New Description from Christian and Louise Woodstock
I seek support for a new community engagement project in Phoenixville, PA that aims to engage the low-income, elderly residents of St. Peter’s Place, the volunteers of Living Landscapes (a nonprofit devoted to sustainability), and the students of “Climate Communication,” a course within the Media & Communication Studies Department at Ursinus College to be taught in Spring 2022. I will be working with St. Peter’s Place and Living Landscapes to begin the task of identifying the needs of these partners and how my students will be able to assist them. My expectation is that students will work to close knowledge gaps for these organizations and will help them build capacity for the execution of the project outlined below.
To support the realization of a native garden at St. Peter’s, students will research and run a variety of climate communication programs (interactive sessions with stakeholders, podcasts, videos, social media campaigns, letters to the editors of local newspapers, signage around the garden). Students will directly experience the central importance of engaging all stakeholders in climate communication initiatives to bolster the likelihood of long-term success.
The students will enter the collaboration between St. Peters and Living Landscapes at a crucial juncture. Starting in 2018, and after several years of planning and procuring funds, Living Landscapes installed a small front garden at St. Peter’s residential apartment building. The design, donated by Donald Pell, an award winning garden designer, focused on plants that provide shelter and sustenance for insects and birds (key animals in the imperiled food web). Fast forward to November 2021, consider the damage to our social connections wreaked by the pandemic, and the garden is weedy and in the eyes of the residents, unattractive, and even embarrassing. The garden is not fulfilling its mandate to be a space where the residents, largely surrounded by concrete, can experience the healing benefits of contact with nature. At the last work session, volunteers arrived to much of the garden having been cut down with a weed whacker, their morale visibly shaken.
With all good intentions, in retrospect, the Living Landscapes team acknowledges that more could have been done to communicate effectively with St. Peter’s Place residents and staff. And this is where “Climate Communication” students can intervene. The fresh energy of young people will likely meet with receptivity by residents. Without initially explicitly discussing the small garden, students can engage and find common ground with residents, discern their interests and connect these interests with positive climate actions without expressly mentioning climate change. This is not intended to deceive, but to open and connect. Students can learn about what the outdoors was like when residents were younger, and the sorts of outdoors activities they’ve enjoyed in the past and now. These stories will help students identify language and themes that connect with residents and use these to develop case-specific programming. Over time, as spring warms, students will engage residents outside in the garden according to ability and interest. Students will be charged with communicating directly with St. Peter’s staff to gain entry, schedule and plan events, gaining practice in communicating with professionals to identify their needs for capacity building and to meet them. This project of community education, with college students teaching older folks, and elders teaching young adults, will be inherently experimental, as we identify best approaches and course correct along the way.
The aims of the garden reach beyond the key stakeholders (St. Peter’s Place staff and residents, Living Landscape volunteers, and “Climate Communication” students) to include the wider Phoenixville community. Situated at a busy intersection, where drivers often wait in their cars, the garden should communicate that naturalistic design can serve both aesthetic and environmental goals. Here, students will design and generate informative signage on site, as well as run social media campaigns, using #phoenixville hashtags, and seek coverage from local news outlets – all with an eye to changing perceptions about the purpose and look of native gardens and ways of working the land by hand, without carbon-emitting power tools. Hopefully, this wider purview might also resonate with St. Peter’s residents and staff, warming them to the garden.
This real world applied research project has the potential to positively impact all involved and make it more likely that the garden will succeed with its environmental goals. There are many ways that a multi-pronged project like this can “go sideways,” and this too will be fodder for learning.