Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CALENDARS (Co-production of seasonal representations for adaptive institutions)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-07-01 do 2024-06-30
CALENDARS was steered by the overall objective to advance knowledge of how seasonal cultures shape and are shaped by institutions, and critically appraise the quality of these cultures for successful adaptation to seasonal change.
Obj. A: Critically examine and compare how seasonal representations shape, and are shaped by, institutions in different places.
CALENDARS developed concepts of seasonality for guiding adaptation governance. We addressed seasons as cultures of perception and practice; as 'individuals’ and groups’ perceived patterns in yearly rhythms that they segment into periodic patterns meaningful for them, and effect practices that maintain or change these patterns'.
Within institutionalised fields of activity we saw how practitioners notice the rhythmic patterns they time their practices to, and their repetitive practice itself becomes entwined as a rhythm within that pattern. People make the seasons according to what they notice and what they do. Over time, activities become entrained to seasonal rhythms as a taken-for-granted culture for how to think, feel and act over the year. Societal activities become seasonally synchronised to avoid temporal clashes.
Obj. B: Collaboratively appraise the quality of seasonal representations for successful adaptation in different institutions, with local actors.
CALENDARS demonstrated that individuals’ and groups’ skill at apprehending seasons, and timing practices accordingly, is unique to their relation to seasons. A key adaptation challenge – for ensuring timely action - is to effect ‘transdisciplinary’ processes that are inclusive of the heterogeneous ways groups live by seasons while identify shared temporal reference points that groups synchronise by. This means harnessing people’s temporal capacities to change timings in the face of shifts climatic rhythms, introduced species, cultural festivals, or advances in science and technology, and so on.
Obj. C: Create alternative seasonal representations with local actors, and study facilitators and barriers to adoption of new representations in institutions.
CALENDARS researchers found that people engage in diverse and sophisticated discussions of seasons, including highly creative and personal ways of representing seasons. We worked with artists in coming up with ways for groups to critically reflect on their ways of thinking and acting seasonally, and how they may need to recalibrate their timings to modified seasonal patterns; from VR simulation, to traditional calendars, seasonal walks, or film for example. This work revealed facilitators and barriers to such recalibration. Facilitators, for example, included habits of noticing, a connection to tradition, everyday micro-changes, and shared timings within a group.
Obj. A: Critically examine and compare how seasonal representations shape, and are shaped by, institutions in different places.
CALENDARS developed concepts of seasonality for guiding adaptation governance. We addressed seasons as cultures of perception and practice; as 'individuals’ and groups’ perceived patterns in yearly rhythms that they segment into periodic patterns meaningful for them, and effect practices that maintain or change these patterns'.
Within institutionalised fields of activity we saw how practitioners notice the rhythmic patterns they time their practices to, and their repetitive practice itself becomes entwined as a rhythm within that pattern. People make the seasons according to what they notice and what they do. Over time, activities become entrained to seasonal rhythms as a taken-for-granted culture for how to think, feel and act over the year. Societal activities become seasonally synchronised to avoid temporal clashes.
Obj. B: Collaboratively appraise the quality of seasonal representations for successful adaptation in different institutions, with local actors.
CALENDARS demonstrated that individuals’ and groups’ skill at apprehending seasons, and timing practices accordingly, is unique to their relation to seasons. A key adaptation challenge – for ensuring timely action - is to effect ‘transdisciplinary’ processes that are inclusive of the heterogeneous ways groups live by seasons while identify shared temporal reference points that groups synchronise by. This means harnessing people’s temporal capacities to change timings in the face of shifts climatic rhythms, introduced species, cultural festivals, or advances in science and technology, and so on.
Obj. C: Create alternative seasonal representations with local actors, and study facilitators and barriers to adoption of new representations in institutions.
CALENDARS researchers found that people engage in diverse and sophisticated discussions of seasons, including highly creative and personal ways of representing seasons. We worked with artists in coming up with ways for groups to critically reflect on their ways of thinking and acting seasonally, and how they may need to recalibrate their timings to modified seasonal patterns; from VR simulation, to traditional calendars, seasonal walks, or film for example. This work revealed facilitators and barriers to such recalibration. Facilitators, for example, included habits of noticing, a connection to tradition, everyday micro-changes, and shared timings within a group.
The CALENDARS project work was organized in three progressive phases, and an additional, cross-cutting programme to develop scientists and policy-makers literacy for discussing the adaptation of seasonal timings.
Phase 1 - Examining seasonal cultures
Phase one saw researchers embedded in case study organizations or groups, to uncover their seasonal cultures. Most work was with groups in Bergen in Norway, and the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, though as the research group expanded, it drew in other global case studies. Groups ranged from schools, to a beekeeping club, an amateur writing group, an arboretum, a café, and conservation clubs, for instance.
Researchers conducted mixed-method ethnography, designed to stimulate reflection amongst groups on what seasons mean and do for them. Key to CALENDARS was that the research was co-created with the groups under study. Research subjects were co-investigators, who guided the research and its outputs.
In phase one, researchers also zoomed out to study the seasonal cultures of the wider communities where case study groups were based, through science fairs, or citizen science for example.
Phase 2 - Appraising seasonal cultures.
Phase two enabled groups to critically appraise the quality of their cultures for timing activities in the face of rapidly destabilizing seasonal patterns.
Within case study groups, we deployed methods for stimulating a critical take on seasons; from narrative interviews to workshops where groups draw or carve calendars, creative writing tasks, collaborative film-making, or seasonal walks. CALENDARS also convened case study groups in dialogue, through meetings and symposia, to confront these groups with quite different ways of seeing seasons, and invited case study groups to contribute a chapter to an edited book.
Phase 3 - Creating alternative frameworks
Phase 3 enabled case study groups to recalibrate their seasonal patterns of activity to be more agile to rapid seasonal change, as an extension of the appraisal phase. Making alternative representations was a collaboration between the research team, case study groups, and creative artists. These representations functioned as (a) a method for triggering critical reflection and discussion on seasonal cultures and their change, and (b) a product for wider dissemination. We produced such diverse representations as: carved plank calendars, a documentary film, a virtual reality simulation, a dedicated CALENDARS art exhibition, poetry and short stories, drawings of calendars, website-based calendar generators, organized seasonal walks, or group exercises. Most of these representations were (and still are in many cases), freely and publicly accessible, and remain as a legacy on the project website.
Developing seasonal literacy
A goal that emerged was to create settings where early career scientists and practitioners could build literacy in the concepts, tools and approaches of working with temporalities. We developed; (i) an undergraduate course; (ii) two PhD courses led by CALENDARS; (iii) co-development of two further PhD courses; and (iv) a cohort of masters and PhD candidates who have developed their theses under CALENDARS.
Phase 1 - Examining seasonal cultures
Phase one saw researchers embedded in case study organizations or groups, to uncover their seasonal cultures. Most work was with groups in Bergen in Norway, and the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, though as the research group expanded, it drew in other global case studies. Groups ranged from schools, to a beekeeping club, an amateur writing group, an arboretum, a café, and conservation clubs, for instance.
Researchers conducted mixed-method ethnography, designed to stimulate reflection amongst groups on what seasons mean and do for them. Key to CALENDARS was that the research was co-created with the groups under study. Research subjects were co-investigators, who guided the research and its outputs.
In phase one, researchers also zoomed out to study the seasonal cultures of the wider communities where case study groups were based, through science fairs, or citizen science for example.
Phase 2 - Appraising seasonal cultures.
Phase two enabled groups to critically appraise the quality of their cultures for timing activities in the face of rapidly destabilizing seasonal patterns.
Within case study groups, we deployed methods for stimulating a critical take on seasons; from narrative interviews to workshops where groups draw or carve calendars, creative writing tasks, collaborative film-making, or seasonal walks. CALENDARS also convened case study groups in dialogue, through meetings and symposia, to confront these groups with quite different ways of seeing seasons, and invited case study groups to contribute a chapter to an edited book.
Phase 3 - Creating alternative frameworks
Phase 3 enabled case study groups to recalibrate their seasonal patterns of activity to be more agile to rapid seasonal change, as an extension of the appraisal phase. Making alternative representations was a collaboration between the research team, case study groups, and creative artists. These representations functioned as (a) a method for triggering critical reflection and discussion on seasonal cultures and their change, and (b) a product for wider dissemination. We produced such diverse representations as: carved plank calendars, a documentary film, a virtual reality simulation, a dedicated CALENDARS art exhibition, poetry and short stories, drawings of calendars, website-based calendar generators, organized seasonal walks, or group exercises. Most of these representations were (and still are in many cases), freely and publicly accessible, and remain as a legacy on the project website.
Developing seasonal literacy
A goal that emerged was to create settings where early career scientists and practitioners could build literacy in the concepts, tools and approaches of working with temporalities. We developed; (i) an undergraduate course; (ii) two PhD courses led by CALENDARS; (iii) co-development of two further PhD courses; and (iv) a cohort of masters and PhD candidates who have developed their theses under CALENDARS.
CALENDARS extended research into how peoples’ cultures, and particularly their cultural frames of seasons and time, influence how they adapt to global environmental (and social) change. This work looks at how global changes disrupt the temporal rhythms patterning community life, and explores adaptation as ‘time work’; adjusting timings to opportune moments. It is disruptive because mainstream adaptation has had a narrow understanding of time, largely focused on future climates. But this ignores that (i) everyday rhythms are undergoing changes in the present requiring shifts in timings; and (ii) that if adaptation efforts do not account for temporalities important to people, may be detached form the timings of community life and maladaptive. To disrupt the status quo, CALENDARS presented five major steps beyond the state of the art.
1. Destabilizing adaptation science’s taken-for-granted conception of seasons
2. Introducing an alternative conceptualisation of seasons as complex and shifting patterns of interacting rhythms
3. Linking seasons to action and politics, where ‘reading seasons’ is a key competence for effecting timely activities
4. Showing how seasons vary over years, and change as cultural frames over time
5. Exploring how temporal competence is a key element of adaptive capacity.
1. Destabilizing adaptation science’s taken-for-granted conception of seasons
2. Introducing an alternative conceptualisation of seasons as complex and shifting patterns of interacting rhythms
3. Linking seasons to action and politics, where ‘reading seasons’ is a key competence for effecting timely activities
4. Showing how seasons vary over years, and change as cultural frames over time
5. Exploring how temporal competence is a key element of adaptive capacity.