An ecological artist and researcher connecting people with ecology through community projects and outdoor art workshops to inform more creative and sustainable ways to live.
Laura Donkers connects people with ecology through art to captivate and inform them towards more creative and sustainable ways to live. She is an ecological artist and researcher designing and leading community projects and outdoor art workshops to (re)activate public engagement with the environment. Collaborations with local communities and stakeholders seek to generate ecological responsibility through experiential learning and creative activity to put people back in touch with environment, community and self.
Her approach to addressing the environmental crisis is to support societal transformation within the structure of everyday life by engaging citizens’ practical capabilities, integrated social networks, and inherent nature-relatedness. She seeks to change attitudes by working with communities to strategically reposition their local knowledges by linking them to climate change knowledge to create the conditions for generating community action. Through creative workshops and projects, this approach uses existing mutual linkages (intergenerational and societal bonds, rootedness in a particular place, practical capacities and skills) as nodes of engagement to develop knowledge, capacity, and motivation towards active engagement with low carbon citizenship. This multi-disciplinary approach engenders connection between human and nonhuman communities to engage and inform eco-mindfulness, mutuality, and kinship.
She holds a BFA Hons in Fine Art, MFA in Art, Society, Publics, and a Practice-led PhD in Contemporary Art Practice, and works between the Outer Hebrides (UK) and Auckland (Aotearoa NZ).
Laura's ClimateCultures posts
‘What You Need Will Come to You’
Eco-social Art — Engaging Climate Literacy