Creative ecology: embracing the arts within science

Although ecology by nature is a science focused on connections among organisms and systems, the academic world of scientific disciplines teaches us to dismantle, to break down the ideas of others, to be critical first. In this talk, I will encourage us to think of the arts, which are foundationally creative and generative, as complementary to, and potentially valuable for, the pursuit of ecological understanding. We will consider ways of using creative arts in teaching and communicating about ecology, and look at examples of Art-Based Perceptual Ecology as an approach to data-collecting in ecology.