Develop your patrons' landscape literacy and environmental appreciation through hands-on exploration, data collection, and creation.
Learning Goals
We aim to:
- Provide learners of all ages with new skills to observe the ecologies of cities and suburbs.
- Facilitate the development of a critical eye—fit for detecting environmental challenge, nuance, and phenomena—as well as an ability to imagine more safe and equitable futures for city development.
- Cultivate a reverence for and love of place—adding value to mundane or familiar landscapes.
- Leverage local environments as living, dynamic classrooms for fostering landscape literacy.
Workshop Structure
Each workshop is composed of three different elements:
- 🌬️ Sensory Nature Walk: An introductory activity to spark curiosity in the topic of focus.
- 🖐️ The Tangible Ecosystem: A field exercise designed to give participants hands-on experiences with the topic.
- 🍂 Understanding Urban Soils: A come-together activity, where participants will work together to create a shareable artifact and reflect on what they've learned.
What We ❤️ About This Activity
🌳 Offers the chance to understand ecology through creation Activities encourage hands-on crafting and visualization of interactions and processes within your local ecosystem.
👯 Encourages peer exploration and discussion Participants work together to explore local habitats and share what they observe.
👁️ Facilitates the development of heightened senses Fit for detecting and interpreting environmental challenge and nuance.
🏝️ Cultivates a reverence for and love of place Adding new interest to mundane or familiar landscapes.
🌃 Encourages civic engagement As participants learn to imagine more safe and equitable futures for town and city development.
About PLIX Urban Ecology
These workshops were originally designed as a series of community-oriented experiential learning sessions intended to combat the disregard for nature in and of cities. It was later expanded and adapted for the public library setting in collaboration with the PLIX team. The ultimate objective of this series is to support learners of all ages to further understand local urban ecology by employing a systems-level, nature-conscious, and playful approach to learning.