Empowering HOPE Through the Arts – Wednesday 11.30 am to 1 pm

This interactive workshop is designed for participants to engage in creative arts to foster “effective action, interest and wonder in the natural world.” Focusing on botanical content, the activities utilize the arts to awaken emotional connections to the flora that surrounds us – so vital for conservation efforts. Utilizing research by Fearn, Macedonia, Bloom, Wandersee and Schussler, these activities will demonstrate ways participants’ constituencies can gain knowledge and personal connections through motivating art activities.

Included in these will be poetry writing, creative dramatics and colour awareness. Participants will bring back to their work situations — creative, fun, cheap, and easy-to-do nature activities that can be adapted to a wide range of conservation issues and to a wide range of ages. By  Bette Perlman and Liza Hawley from the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia.