The Adirondack Park is the largest publicly-protected area in the contiguous United States, encompassing about six million acres. Half of the Park belongs to all the people of New York State and is constitutionally protected to remain a “forever wild” forest preserve. The remaining half of the Park is private land which includes settlements, farms, timber lands, businesses, homes, and camps. The 3.4 million acres of privately owned land in the Adirondack Park is classified under the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan designed to preserve the natural resources and open-space character of the Park while providing ample opportunity development. Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan also sparks fierce debate.
This makes the Adirondack Park, the perfect place to deconstruct environmental conflict and to explore, through the art of storytelling, how people in the park are experiencing climate change. The goal of this project is to connect climate change to personal narrative through a mobile audio installation that travels the Adirondack Park recording the stories of climate change. Research has shown that personal stories help reduce the idea that climate change will only impact people in the future. To make meaningful climate resilient communities, it’s more effective to hear and think about how climate change is impacting our local community than read scientific data. Participants will be invited into this traveling recording studio to record their personal stories.
Our intention is to use these stories to inspire student activist/artists to reflect on ways to make art in an around the topic of climate change. This art may take the form of film, dance, visual art, music and will be captures in a digital archive. This archive will hold these creative reflections, along with the original stories, and climate data that will allow for multiple ways of understanding. The goal is to have our broader audience understand climate change cognitively, intuitively, and in an embodied — real way.