity building objective will be to promote mutual learning about the role of the arts for tree health and landscape decision-making through interaction with those involved in policy making and practice in tree health. This will involve a creative World Café workshop with policy makers and practitioners to reflect on the challenges of blending outcomes from arts interventions with applied policy-relevant outcomes, specifically around a set of 'live' policy problems such as tree pest and disease outbreaks. Outcomes will include a Policy Brief and a Creative Engagement Toolkit - a reflective document of the creative process and methods, which will act as a toolkit for creative engagement, to inform other researchers seeking to incorporate arts research into larger inter/trans/un-disciplinary work or communities of publics seeking to identify the cultural values in their local landscapes.