Markku Rummukainen

Global environmental change is not just a bio-physical reality. It has affective, relational, and existential dimensions that influence people. Artistic methods can be used in research to communicate about or disseminate global environmental change and explore people’s emotions about and sense-making of global environmental change. While often positioned as a mode of outreach, this presentation reflects on two interdisciplinary projects that instead experiment with art as a mode of inquiry, sense-making, and knowledge production.

The first project, People, Patterns, and Places, explores ecological loss and damage through a transdisciplinary lens, combining scientific, artistic, and narrative approaches to reimagine knowledge production in Southern Sweden (Skåne). By bringing together scientific identification of ecologically significant sites (‘places’), visual and narrative portraits of local stewards (‘people’), and artistic synthesis across landscapes (‘patterns), the project foregrounds affective, relational, and place-based dimensions of ecological loss that conventional research might overlook.

The second project, Meaning-Making, part of Mistra Environmental Communication, collaborates with museums to study how different artistic and curatorial approaches may shape emotional engagement around environmental change. Here, art operates at the interface between research and society, mediating how emotions and meaning are negotiated in public spaces.

Rather than presenting empirical results, this talk reflects on methodological benefits, challenges, and gaps of arts-based approaches in interdisciplinary, environmental research projects. It discusses how such approaches may go beyond communication and outreach to actively shape environmental research, expand what knowledge is taken seriously, as well as open affective spaces for reflection.