A Climate for Art: Enhancing Scientist–Citizen Collaboration in Bangladesh

Abstract

AbstractIn our climate research project in Bangladesh, we work closely with local rural communities. The communities have designed their own citizen science projects in close dialogue with the project?s climate scientists. The climate scientists have also directed their research based on the stories the communities previously shared in longer narrative interviews. In order for the citizen science to be a success, a sense of community and good team spirit is essential. We collaborated with a Bangladeshi artist to achieve some important goals. Not only did we want to create new and exciting outreach materials, but, more importantly, we also wanted to see how the artistic process could nurture a sense of community for the local participants. Despite being limited by time, we saw some promising outcomes from the collaboration. The artist successfully interacted with the project researchers and the local participants. The final artwork was a real collaboration between the artist and the participants, who felt pride and ownership in the results.