Designing with nature – Green Screen Lectures International

Agenda - Designing with nature

•       What is sustainability from sustainability sciences point of view?

•       Including nature as a participant in creative processes and reasons why to do it

•       How to include nature to the projects?

•       Discussion

Hosts: Kirsi Karimäki and Tuomo Joronen, Tampere University of Applied Sciences
Speaker: Dr. Emilija Veselova, Aalto University, Finland

Dr. Emīlija Veselova is an expert in the emerging area of designing with nature, also known as more-than-human, multispecies, planet-centric design. This area of design strives to address the sustainability crisis by including natural nonhuman entities­­, such as organisms, species, and ecosystems, as stakeholders in design processes. Emilija holds a Bachelor's degree in Interactive Media from Tampere University of Applied Sciences and a Master's and Doctoral degrees in Design from Aalto University.

In her talk, Emilija will present the main findings from her doctoral research. She will define sustainability through theories and models of sustainability science. She will introduce the worldviews that underlie the sustainability crisis, including anthropocentrism, human disconnect from nature, and human perceived right to dominate nature. Then, she will present the reason for considering, including, and representing varied natural entities in the design and creative processes. Emilija will conclude her talk by showing how designers and creative practitioners can include natural stakeholders in their processes and show examples of how some researchers and practitioners have done that in projects.

In her doctoral research, Emilija critically investigated the proposition that including natural nonhuman stakeholders in participatory and co-design processes could contribute to sustainability. She coined the "designing with nature for sustainability" approach by building links between design research and practice, sustainability science, research on socio-ecological systems, ecology, and environmental ethics. She developed a novel systemic approach and typology for identifying natural nonhuman stakeholders and investigated how to identify natural nonhuman needs.

Emilija's doctoral dissertation is available for download, free of charge, at: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-64-1315-0

About the Green Screen International Lecture Series

The event series are organized by the GEM project consortium. With this event series GEM (Green Education in Media) wants to empower students and teachers to make green changes in their institutions by providing knowledge resources and tools.

Furthermore GEM wants to strengthen self-reflection about the sustainability of media professions by promoting dialogue and creative collaboration with science.

Follow GEM - Green Education in Media on eventbrite to get updated on further events.

The online sessions will be recorded in order to create sustainable teaching material for teachers and students of Green Education in Media. For enhanced accessibility, we will provide live subtitles. The link to the Microsoft Teams meeting will be sent out with the registration confirmation email and can be found on the Eventbrite website.

The link to the Microsoft Teams meeting will be sent out with the registration confirmation email.

The creation of these resources has been (partially) funded by the ERASMUS+ grant program of the European Union under grant no. 2022-1-DE01-KA220-HED-000088645.

Neither the European Commission nor the project's national funding agency DAAD are responsible for the content or liable for any losses or damage resulting of the use of these resources.