Becoming-Places: Experimenting with emergent arts-based practice as method

The presentation draws on research into contemporary process-orientated arts-based practice and outdoor learning with a focus on how these approaches are (s)places of emergent pedagogy that contribute to the increasing interest in outdoor and walking based education research methods. The Art Earth Walk method has emerged through my background in Earth Education's 'Earth Walks' (Van Matre, 1990) as a sensory and immersive inquiry with ecosystems and habitats, alongside an experience of Shinrin-yoku (Li, 2018), with slow sensory creative inquiries nurturing wellbeing and nature-connection. A short selection of pages from my own Art Earth Walk journaling will be shared, exemplifying these as ‘agential cuts’ (Barad,2007) and symbol conceptualisations (Yunkaporta, 2019) to explore ‘thinking’ and ‘storying’ of subjective experiential nature encounters through walking and arting. The sketch book pages will also offer provocations into themes around becoming places and futural survival, especially foregrounding that ’to think-with is to stay with the naturalcultural multispecies trouble on earth’ (Harway 2016, p.40) and that place-conscious land/art methods do inherently embody eco-social justice.