Evaluating the Affective Power of Art to Increase Knowledge and Support for North American Rangelands, Grasslands, and Grassland Peoples

Commodities

• Agronomic: grass (misc. perennial)
• Animals: bovine, sheep

Practices

• Animal Production: grazing management, range improvement, rangeland/pasture management
• Crop Production: other
• Education and Training: demonstration, extension, farmer to farmer, networking, workshop, youth education
• Farm Business Management: agritourism
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, carbon sequestration, habitat enhancement, wildlife
• Production Systems: agroecosystems, dryland farming
• Sustainable Communities: food sovereignty, local and regional food systems, public participation, public policy, social capital, urban/rural integration

Rangelands and grasslands are highly productive and valuable perennial-based ecosystems, sequestering carbon, stabilizing soil, and providing water filtration, habitat, and human food, including for indigenous and pastoral communities relying on these landscapes for survival. Yet they are highly threatened, having contracted by 60-80% throughout North America due to conversion to intensive agriculture, urbanization, power development, and other causes. While causes of loss vary, wide agreement exists that these biomes are undervalued by society despite their ecological, socio-cultural, and economic significance. This has led to increasingly urgent calls for wide-reaching education campaigns to raise awareness among public audiences and policymakers, and spur action to stop and reverse losses.  

In particular, there is a need to reach non-rangeland audiences (to preach beyond the choir) and appeal to these audiences on a deeper level.  Producer-collaborators in this work understand what it is like to manage a ranch through a wildfire, to see the expression on kids faces when they learn a new wildflower, to see rare grassland bird species coexist in a shared landscape, and the role of grasslands in indigenous and Euro-American cultures. This project is intended to help convey these stories, and increase knowledge of a threatened biome and the people who inhabit it.  

For this project we will develop a multi-state outreach coalition to deploy arts-based education exhibits, and utilize this communication network to evaluate the affective power of art. Specifically, we aim to reach non-rangeland communities in rural and in particular urban-metro regions by developing 24-36 creative, multi-media public exhibits. We will use a mixed methods research design to evaluate the effectiveness of these installations in public settings (specifically examining ecological context, city size, venue type, and public opening/no-opening) to increase knowledge, change attitudes, and drive behavior change regarding support for grass/rangelands and grass/rangeland communities. 

This project will work through a coalition of at least 25 producers, indigenous partners, and rangeland professionals who have come together across 11 western states including the Pacific Islands, as well as Durango, MX and Manitoba, CA. Team members have self-identified as able to recruit, design, and deploy content and exhibits in their states. We will collaborate with the Rangelands Gateway to curate content (and develop a public-facing web platform), and key subject matter specialists including rangeland scientists, Extension professionals, an evaluation researcher, and artistic director. Collaboration with the Native American Rangeland Partnership and Indigenous Kinship Circle will help communicate the indigenous traditional ecological knowledge that has been central to maintaining grassland for millennia. The project will reach 200,000+ viewers, directly or indirectly support around 730,000 producers on approximately 770 million acres, and address a knowledge gap in using art for awareness/behavior change. Findings will be shared through podcasts, extension products, webinars, conferences, manuscripts, and partner networks.

Research Objectives

1. Develop a western region network of 24 to 36 educational art exhibits to evaluate the effect of ecological context, city size, venue type, and exhibit openings on public comprehension of and engagement with critical rangeland and grassland issues. 
   • (a) Evaluate the impact of art-based rangeland exhibits on public audiences not historically familiar with grass/rangelands by locating exhibit venues in non-rangeland ecological contexts and larger metro-urban areas.
   • (b) Evaluate our ability to reach new audiences with rangeland messages by partnering with and displaying arts-based educational content at novel exhibit locations such as airports, city halls, libraries, and shopping malls. 
   • (c) Evaluate the impact of social gathering (i.e. public opening vs. no public opening) on level of engagement of attendees.
2. Investigate the potential for arts-based learning to enhance a sense of connection among tribal and non-tribal youth to their range/grassland landscapes
   • (a) Evaluate the effect of farm-based art-education workshops on comprehension of range/grassland topics among tribal and non-tribal youth.
   • (b) Evaluate the effect of classroom-based art-education workshops on comprehension of range/grassland topics among tribal and non-tribal youth.

Education objectives

1. Develop a publicly accessible digital and physical library in collaboration with Rangelands Gateway consisting of at least 100 submissions of artistic audio-visual resources that are paired with one of ten priority messages about grass/rangeland issues.
2. Utilize public exhibits and linked digitized arts content to increase the knowledge of more than 200,000 people, particularly in non-rangeland settings, about the full range of social, ecological and economic values provided by rangelands. 
3. Organize three arts-based education workshops focused on filmmaking with partners at Native American Rangelands Partnership (NARP), the Indigenous Kinship Circle (IKC), The Mexican Society for Range Management, and Hawaii Cattlemen's and Cattlewomen's Associations to increase knowledge of grass/rangeland concepts and issues among tribal and non-tribal youth.
4. Substantially influence the viewpoint, knowledge, and decision-making behavior regarding rangelands of 20 state or federal legislators through direct recruitment to five public exhibit openings; track educational impact within this group across the duration of the project through creation of a law/policymaker ‘cohort’.
5. Increase the ability/skills and familiarity of 100 rangeland professionals and 100 producers with using arts-based education by disseminating a toolkit of instructional resources and research findings through multiple professional network communication channels.