UNESCO BRIDGES Hub Launch: E(e)arth

^{| Photo by Sina Katirachi on Unsplash}

Welcome to the UWTSD UNESCO-BRIDGES Hub launch page

The launch will introduce the aims, values and opportunities of the Hub by showcasing projects that use the strengths of the Humanities to generate innovation in thinking and action.

The launch will not be a passive affair. It will be active, informal and require your engagement. If we are to move into new ways of understanding, we need bold action. This launch responds to that call.

When and Where

• 2nd November 2022
• The Reading Room, The Alex Building, Swansea

Project details

The projects presented at the launch demonstrate different approaches and methods of knowing the Earth (and earth).

The first project was devised and is led, by a group of indigenous people from Colombia who decided to teach conventional environmental scientists their previously unrecorded methods of land regeneration.

The second is an interdisciplinary collaboration with a Welsh artist who asks questions about being the earth and uses the arts to work with the soil and explore relationships with the taken for granted lives underfoot.

The third project demonstrates the imaginative and creative power of playing games to seek solutions to environmental issues. Games encourage positivity and allow players to collaborate to harness tensions and frustrations to untangle complex problems.

Programme

• 10.00 – Arrival and Coffee
  
  
• 10.30 – Welcome and Introductions
  •  Introducing the Hub; mission and opportunities

• 10:40 – Brief address:
  
  
  • Professor Medwin Hughes, Vice-Chancellor of UWTSD
  • Gabriela Ramos – UNESCO Assistant Director-General
  • Steven Hartman – Executive Director of UNESCO-BRIDGES
  • Carlos Alvarez Pereira, Vice-President, Club of Rome

• 11.30 – Munekan Masha (Let It Be (Re)Born), presented by Prof. Alan Ereira and Jose Manuel Sauna Mamatacan, representative of the Kogi indigenous people, Colombia.
  
  
• 12.30 – Informal buffet lunch
  
  
  • Virtual Reality Booth: a virtual walk through faraway ecosystems [Optional activity] 

• 1.30 – What It Is to Be Here: Exploring Grief, Place and Memory, presented by Helen Acklam, soil artist.
  
  
• 2.00 – Serious Gaming: Playing Games to Understand Climate Change [Activity with GamEngage, Cardiff University] This project is presented by co-founders of GamEngage, Dr Feng Mao (University of Warwick) and Dr Shasta Marrero (Cardiff University).
  
  
• 2.30 – Tea and Expert Panel Discussion, Q&A moderated by Dr Nicholas Campion, Director of the Harmony Institute, Director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, Editorial Director of the Sophia Centre Press
  
  
  • Professor Veronica Strang, Cultural Anthropologist, Water Expert
  • David Cadman, Professor of Practice, Harmony Institute, UWTSD
  • Professor Piero Dominici, Sociologist, Philosopher, Scientific Director of the International Research and Education Program CHAOS
  • Ila Malhotra Gregory (she/they), facilitator, questioner and weaver. They have a background in youth activism, re-imagining systems and facilitating spaces for self inquiry.
  • Professor Elena Rodriguez Falcon, Deputy VC, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering