Research

INTRODUCTION

Cultural heritage, material as well as intangible, is vulnerable to environmental risks accelerated by climate change. Culture, and the values that it encompasses, inclusive of land tenure customs, may also support sustainable approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation. Art is one means of engagement for individuals or communities, as well as a tool for intergenerational knowledge transfer; it also offers epistemological paths for exploration and toward understanding. Arts and culture reflect society and provide avenues for observations or expressions of values.

Both science and art can metaphorically convey fact. They can also be modes for learning. Arts may contribute to comprehension (Elgin 2006). The arts and the sciences are complementary, “each contributing to the advancement of understanding” (Elgin 1993:27). If structured to honor the goals of Knowledge Holders, arts-based research (ABR) projects “create a space where ‘expertism’ makes way for diversity, inclusion, and dialogic knowledge creation as a more ethical and collaborative research process” (Lenette 2019:32).

Emerging from field work in Barbuda, in this paper I explore ways that art and culture can be utilized for gathering information about the environment and traditions that support ecology and community resilience. It also examines how place-based cultural and biocultural heritage and knowledge systems can be tools for identifying and communicating information regarding climate and community-attuned sustainability.

The original field study was designed to explore local knowledge of cultural traditions relating to the environment. It also aimed to observe the processes of gathering arts-based stakeholder-generated information for refinement and possible replication in other contexts. Research questions were: (1) Can art facilitate community engagement in identifying cultural values and knowledge relating to climate change and local heritage? Also, could ABR approaches facilitate discovery of gaps in knowledge perhaps missed by more traditional methodologies? (2) Which specific cultural or biocultural heritage elements, tangible or intangible, do stakeholders or rights holders most value in this climate-vulnerable island? (3) Another, underlying, research question for both field studies was how library science-informed documentation of local stakeholder data and values might develop as a use case for such studies or broader reciprocal sharing of academic ecological knowledge (AEK) and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The concept for an open access database facilitating the sharing of scientific and local types of knowledge was articulated at a later date (Lerski 2022a, 2022b).

As the research continued, and with the added post-hurricane field visit, the principal investigator employed one of ABR’s methods: adjusting to the materials or situations and their unfolding stories. The research focus shifted to also accommodate the evident conflict between externally imposed land and cultural preferences and a local, democratically selected land tenure preference and cultural norms. The latter preference included sustainable hunting on commonly shared land with the use of trained dogs, rainwater collection (Boger et al. 2014, Perdikaris et al. 2021), and fishing. That political-cultural conflict had existed before the Category 5 hurricane, but was heightened by Antigua’s and external developers’ moves to enforce a privatized land regime in the context of devastation and forced evacuation of all Barbudan residents. The 2018 study sought to discover post-disaster perceptions of cultural values and adaptation strategies.

This study extends one Caribbean arts-based case study to interrogate possibilities of social and emotional learning, both within communities and in researcher or institutional understandings of stakeholders’ values or priorities. A growing body of literature documents the inclusion of cultural heritage and the arts in climate change endeavors. The United Nations COP 28 meeting (2023) included a High Level Ministerial Dialogue for Culture-based Climate Action that called attention to the potential for imagination to “unlock creative solutions” and social engagement traversing “all sectors,” not just scientific areas.

Beyond data generation, engaging communities through art and heritage can contribute to identifying “key values and best practices for culture-based climate action,” and also “crucial application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge epistemologies” (United Nations COP 28 2023). There has been a slow but steady progression of understandings of the place of culture in climate policies. In 2019, the UN (United Nations 2019) initiated, and in 2023, the United Nations COP28 included culture among its sessions relating to climate change. This follows UNESCO’s Educational Sustainability Goals (2019a, 2019b, 2020) and an increasing academic literature on these topics.

Links between cultural diversity and biodiversity have been acknowledged as potential sources of understanding and preparation for climate change (Pretty et al. 2009, Jacka 2016, Convention on Biological Diversity 2019). Stakeholder participation in planning for climate change is recognized as a critical factor to successful outcomes (Kuruppu and Willie 2015, Fillmore and Singletary 2021, Mach and Siders 2021; Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, 2014, https://climatetkw.wordpress.com/guidelines/). Though this study’s data were gathered before the coronavirus pandemic, the topic of climate change and cultural heritage is recognized as timely and increasingly relevant to current and future global outcomes.

A literature review of ABR and its ability to engage stakeholders in processes of discovery contextualizes the visual arts and mixed-methods approach of the case study. This paper places these approaches in the context of intangible heritage research, particularly of the Caribbean region (Cumberbatch and Hinds 2013, López-Angarita et al. 2022, Brown et al. 2023) Further, an exploration of studies regarding TEK, and its relationship to AEK, seeks to discover practices respectful of local community traditions and understandings of the environment. These methodological explorations underscore the process by which this case study documents how stakeholders proposed to document and share Barbudan living heritage across generations.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH), sometimes referred to as living heritage (UNESCO 2020, ICOMOS 2022), featured prominently in the study, particularly food and land tenure customs. The study documents ways that individual stakeholders proposed to share and conserve such knowledge across generations, particularly with regard to cultural survival, a preferred mode of adaptation. The mixed methodologies described here could be used in similar contexts in advance of climate changes, toward documentation and preservation of local cultural practices and knowledge relating to the environment and resilience. The literature review shares arts or culture-based cases, noting additional art avenues such as music or dance.

Existing freshwater, salinization, and erosion issues had made Barbuda an archeological and environmental focus well before the field studies documented here. Historical and contemporary environmental challenges in Barbuda (Boger et al. 2014) and the complex political and social environment of the island and region (Frank 2017, Scruggs 2017, Ferrando 2018, Klein and Brown 2018, Boger and Perdikaris 2019) informed the study. The primary field study ended three weeks before Hurricane Irma hit Barbuda on 6 September 2017; however, this paper is not focused primarily on an event that had not been anticipated for the study, but on associated long-term environmental and cultural values in an ecologically vulnerable setting.

Researchers note the urgency of documenting the heritage of culturally vulnerable communities (Lempert 2010a, 2010b, Maldonado et al. 2013). Stakeholders can participate via customs and traditions such as art, storytelling, drama, spirituality, and music (Alberts et al. 2011, Khalala et al. 2016, Ashie-Nikoi 2019). In addition to completing surveys and questionnaires, participants in this case study actively engaged in discussion about climate change and represented stakeholders across age groups, reflecting grassroots local perspectives on the culture and environment of the area.

Cultural involvement of stakeholders of all ages is a tool for community engagement, potentially addressing a gap in adaptive planning and research (Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018; National Tribal and Indigenous Climate Conference 2020). This research employed visual arts as one means of identifying and documenting cultural and biocultural heritage; questionnaires and surveys supported information gathering.

Place-based, arts-involving, living-heritage-emphasizing studies or interventions, undertaken ahead of climate displacement, could establish actionable data. Stakeholder involvement can facilitate understandings of local (a) cultural and community traditions, and (b) flora, fauna, and sustainability traditions of environmentally vulnerable communities.

“Fundamental to all [ABR pedagogies] is their aspiration toward expanded seeing, listening, and understanding of outer and inner landscapes through resonance with artworks (broadly conceptualized)” (Bresler 2018:651). This study was designed and inspired by several rationales as described by Coemans and Hannes (2017). One reason is “to challenge the limitations of conventional language-oriented research methods,” another, “to overcome power imbalances between researcher(s) and the subject being researched,” and another to increase community stakeholders’ interest in participation (2017:40). By placing the case study within the context of ABR, and TEK practices, the article seeks to make explicit the implicit processes.

Although traditional has been contrasted with modern, labels of “Primitive” in art have been critiqued as instances of othering or subjectification. Further, Modernism as a universalizing lens dismissive of local traditions, contexts, or alternative world views (Myers 2006) parallels some of the relational or binary frameworks applied to science vs. TEK or local knowledges. In contrast to these reductive approaches, this article examines parallels between, and possibilities presented via, arts-based and expansive methodologies and epistemologies.

Study location

Part of an island state in the Eastern Caribbean, Barbuda’s low elevation and thin soil factor into its land tenure system. Barbuda’s average temperature is 26 °C (Boger et al. 2020). The estimated annual precipitation for the region is 1000 mm per year, with much of that occurring between July and December. Freshwater is lacking, groundwater is seasonal and shallow (Hubbart et al. 2020), and recent economic development actions imposed on local residents have increased the risks of flooding (GLAN 2024a).

At the time of Hurricane Irma, Barbuda’s population was approximately 1800 people. Eighty-seven percent of the island state’s residents are of African descent. Christianity is the predominant religion. Economic and land traditions for the sister islands differ, but economic data are often reported for the island state as a whole, thereby presenting information for a combined population of 101,489 (Hubbart et al. 2020, CIA 2021, 2024). This paper will touch upon instances where Barbuda’s, as apart from Antigua’s, electoral choices regarding land management were ignored by public, private, and intergovernmental bodies. In its 2024 Economic Overview, the CIA characterized the combined island state as “friendly to foreign direct investment.”

The island’s longstanding communal land tenure system, a part of its cultural legacy, is rooted in its semi-arid climate (Hubbart et al. 2020), agriculturally unfriendly thin soils, and its traditions during British Colonial rule. Unlike its sister and economically more powerful island (Boger et al. 2014, Frank 2017, Boger and Perdikaris 2019) Antigua, Barbuda, because of its soils, was managed less as a plantation and more as a livestock raising area (Look et al. 2019). Slaves in Barbuda had more freedom (Frank 2017).

In the 21st century, thin soils and lack of freshwater continue to present obstacles to agriculture, and the island maintains contracts to sell sand as a business (Potter et al. 2017, Barbudaful 2021), further contributing to coastal erosion. Groundwater salinity impacts food production and drinking water (Boger et al. 2014). In research conducted largely before Hurricane Irma, a team of scientists recommended that “enforcing the regulations that prohibit destruction of mangroves and seagrasses will help ensure that these habitats remain healthy into the future,” and noted the active role of the Barbuda Council in ecosystem management (Ruttenberg et al. 2018).

LITERATURE REVIEW OF EXPANSIVE EPISTEMOLOGIES

Arts-based research and traditional ecological knowledge

Methodologies engaging local stakeholders in identifying or exploring local heritage through art hold potential for ecological understandings. Arts-based research provides tools for studies involving vulnerable communities (Coemans and Hannes 2017). Beyond simple inclusion of TEK within global ecological discussions, there is a growing understanding that Indigenous and local perspectives are vital and should be intentionally included (Poole 2018, Normyle et al. 2022, United Nations COP 28 2023). Artistic processes are themselves opportunities for framing research questions, investigating gaps, or creating alternate paths (Polfus et al. 2017, Scheffer et al. 2017; Lerski, in press; Lerski 2023, unpublished manuscript).

Arts-based research is a methodology that “involves the use of any art forms, at any point in the research process, to generate, interpret, or communicate new knowledge (Lenette 2019:27). Formal terminology for ABR can be traced to 1993 (Coemans and Hannes 2017). In community-based research, photography and drawing have been the preferred arts-based methods (Coemans and Hannes 2017), though this paper notes increasing numbers of performing arts instances as geographic representation of research expands. Lenette argues that “when used for data collection, images, sculptures or performances can ‘replace’ traditional interview responses or support the interpretation process” (Lenette 2019:27). In ABR, engagement and creative artistic processes can contribute to stakeholder confidence in studies.

Targeted uses for arts-based case studies exist. For instance, in the United Kingdom, analysis of historical watercolor depictions of the English coast before and after the Industrial Revolution provided data, when compared with contemporary imagery and measurements, of ecosystem changes such as levels of erosion (McInnes and Stanford-Clark 2023).

Some academic researchers exclude TEK in studies; skepticism remains regarding local knowledge systems that may incorporate spirituality or cosmology. In contrast, Albuquerque et al. note TEK’s “complex structure and epistemic potential” (2021:2). Culture-inclusive climate change approaches face resistance for similar reasons, but a white paper co-sponsored by the IPCC, UNESCO, and ICOMOS, on the “Role of Cultural and Natural Heritage for Climate Action,” concludes that “the language of heritage offers one of the few registers through which we can have a conversation about such existential questions and ideas. Heritage presents us with a vernacular, secular language through which to address questions and concerns” (Shepherd et al. 2022:53).

Cross-disciplinary collaborations involving ABR or TEK need not engage in hierarchical ranking of knowledge systems (Ludwig and Poliseli 2018, Albuquerque et al. 2021). Indeed, a local knowledge system can allow for complicated spatial and temporal scopes, and TEK “supports diverse practices from predicting ecological dynamics to building spiritual relations between human and nonhuman actors” (Albuquerque et al. 2021:2).

Orlove et al. (2023:1431) caution that “partnership across diverse knowledge systems can be a path to transformative change only if those systems are respected in their entirety, as indivisible cultural wholes of knowledge, practices, values, and worldviews.” This understanding guides their policy recommendations to “guide collaboration across knowledge systems,” for “just partnerships in support of a decolonial transformation of relations between human communities and between humanity and the more-than human world.”

When searching for a definition of “traditional ecological knowledge” in the Oxford or Merriam-Webster online dictionaries, there are no entries, despite the fact that this term is frequently used in academic literature. A search of the Web of Science databases for entries from 2008 onward across multiple disciplines, yielded 252 results with the phrase in the title across multiple disciplines. The divergence between publication prevalence in a major science database and acknowledgement of TEK within major English language dictionaries points to a possible underappreciation of this knowledge system. This may indicate a general reference lag in reflecting a complete range of cultural-ecological constructs. In contrast, the phrase “climate emergency” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2019 (Oxford University Press [date unknown]). It is worth noting that TEK is being integrated into governmental policies (Hernández-Morcillo et al. 2014, Executive Office of the President of the United States 2021).

The U.S. National Park Service defines TEK as,

... the on-going accumulation of knowledge, practice and belief about relationships between living beings in a specific ecosystem that is acquired by indigenous people over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the environment, handed down through generations, and used for life-sustaining ways. This knowledge includes the relationships between people, plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes, and timing of events for activities such as hunting, fishing, trapping, agriculture, and forestry. It encompasses the world view of a people, which includes ecology, spirituality, human and animal relationships, and more (National Park Service 2020).

Berkes emphasizes that TEK is “both cumulative and dynamic, building on experience and adapting to change, as societies constantly redefine what is considered ‘traditional’” (2006). The inductive nature of some forms of art such as the direct carving method of sculpting (Zilczer 1981) align with this dynamic. Indeed, as sculpture explores three dimensions, holistic world views embrace reciprocal (Matthews et al. 2023) and sustainable models, rather than extractive, atomized, or uni-directional approaches.

“Researchers who employ such methodologies do not merely work with individuals as ‘participants’ but as co-constructors, as co-creators, and sharers of knowledge,” argues Lenette (2019:32-33). Both ABR and TEK are generative. For instance, the dynamic nature of TEK suggests that communities’ information and approaches are processes rather than fixed data points to be catalogued as standard preventions or adaptations. “Any approach attempting to preserve TEK in fossilized forms is bound to fail,” note Gómez-Baggethun, et al. in “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change: Research findings and policy implications” (2013).

A methodology’s, or artwork’s, openings for unforeseen discoveries also bears consideration. In “Exemplification: A Case Study,” Elgin describes and analyzes an art exhibit that has both scientific and aesthetic components. “To treat a mundane object as art is to open our eyes to aspects of it and relations in which it stands to other things - aspects and relations that we would otherwise miss ” (2023:217). The installation, “Hemlock Hospice,” invites viewers to explore environmental loss via a collaborative, transdisciplinary framing by an ecologist and an artist, within the setting of an academic, scientific setting. This example illustrates the potential of blending scientific and aesthetic considerations. “Through the alchemy of art and the rigor of science,” the case “transmutes mundane matters into something rich and strange, something worthy of attention” (232). Here, exemplification through art provides new paths for learning about ecology.

An entire volume, Communities and Museums in the 21st Century: Shared Histories and Climate Action examines arts and heritage in relation to sustainability. The book’s contributors document how TEK and Indigenous knowledges are not only relevant, but integral to effective community engagement with climate change (Brown et al. 2023). Its chapters, “tackle the epistemic problem of incorporating subaltern knowledge into the processes of knowledge production to enhance self-determination, well-being and self-worth,” (Brown 2023:8) and methods such as community workshops involving oral history and research questions investigating internal colonialism.

Lenette (2019) argues that ABR can add more modes of sharing data outside of academia, improved use of information in communities, and the fostering of agency in knowledge holders. In 2021, the Executive Office of the President of the United States released policy guidelines for federal departments and agencies, recognizing Indigenous TEK, “as one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States and to our collective understanding of the natural world.”

Polfus et al. (2017) document extant literature on the benefits of integrating arts to support collaborative research in environmental or social science disciplines. They also note opportunities “for indigenous people to express important concepts and identify the context and details that ground their traditional knowledge,” through participatory art. The Polfus et al. (2017) Canadian study involved stakeholder input on methodology and design, through to interpretation. Visuals, including flip charts, drawings on white boards, and post it notes helped participants to define questions. Both paper and digital mind maps facilitate stakeholder refinement of terms and concepts in an interactive way. For instance, in discussing caribou while examining a poster, elders added descriptions and details, demonstrating precise and involved distinctions regarding the North American reindeer. “Understanding the more nuanced components of Dene traditional knowledge and language relating to caribou variation would have been much more difficult without the use of original illustrations and the visual participation of Dene collaborators.”

Arts-based research facilitates the discovery of and cross pollination of AEK and TEK, the latter which may document or communicate information outside of textual or standard scientific formats. There is a need for “reflective action,” employing TEK and AEK, and not a requirement to rank AEK or TEK, or to argue for the relevance of TEK. (Albuquerque et al. 2021:7). Finally, ABR provides alternative research frameworks. Noting the work of Vecchio et al. 2017, in “Why Arts-Based Research?” Lenette argues that adding ABR to detached methods such as surveys, “can also effectively disrupt the power relations that underpin traditional researcher-‘subjects’ models that position researchers as the key producers of knowledge” (2019:34). Conceptual challenges facing interdisciplinary approaches to climate change, and the limitations of discipline-focused environmental change specialties, warrant “different epistemologies in productive tension with each other” (Yeh 2016:39).

Intangible cultural heritage and contextual values, particularly in the Caribbean region

Cultural heritage is “a tool that can aid in the development of strong, resilient communities post-relocation, communities capable of successfully coping with future climate stressors” (Hermann 2017:193). In Barbuda, the political-cultural tradition of communal land ownership, with community-based decisions through an elected council was threatened by the disaster of Hurricane Irma and ensuing disaster capitalism but provided resilience and a possible legal path (Mohammed 2023, Emmanuel 2024, NY Carib News 2024) to cultural and ecological protections.

Jameson (2022) interrogates the role of land tenure in climate adaptation with a focus on Barbuda. The study concludes that local stakeholder involvement in decision making is critical to sustainability as well as to the outcomes of development projects and whether they benefit Barbudans. For instance, research on land tenure in Mexico revealed that “communal land users valued the preservation of land/resources over the extraction of resources for economic gain” (Jameson 2022:68). Though the sister, and more politically powerful, island of Antigua has relationships with the United Nations and possibly its Green Climate Fund, it was at a session exploring the relationship of cultural heritage and climate ahead of the UN Summit in New York that the post Hurricane Irma land grab was characterized as a “cautionary tale” (United Nations 2019). Barbuda has relationships with international ecological parties, such as its membership in the Ramsar Convention for Wetlands, and engagement with the Blue Halo Initiative (Ruttenberg et al. 2018, Jameson 2022).

In Barbuda, where the land tenure system currently is unstable, the very insecurity surrounding legal claim to and management of the land poses challenges to climate adaptation, argues Jameson. In addition, in the context of a private land system that was not chosen by Barbudans, “within the hegemonic model, communal lands can often be seen as illegitimate, insecure forms of land tenure due to the lack of documentation recognized by the hegemonic legal system” (2022:3). Indeed, in 2023, responding to an appeal calling for the blocking of a large airport that had been erected in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Irma without the consent of Barbudans, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda described dissenters from the private land tenure vision as “economic terrorists” (Mohammed 2023). Those opposed to the construction argue that the new airport’s runway was constructed over caves that in the past had served to mitigate flooding during extreme weather (GLAN 2024a)

A study examining the flying fish bio-cultural heritage tradition in the Caribbean island of Barbados (Cumberbatch and Hinds 2013) considers whether a threatened pelagic fish should continue to be considered a national cultural icon. As with many sustainability issues, this one involves multiple factors—economic (price control and food insecurity), cultural (culinary and performing arts, festivals, and mascot), historical (scientific drawings, ichthyoarchaeological evidence) and political (local and international fishing boundaries, poaching)—in addition to changes associated with climate changes (warmer oceans, invasive species, salinification). The authors argue that cultural resilience applies not only to Indigenous populations but to urban and modernized local populations as well, that “the cultural value of nature must be extended beyond areas such as sacred forests and landmarks to include wild resources harvested from natural areas” (Cumberbatch and Hinds 2013:119).

Another documentation of community participation involving culture and waters features the biocultural heritage traditions of the Skokomish Peoples in the Pacific Northwest in the United States. There, advocacy for change by Indigenous people restored the flow of the north branch of the Skokomish River after diversion of natural water flow and the impact on culturally significant salmon (Stoffle 2022). Local knowledge and a reciprocal relationship with the land and the sea, such as the centuries-old place-specific understandings of Barbudans of African descent, offers sustainable approaches to that island’s environment.

In Belize, the Garifuna language, drumming, dance, and ceremonies of the Afro-Indigenous population engage the community and provide avenues for the sharing of information and preservation of culture (Jones 2023). Also in Belize, a community cooperative, Trio Farmers Cacao Growers Ltd., prevailed in facilitating a symbiotic, reciprocal, relationship with managers of a conservation area; there farmers, largely Mayan descendants, were allowed to practice sustainable cacoa-based agroforestry harvesting within an otherwise restricted area, where they were also engaged in monitoring the spaces toward conservation. An NGO, the Yaaxche Conservation Trust, facilitated the sustainable development goal through agroforestry training and negotiating between that group of farmers and the government (Mardero 2024, personal communication; Mardero and Metcalfe 2024, unpublished manuscript). Facing similar obstacles, Indigenous women practicing biocultural weaving traditions in the eastern and southern highlands of Tanzania have traditionally engaged with environments that are now off limits because of environmental regulations (Maligisu and Lerski, 2024, unpublished manuscript). Elsewhere in Tanzania, scholars deliberately engage local communities in cultural conservation utilizing a regional musical tradition, “Bongo Flava” (Ichumbaki and Lubao 2020).

“Musical Folklore as a Tool for Social-ecological Change in the Colombian Caribbean,” documents survey results and the piloting of a local intangible heritage arts practice in an awareness effort about an ecologically significant biocultural resource, the parrot fish (López-Angarita et al. 2002). The study used arts-based mixed methods, including surveys over one year, educational talks at schools, theater (a play about the ecological role of parrotfish), two consecutive years of tourist education during the high season, an exhibition of children’s drawings of parrot fish, and the involvement of the community through engagement with Champeta music, “the heart of their culture,” and the associated dance tradition. Through lyrics and the musical tradition, fishermen, restaurant owners, tourists, and the local population were receptive to sustainability information and involvement in adaptations, in spite of maladaptive previous environmental efforts cut off from resident’s food security issues. The authors attribute the documented effectiveness of their interventions to “building relationships within the community, showing respect, acceptance, and interest in local culture, values, and livelihoods” (López-Angarita et al. 2022:7).

These projects are among many that illustrate the appropriateness of the Education for Sustainability’s (UNESCO 2019a) emphasis on cultural and social emotional learning and approaches to ecosystem health. Also, arts cross language obstacles and impart conservation concepts and meanings “in low literacy contexts, but have received relatively little attention as a conservation approach strategy” (López-Angarita et al. 2022:2).

One investigation in Australia involved Indigenous people and scientists in workshops to identify cultural values relating to climate changes, using art as a centerpiece for dialogue. Here, visual arts/images were placed at the center of workshops as prompts to generate discussion about such issues as management practices, history, changes, contemporary views, and expected futures. In North Queensland, the Yuku Baja Muliku First Nations peoples shared pictures that each “represented the essence of a value,” as an alternative, and more complete, illustration than climate knowledge conveyed primarily through academic information. In this study, the Aboriginal community welcomed the scientific researchers who were carefully vetted for having a capacity for “two-eyed seeing” (Hale et al. 2022:236). The co-produced research integrated artwork created within the local community to generate discussions regarding historical, ongoing, and planned ecosystem approaches. Among the TEK systems noted are the seasonal calendar, and adaptations to climate changes, for instance, cultural burning management, or adjusting specific indicators of ecosystem phases.

In South Asia, material culture ecosystem stewardship rooted in intangible heritage knowledge systems provide knowledge of locally focused historical ecosystem management relevant to current environmental challenges (Mubayi 2022; World Monuments Fund 2023, online panel discussion, https://www.wmf.org/event/tackling-water-insecurity-south-asia-case-reviving-historic-water-management-systems). Similarly, the famed Dutch hard infrastructures for managing flooding are based in the country’s ancient political-cultural, regionally autonomous water boards, “waterschappen” (Kaijser 2002, Unie van Waterschappen [date unknown]).

Case studies of current intangible heritage initiatives by museums examine co-production, decolonial work, and community-based ecological work. For instance, museos comunitarios, as they are known in the Spanish language, fill a gap and demonstrate a new model of small local museums, especially in Latin America but less developed in the Caribbean. “It is no accident that just as ideas of sustainability and decolonization are assuming increased urgency today in the face of climate change and calls for global social justice, so community museums are ... due to come into their own in addressing major societal and environmental issues for the 21st century” (Brown et al. 2023:6). These institutions embody “ideas of collective self-determination and memory that are crucial for Indigenous and ethnic contexts,” (Brown et al. 2023:6) and affirm the individual community’s values.

Place-based examples illustrate “potential for museums to be significant collaborators in local climate action,” through projects ranging from exhibits, to engaged education such as citizen science, to a national gallery. Brown summarizes that, “at their best, community museums are created from community need, curated from traditional knowledge and managed using accepted forms of local governance” (2023:4).

Brown’s observation about the significance of community and accepted forms of local government contrasts with the deliberate disregard for cultural preferences in the case of Antigua in relation to Barbuda. Antigua’s preference for private land ownership and a construction and tourist-based economy is tacitly accepted by nongovernmental agencies (International Monetary Fund 2024, Macrotrends LLC 2024, World Bank [date unknown]). No mention is made in their reports of the nonparticipation of the Barbuda Council in the repeal of the Barbuda Land Act of 2007 through the Barbuda Land Amendment of 2017. The agencies neglect to report on lawsuits regarding leases and developments not approved by the Barbudan people through the unilateral change of land ownership in Barbuda (Antigua and Barbuda 2007, Parliament of Antigua and Barbuda 2017, Human Rights Watch 2018, GLAN 2024b). Although World Bank data indicate a slight drop-off in a Rule of Law: Percentile Rank indicator, from 52.4 to 48.6 between 2016 and 2022, the basic assumptions of that category are framed by private property perspectives; the “Rule of Law” category “captures perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, ... the courts ... Percentile rank indicates the country’s rank among all countries” (World Bank [date unknown]:data 59 BI-BO).

These absences of legal specifics amount to erasure of one island’s preferences and community opposition to an imposed and what appeared to be an environmentally untested plan. Through their omissions, the reports do not recognize property rights that are not private, such as communal land tenure customs of cultural and ecological value throughout the world (Rincón Barajas et al. 2024; LandMark, http://www.landmarkmap.org/). These omissions speak volumes, and contradict pronouncements such as that made by the World Bank (W. Zakout and A. White 2019) in a blog post, “Community land rights: An untapped solution to secure climate, biodiversity, and development goals,” and in 2019 Twitter post that, “to achieve global climate and development aims, land and property rights should be at the top of the global development agenda.”

Investigation of gaps is another epistemological avenue opened through arts-based research (Lerski 2023, unpublished manuscript). In the case of Barbuda, major international financial institutions did not document for an island state the kind of risk analysis or recording of pending legal rulings that would be included for corporations under the reporting requirements of, for instance, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 2024a, b). Löfqvist et al. (2023:143) encourage consideration of alternate models, “especially those of vulnerable and local people, are needed to break out of epistemic domination and scientific imposition of traditionally Western values to non-Western contexts.”

At the Barbuda research center, environmental science measurements of water levels, archeological examinations, and the arts-based research all take place with the assent of the governing Barbuda Council. This article’s case study engaging community research participants through art is a part of a multidisciplinary approach to sustainability, here involving culture. It took place in the context of a financially and politically dominant culture of Antigua and, as this paper will identify, of intergovernmental institutions that did not acknowledge the democratically selected land management political-cultural land structures of Barbuda. In his 1985 seminal work on organizational behavior (2004:8), Schein writes, “Culture is to a group what personality or character is to an individual. We can see the behavior that results but often we cannot see the forces underneath that cause certain kinds of behavior.”

In the context of acknowledging, or contributing to solutions toward, climate challenges, Schein’s extended definition might be useful in its appreciation for the significance of this social element: “Culture as a concept is thus an abstraction but its behavioral and attitudinal consequences are very concrete indeed” (2004:8). This also has implications for responsible co-production of knowledge and solutions, and potential appropriation, as “When a non-Indigenous Earth scientist and an Indigenous knowledge-holder encounter each other for the first time, this is not really the first meeting; it is one in a series of encounters that have been unfolding for hundreds of years” (Lazrus et al. 2022:3). Indeed, in a letter, “Lenape Leaders of Today Refute the Schagen Letter” written 400 years after the Schagen Letter transferred the island of Manhattan to the Dutch, Chiefs of the Lenape Nation argue that the Native American cultural norms had not been followed, that the historical record of sale did not attach wampum or a treaty and “does not remove our connection to the land and waters of Manahahtáanung” (Tracy 2024).

A report by UNESCO, “Educational Content Up Close: Examining the Learning Dimensions of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education” (2019a) notes a need for cultural elements. The study, focusing on pre-primary, elementary, and secondary education, found a “declining emphasis on the social and emotional dimension” (2019a:8) of education for sustainability development and global citizenship education. The study found that cognitive learning was prioritized over social and emotional learning in sustainability education. Given that scientific studies and ongoing data sets have demonstrated climatic changes (Ghil and Lucarini 2020, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 2023), efforts to reach and teach global citizens about sustainability have grown. However, historical, humanistic, and social science knowledge lag.

UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Framework for the Implementation of Education for Sustainable Development Beyond 2019 (UNESCO 2019b) described the ESD for 2030 approach. The study did not examine informal avenues of education, The absence of informal learning networks from the UNESCO research exposes a gap and an opportunity, a prominent and intergenerational educational avenue that Indigenous communities have recognized over time (Lazrus et al. 2022), one that more collaborative sustainability efforts might close. The Framework advocated disruption (UNESCO 2019b). UNESCO’s Roadmap similarly encourages “structural transformations in today’s economic and social systems by promoting alternative values and contextualized methods” (UNESCO 2020:9).

Indigenous and Earth Science approaches are both necessary in addressing climate changes, and the former’s ways are based on “intergenerational understandings and practices based on lifetimes of observing and interacting with the environment ... long-term monitoring, testing, hypothesizing, and evaluation developed over millennia” (Lazrus et al. 2022:1). Culture here supports “understanding the direct links between rigorous knowledge building and actions for a sustainable world.” That IMF, World Bank, and CIA data or reports on the economies of the dual island state of Antigua and Barbuda do not mention different land tenure traditions on the islands indicates that culture, an aspect of social and emotional learning, has not been fully considered in country analyses, in spite of report sections concerned with sustainability or climate changes. Omissions by international financial organizations indicate a lag in relation to academic and societal recognition (Petzold et al. 2020) of the importance of diverse input and stakeholder values and preferences in sustainability initiatives.

METHODS

Arts-based research, inclusive of mixed methods

The arts-based methodology provided a vehicle for including local or TEK among knowledge production approaches on the island. Visual art can contribute to effective communication; for example, authors such as Cornwall and Jewkes 1995, and Hunn 2006 (as cited in Polfus et al. 2017) find that visualizations can support oral communication toward the understanding of complex ideas, without oversimplifying. Images or immediate use of drawings can facilitate understanding of nuances and details in spite of language barriers or incomplete translations. Albuquerque et al. (2021: 6), noting Ludwig and El-Hani 2019, suggest “transdisciplinary dialogue between partially overlapping knowledge systems with different epistemic and methodological resources.”

A mixed methods approach involving pre and post workshop questionnaires, surveys, observations, discussions, and art workshops engaged stakeholders in identifying and documenting their valued cultural elements. The Barbuda Research Complex, which is a government-approved entity on the island, introduced the researcher to the principal of the island’s primary school and the pastor of a local church. These individuals provided support, local knowledge, networks and access to workshop spaces.

Participants worked in age cohort groups. The researcher and one assistant who had studied watercolor painting and mixed sculptural techniques provided basic instruction in art techniques. Although researchers’ art-making skills are valuable, collaborations between researchers and arts organizations provide alternate avenues of facilitating ABR (Lenette 2019). All art materials were provided by the researcher during the 2017 and 2018 workshops, with a grant supporting supplies in the follow up study.

During the 2017 study, the number of children was capped at 20, to enable adequate supervision by one researcher, one assistant, and designated adult members of the community on hand to help with distribution of art supplies and moving children from one activity to the next. Adult classes were capped at 20, but fewer individuals participated because of a need to divide childcare. In 2017, the children’s workshops ran throughout the week, for multiple hours each day, with time for a break. In November of 2018, there were two afterschool sessions for the group including children and young adults. Adults met on two evenings in 2017, and for one evening in 2018.

Each research trip included opening and closing questionnaires or surveys. Individual workshops began with artwork or poetry. To complement visual arts, previously selected poems were shared via readings or recordings. There was special emphasis on regional, Caribbean writers, and featuring poems appropriate for specific age groups. Engaging participants in reciting those poems or in writing their own generated discussion about language, idiomatic speech, and local traditions, supporting exploration of place-based traditions. Unless participants incorporated their writing in their visual art, writing exercises were not a part of formal data collection in this study, but were included for idea generation.

“Hurricane Hits England,” by Grace Nichols, generated discussion in an adult workshop (1996, 2014). Nichols’ poem, “Like a Beacon,” (2017) presented ICH traditions that are based in place but that also provide adaptive capacities: “In London/every now and then/I get this craving/for my mother’s food/I leave art galleries/in search of plantains/saltfish/sweet potatoes...”

Research approval

University internal review board (IRB) guidelines for international studies and research involving human subjects directed research design. Signed agreements governed the collection and use of photos, participants’ artwork, and oral and written responses. Extra caution was taken to protect minors. In advance of the post-disaster, second field study, additional review of the protocol took place. Participants’ rights regarding participation or sharing were documented in informed consent and assent forms collected for each of the field studies, conducted in August 2017 and November 2018.

The protocol for the 2017 study separated the groups and the consent forms into two groups, adults or children. The 2018 protocol specified an additional subdivision of the participants who were minors, adolescents, or children. The children’s participation was agreed to by their parents or caregivers; the adolescents participated with the consent of their parents but the young adults also assented to participation and specified whether and how much of their information could be included in the study.

Research design

Library best practices regarding privacy, and collection and categorization of data informed research design, toward developing a use case for such research. Additionally, methodology was informed by (a) the researcher’s practice as a sculptor and experience supervising adult art-making at the Art Students League of New York; (b) professional work with libraries serving students from nursery school through high school; (c) advanced studies in digital libraries; (d) graduate library and information studies, and certification in services for adults and children, with a poetry emphasis.

The research engaged local stakeholders including children, teenagers, and adults. The 2018 protocol requiring clearer distinctions in age groups proved useful when grouping the anonymized results, particularly for the Valued Cultural Elements Survey (Tables 1, 2, 3). The finer-grained grouping facilitated analysis of which elements were contributed by age cohorts.

Research components for Field Visit 1 included (a) initial literature review and history of the site; (b) a contextual visit to the island, its research complex, historic water wells, and archeological excavations in January 2017; (c) preparations for a field visit, inclusive of coordination with facilitators from a local church, the elementary school principal, and the Director of the Barbuda Research Complex; (d) initial preparation of research protocol; (e) decision making regarding workshop components, instruments, and corresponding art materials including poetry books or recordings for different age cohorts; (f) creation of consent forms, research questionnaires and surveys, and attainment of IRB approval; (g) coordination with adult supporters at the research site for planning of dates, workshop location, and facilitation and distribution of consent forms; (h) on site arts-based workshops and data collection; and (j) data analysis. Involving youth in research required extra levels of planning and institutional approvals. Field Visit 2 preparations included elements c through j, but also involved extra precautions in a post-disaster scenario, to mitigate against additional trauma to participants. Similar future studies might offer suggested responses regarding practices or flora or fauna, based on existing knowledge of the research location; however, space for open-ended responses would be important to permit the gathering of new information.

To replicate the study or an iteration integrative of different researchers’ particular arts backgrounds, or of the cultural preferences of unique locations, researchers might alternatively use theater, dance, photography, or music as a core for art workshops. As with this study, mixed methods could complement the arts, via surveys, interviews, observations, or questionnaires. Without visual arts documentation, with the approval of participants, video or audio recordings could note processes of discovery and discussions. For instance, the author is currently collaborating with a community-based organization and a database specialist to document TEK in Malawi, with that community’s preferred emphasis on performing arts such as theater, dance, and storytelling (Lerski, Mwale, and Rose, 2024, poster, https://zenodo.org/records/14175986).

Context for the study

The initial, August 2017, study had been advertised and introduced as research involving arts workshops exploring climate change adaptation. The first arts day camp took place over a one-week period, with separate sessions for children and adults. There was no plan to conduct a follow-up camp. Category 5 Hurricane Irma’s decimation of the island on 6 September resulted in the forced evacuation of all human residents from Barbuda, tragically resulting in a situation for follow-up empirical understandings of the subject of the original study: cultural heritage preservation in the context of climate change adaptation or relocation.

The research emphasis was on identifying cultural values, engaging multigenerational stakeholders, and on ABR as a methodology, not on a specific climate event. The advent of a major hurricane focused participants of the second workshops on vulnerability and a need for active planning for climate changes.

The post-hurricane study brought to focus what had at the conception of the research been a future consideration: relocation. Activities were adapted to the fluid environment, including an absence of running water, 14 months after the hurricane. As in 2017, informed consent and assent forms were collected. The follow-up study involved a subset of the original participants, those who had returned to Barbuda and were willing and able to participate in November 2018. Unstable power generation, uncertain even during the first field visit, almost lead to the cancelation of the one adult session in 2018.

In its “Suggested requirements for a ‘methodological toolkit,” ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) includes a Heritage Values Assessment, “Taking a values-based approach and incorporating tangible and intangible heritage throughout ...Understanding current values is a prerequisite to assessing risk from Climate Change” (ICOMOS 2019: 22).

A new tool was introduced in the second field study, the Valued Cultural Elements Survey (Tables 1, 2, 3) to enable a more fine-grained and targeted analysis of intangible cultural heritage elements. The survey requested information about local traditions, including language; hunting, fishing, or culinary practices; music; social or business protocols; oral storytelling; land management; homemaking traditions; birth, marriage, and burial customs; and other rites of passage or religious or communal ceremonies or traditions. Because it was designed for the post-hurricane workshop, the survey included this question, which also generated discussion and exploration through art making: “Do you value or appreciate differently any of the above elements, or other aspects of your culture, after Hurricane Irma resulted in the forced evacuation from your island? Please explain:”

Data analysis

Participants’ responses to surveys and questionnaires were tabulated and analyzed for themes as well as individual elements (Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Analysis was also applied to the visual artwork (paintings, drawings, sculptures, some seen in Figs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6) and the writings and discussions. The thrust of the research was to determine the effectiveness of arts-based engagement and inquiry, inclusive of its contextual mixed methods approaches, as a means to discovering and documenting cultural heritage elements relating to climate change. The methodology was focused on the planning and delivery of the art workshops as a means for generating discussion and sharing of community values and sustainability practices. Recommendations for formal structuring and scaling of the methodology appear in the discussion section.

Along with Table 4’s quantification of biocultural or cultural heritage topics that participants chose to depict visually, the space that opened for exploration, reflection, and discussion were not numerical but nonetheless of value. “Aesthetic understanding ... is not primarily a matter of knowing truths about art or truths that art discloses, but of using art effectively as a vehicle for exploration and discovery,” writes Elgin, in “Understanding: Art and Science” (1993:15).

When the author, having observed the exploration and discovery facilitated by the arts workshops, reviewed the study’s findings and was applying those same approaches to analysis of the data, a gap necessitating further exploration spurred further investigation. Thus, in looking at the universe of policy options and legal risks presented by the IMF and the World Bank about the dual island state of Antigua and Barbuda, the researcher discovered that there was no mention of one land tenure custom practiced by rights holders in Barbuda. Further, the principal investigator later observed that at the UN’s 4th International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in Antigua, land developers were featured but Barbudans were excluded (GLAN 2024c).

RESULTS

Land tenure and “living off the land”

A mixed methods approach facilitated the gathering of varied information. Adults stressed storytelling traditions. Young children’s artwork conveyed early recognition of local flora and fauna, including culinary traditions associated with that biocultural heritage. Examples of local plant and animal depictions included drawings or paintings of frigate birds, the red-footed tortoise, and genip and palm trees (Figs. 1 and 4). Language traditions were captured in surveys and discussions. Information from surveys confirmed published data regarding Christian religious as well as local ceremonial traditions (Tables 1, 2, 3). Workshop discussions as well as visual arts depictions during visual arts sessions furthered understanding of the residents’ relationship to land, ocean, and related cultural traditions, including the island’s communal land tenure system with respect to its sister island’s attempts to emphasize private land ownership.

Contextual information gained from surveys, questionnaires, and discussions assist with interpretation of the data within the art created by study participants. Land tenure appears indirectly or directly in surveys and artwork: “free land” in Table 3, the 2018 survey of adults; the hunting tradition, which occurs over large parts of the communally owned island; fishing traditions that current news articles indicate are threatened by restrictions being placed on residents because of tourist developments; and the adult response noting concern, “unable to see what was happening at homeland” during the land grab scenario during the period of forced evacuation post Hurricane Irma. In Table 2, adolescents mentioned political party, and twice mentioned the cave ceremony the “living off the land” tradition which is part of the subsistence and biocultural living heritage tradition linked to communal land. Figure 6 shows how the children elected to make three-dimensional art in collaboration, envisioning their community together. Many other cultural and biocultural elements were depicted via sculpture, drawings, or paintings, often conveying data shared via questionnaires and survey. A child’s drawing of a frigate bird (Fig. 1) documented a local avian species, which the island’s bird sanctuary protects (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States 2020).

Generational results

Age cohorts contributed different data points. For instance, adolescents’ responses to the Valued Cultural Elements survey included mention of caves, cave ceremonies, deer, and fishing. These elements relate to the island’s communal land tenure tradition that enables shared use of land by local citizens, undisturbed by private developments and their associated restrictions on free movement (Mohammed 2023). Pre-adolescent children recorded the harvest festival, fishing and seafood meals, and musical traditions such as Calypso. Children also indicated a changing diet inclusive of imported sodas, the latter confirmed by news reports and academic research examining diabetes and obesity in the region (Boger et al. 2014, Potter et al. 2017, Daily Observer 2018).

A culinary favorite, soldier crab fungi, available during the annual breeding time for the Caribbean hermit crab (Perdikaris et al. 2013), was mentioned in the surveys of children and adults. Adults noted medicinal plants in discussion and surveys. Young adults and children demonstrated detailed knowledge of plant and animal life in their drawings and sculptures (Fig. 4, Table 4).

Culinary traditions featured prominently, with multiple mentions and depictions, including a group sculpture of coal pot cooking (Fig. 2), also documented in regional museums. Conch, lobster, fish, peanuts, bush tea, soursop fruit and tea, hibiscus, bananas, and mangoes were identified (Tables 1, 2, 3, 4). The lagoon is home to a large population of lobsters, a source harvested for export; the hurricane breached a lagoon wall, signaling the fragility of both export products and water supplies on the island. The quality and quantity of drinking water on the island are increasingly problematic, contributing to reliance on bottled drinks.

Children noted fishing, and teenagers also identified sustainable hunting traditions that take place under the communal land tenure of the island (Table 1). Young adults referenced cave ceremonies, otherwise referred to as “living from the land,” activities (Perdikaris et al. 2013). Many of those traditions were at risk in the dislocation aftermath of the hurricane (Faiola et al. 2017, Boger and Perdikaris 2019).

Living heritage traditions

Remains of British Colonial built heritage, the Codrington estate (Fig. 3) and the Martello tower, rarely received mention in either field study. Sea and land-based ceremonies and food traditions and ceremonies were noted. The Barbudan land tenure tradition of communal ownership featured in discussions, as did the agricultural/harvest, religious or communal ceremonies, celebrations, food/drink, land management, and leadership customs categories of the 2018 Valued Cultural Elements survey. Cultural elements heavily featured flora, sea life, and food elements associated with informal food gathering, rather than with deliberate agriculture, though gardening was mentioned.

Identifying cultural and biocultural heritage through surveys, questionnaires, discussions, and artwork, participants noted ICH elements such as Independence Day and Christian celebrations along with various culinary, fishing, hunting, and cleaning traditions. Biocultural examples included flora (soursop, genip, palm trees, hibiscus, mangroves) and fauna (land turtles, wild boar, turbot, whales). Participants used laymen’s terms to describe biota. There was some overlap in the elements identified by different age groups, but each participating cohort contributed unique elements.

Participants’ ideas for sharing local knowledge and traditions

Questionnaires supplemented discussions in documenting stakeholders’ ideas about best ways to describe, document, share, and conserve valued biocultural and cultural traditions relating to sustainability and the island (Table 5). Rights holders, those multigenerational workshop participants from the community, proposed the integration of cultural arts in schools, storytelling and writing events, libraries housing book and video documentations, and community center programming about valued and fragile traditions. Cultural and biocultural traditions noted in the Most Valued Cultural Elements surveys (Tables 1, 2, 3) included data: hunting or fishing traditions, deer or types of seafood, to “living from the land” and the communal land tenure customs. Those ideas and elements were partially generated and extended through artwork, including children’s sculptures and drawing designs for community-supporting buildings.

Because the follow-up study took place during the school year, other obligations including those related to ongoing post-disaster challenges, as well as the still-diminished population on the island, contributed to a lower participation rate. Participation among those present was consistently high and was voluntary throughout.

Among questionnaires, 10 adult participants in August 2017 completed:
10 opening questionnaires
6 closing questionnaires

Twenty children (inclusive of young adults) in 2017 completed:
20 opening questionnaires
20 closing questionnaires

In November 2018, five adult participants completed:
5 valued cultural elements surveys
5 closing questionnaires

The 2018 cohort of 9 children and young adults completed:
9 valued cultural elements surveys
9 closing questionnaires

Along with the elsewhere-recorded voting decisions of the adult residents of the island, these documented data points of the cultural preferences and values of multigenerational rights holders can support policy making that is respectful of community wishes. In this study on the island of Barbuda, the valued cultural elements reflected cultural preferences based on common access to open areas of land and sea, not parceled into private lots or beach access blocked for external tourism.

DISCUSSION

Barbudan rights holders’ values and eco-political preferences have been documented via multiple modes, through their votes, through their art, and through their survey and questionnaire responses indicating their cultural preferences. Community knowledge, as named, discussed, documented, or shared through workshops and artforms, served as an immediate and potential vehicle for planning for environmental and associated cultural changes. Stakeholders identified biocultural elements through an art, specifically, visual arts, methodology in both pre and post-disaster situations.

Arts methodology appears in academic literature, as noted in the literature review section. Integration of art and cultural traditions in environmental stewardship is increasingly explored through literature (Nazarea 2006, Butler 2018, Boutsikaris and Palmer 2020) or conferences (e.g., Southwestern Tribal Climate Change Summit 2017, New York Botanical Garden Documentary Premiere 2021 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHkR2b3cTww&t=2s], University of Nebraska, Lincoln 2021, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals 2022, Pan African Archeological Association 2022, UNESCO 2024). In Barbuda, residents’ active identification of biocultural traditions and local knowledge in 2017, ahead of Hurricane Irma, provided advance consideration of climate vulnerabilities which were revisited in the 2018 workshops.

Resistance to slavery is an enduring part of contemporary culture on the island (Perdikaris et al. 2013). Participants noted summer festivities celebrating freedom from slavery; some culinary traditions and rituals link back to African customs. Trauma surrounding slavery’s enforced working of the land continues to impact Barbudans’ relationship with food production (Boger et al. 2014), with implications for resilience to environmental changes as well as to global markets.

Post Hurricane Irma, participants mentioned the island’s land tenure tradition with increased frequency. The land tortoise drawing made by a child participant in 2017 (Fig. 4) flagged how biocultural elements relate to political responses and environmental planning. When all residents had been forcibly evacuated in September 2017, the immediate bulldozing of a runway for a larger, tourist-serving airport raised concerns that there may have been damage to breeding grounds of what Barbudans sustainably use as a food source, the land tortoise.

Barbuda’s relationship to tourism, and its land ownership laws, are distinct from Antigua’s. Barbuda’s ecosystem is fragile to a range of threats, including erosion, hurricanes, salinization, and also political and economic pressures from its sister island. Antigua’s push, particularly at a time when Barbuda was vulnerable immediately after a Category 5 hurricane, to abolish the land tenure system in favor of a model emphasizing tourism held implications for the use of scarce resources, including fresh water (Mohammed 2023).

Storytelling facilitates the passing of information through generations, but adults indicated in drawings, discussions, and questionnaires that the tradition was at risk, and strategized ways to perpetuate the custom. Formerly, stories were shared with children as adults tended to the task of breaking stones for construction. That tradition faded with globalization, when pre-broken stones became available for purchase. Along with storytelling, ceremonies, performing arts traditions, and literature are also avenues for storing and sharing biocultural heritage, and for educating knowledge holders.

The communal approach of local stakeholders was evident among participants during workshops. When given a choice whether to work independently or as groups, individuals consistently chose the latter (Fig. 6). This preference surprised the researcher, used to supervising open sculpture studios at the Art Students League of New York, a renowned art school in the United States. The commonly shared land areas used for hunting, foraging, and agriculture are a part of the ethos (Perdikaris et al. 2021). Such findings about collaborative approaches could be important in plans for conscientious relocation or adaptation (Foster 2016). Long-term stewardship approaches for cultural and natural resources can be supported by collaborative traditional ecological knowledge practices (Whyte 2013).

Both TEK and AEK philosophies and practices can provide insights and strategies for cultural conservation and sustainability solutions. One can acknowledge differences of approaches— “heuristics in AEK are shaped by methods and standards (e.g. of experimentation, modelling, and quantification) that clearly differ from methods and standards that shape practices in TEK” (Ludwig and Poliseli 2018:16)—while recognizing that there are holistic practices within academic research and mechanistic and methodological approaches within traditional ecological systems. This case study illustrated that data generation and art-informed discussions engaged local stakeholders in Barbuda on the topics of cultural and biocultural heritage.

Although the original project design did not aim to understand a conflict between the sister islands’ differing political-cultural land tenure customs, the cultural elements discovered by Barbudan research participants brought that power imbalance and contradiction to the fore. As the conflict held, and continues to hold, implications for rights-holder preferred approaches to sustainability, the research design expanded to address this key consideration. Therefore, the gap-discovering capability as well as the inductive approach of ABR enabled the researcher and the participant co-creators to identify information gaps, contradictions, and opportunities to address epistemological blind spots or policy contraventions.

Notes on study methods and limitations

The art-making participatory methodology may be adaptable in accordance with local cultural traditions or availability of supporting materials. Combined with the mixed methods, the approach can be applied to different settings (Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018, Ashie-Nikoi 2019). A mixed methods approach, inclusive of interviews, surveys, observations, and art workshops, facilitates understandings of cultural frameworks and worldviews, such as communal or individualistic outlooks, toward understanding of social relationships and potential risk management approaches (Lazrus 2016).

The use of open-ended, exploratory aspects of Arts-based research, while avenues for new or underutilized or underappreciated approaches to climate challenges, must also fall into the framework of reciprocal or approved conventions for the public sharing of information, even beyond standard IRB guidelines. As Lazrus et al. note in “Culture Change to Address Climate Change: Collaborations with Indigenous and Earth Sciences for More Just, Equitable, and Sustainable Responses to our Climate Crisis,” recognizing communities’ protocols can protect against appropriation or damage: “Going through the process of identifying the project’s purpose and outcomes can help prevent abuses that can cause harm, even if that harm is unintentional” (2022:4). For instance, public posting of geolocation coordinates of identified sacred spaces would need to be approved by authorized members of a community, or less granular regional markers could be substituted.

ABR presents challenges. The authors of the methodological review, “Researchers Under the Spell of the Arts: Two Decades of Using Arts-Based Methods in Community-Based Inquiry with Vulnerable Populations,” note ongoing questions regarding how to measure research effectiveness, and how to quantify and analyze outputs (Coemans and Hannes 2017); however, with the evolving practice of ABR, assessment methodologies are being refined (Lenette 2019). Another complication faced by arts-based researchers is that funding can be difficult to attain when, “arts-based inquiry does not allow to know all the details of the process, conclusions or possible impact in advance” (Coemans and Hannes 2017:42). Funding for open-ended, rather than scripted, processes can be difficult in relation to grant requirements for measurable or planned outcomes (Morrison et al. 2022, Black et al. 2023)

A Grounded Theory Methodology, employed from the outset, could enable larger scale studies. Because this study was small, it did not require automatable categories and could retroactively impose a controlled vocabulary system. Scaled up research could include more granular pre-identified categories such as for native or horticultural flora, avifauna, piscifauna, or drought or flood-resistant vegetation, and specific intangible and tangible cultural heritage noted in the Valued Cultural Elements survey. Open-ended questions could enable outliers to be labeled later.

Individuals may elect to share some information only among stakeholders, and participants’ rights must be embedded and stipulated clearly in workshops in instances when replication of this arts-camp model are not part of formal research protocols. In addition, in instances when studies take place in disaster or post-trauma environments, additional safety and psychological and emotional vulnerabilities should be anticipated in protocol designs.

Deliberate recruiting of participants representing all ages and genders should be prioritized, as this study had a disproportionate number of females in the adult cohort. The results indicated that responses varied not only by individuals but among participant categories, and the fullest representation of stakeholder knowledge and opinions should be documented. Inclusion of women, a group not always well represented in planning, is an essential methodological consideration (Lopez et al. 2022). Efforts to accommodate working schedules or childcare needs should factor into scheduling and planning.

The design of this study’s arts-based research components was informed by the researcher’s formal training in visual art. A volume such as Leavy’s Handbook of Arts Based Research (2018) demonstrates that there are multiple visual, performative, as well as mixed-method approaches to promoting inquiry, collaboration, and discovery. ABR as a methodology continues to evolve, with reservations deserving of further attention. In addition to exploring and recording stakeholder-shared information and knowledge systems, this article also aims to contribute to understandings about arts-based studies. Both living heritage documentation and effective research methodologies might benefit from more “process-oriented articles” regarding challenges researchers experience during their studies (Coemans and Hannes 2017:45).

CONCLUSIONS

In addition to collecting visual and textual data, the workshops reinforced awareness among participants of their valued traditions; this commitment to preserving heritage was evident even before Hurricane Irma exposed immediate vulnerabilities. In 2018, participants who had returned to Barbuda registered an urgency to document traditions and strategize regarding sustainable ways of living and stewarding their cultural heritage. For instance, children in an art workshop designed a community center, library, and a seafood restaurant; and adults planned community activities to transfer knowledge about a straw broom making tradition practiced by one aging resident of the island (Fig. 5).

There is a living heritage tradition of straw broom making in South Africa, which has proven culturally resilient to apartheid and population movement to urban settings (Cocks and Dold 2004); this may be related to the fragile broom-making tradition in Barbuda, and possibly another instance of African biocultural traditions on the island, such as those documented by Perdikaris et al. in 2013. Culinary traditions, ceremonies, hunting and fishing practices, as well as hopes to be able to live on the island without fear of further degradation of fresh water supplies, flooding, or hurricanes, all connected to the community’s interest in sustainability and the island’s common ownership land tenure tradition.

On the island of Barbuda, artmaking provided a creative, low technology-low cost, avenue for actively involving stakeholders in identifying, exploring, and expressing their individual and community knowledge and values. Combined with academic and citizen science environmental research being conducted on the island, along with the information obtained through the mixed methods inclusion of surveys and questionnaires, such knowledge contributes to information available for planning in relation to present challenges, or mitigation of or adaptation to, environmental changes. Further, in a proposed database of biocultural knowledge, reciprocal information sharing of both AEK and local and TEK information could be facilitated via digital infrastructures, ethical best practices, and open access capabilities (Lerski 2022a, 2022b). Even as climates shift across geographies, documented sustainability traditions could be considered dynamically for mitigation or adaptation strategies.

Just as Barbudan children documented valued flora, fauna, and biocultural traditions through drawings, paintings, and sculptures, young adults and adults specifically mentioned the related political-cultural land tenure tradition supportive of hunting and fishing and independently documented in academic and news articles. Although this case study does not purport to document all such instances, it illustrates a place for artistic community engagement, planning for conservation of ecologically relevant traditions, and documentation of ecosystem elements and cultural values. The paper also provides examples of how artistic processes, such as open-ended exploration or valuing information to be gleaned from gaps and silences, may more broadly contribute to framing of research findings and sustainability.

Inquiry includes critical evaluation of language, which is itself an element of intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003), as a vehicle used to frame or dismiss issues. For instance, this article has noted the use of the terms, “traditional ecological knowledge” and “climate emergency.” “Land grab” (Merriam-Webster 2024) and “disaster capitalism” (Oxford University Press 2023) have entered the lexicon and are considered by populations evaluating ecological policies. Writing in, “The Political Culture of Caribbean Sovereignty,” Lewis observes that “Barbuda could easily become a classic case of land grabbing in the Caribbean” (2024:125). Intergovernmental, private, and public institutions could boost effectiveness of interventions by integrating social and emotional learning input of local stakeholders’ cultural preferences.

Land tenure regimes that are not private may, however, be outside cultural definitions or ownership models considered by some international financial institutions. To avoid bias in interpretation of sustainability challenges, the cultures of both the dominant and vulnerable stakeholders require assessment. If broader sustainability understandings and the recommendations for transformational approaches offered by agencies and researchers quoted here are to be more than tinkering around the edges of existing frameworks, case studies of individual communities should be considered in relation to the context of accepted economic and political models. It is important to understand, even for those who emphasize individualistic world views, how to effectively encourage collective perspectives and actions in times of acute shared challenges (Bretter and Schulz 2023).

At risk after the hurricane’s physical and political devastation was a developed hunting tradition. Soil erosion, drought, and the possibility of more intense storms and flooding pose ongoing environmental and heritage risks. Working with local stakeholders to preserve and utilize TEK or local knowledge and cultural traditions can support sustainability and resilience efforts. This emphasis recognizes agency as well as vulnerability (Nursey-Bray et al. 2022). Knowledge about how local communities protect against land erosion, manage fire, or adapt to drought or shifts in the timing of seasonal weather patterns are examples of actionable data/traditions.

The workshops engaged Barbudan participants in documenting and discussing local traditions and values related to climate change and sustainability. The planned process was a low-technology, and inexpensive, approach to community-involved research. In addition, as explored through the literature as well as the field work, ABR may be an effective methodology to encourage or facilitate cross-disciplinary work involving TEK and AEK. Individuals participating in this case study expressed interest in intangible heritage and biocultural elements and traditions, inclusive of political structures relating to land tenure and development. Regardless of blind spots in international organizations’ risk assessment categories regarding multiple modes of land tenure, the research participants’ perspectives were those of democratic rights holders, the consideration of which should be amplified in environmental policy discussions.

Rights holders indicated preferred paths in the direction of environmental and cultural sustainability. These Barbudan preferences extended in years-long legal action culminating in a 2024 ruling in favor of residents challenging the Antiguan-led building of a large, tourist-serving, airport (NY Carib News 2024). The winning of that appeal may place other imposed private development on Barbuda at risk (Emmanuel 2024), and there are additional challenges under review.

Similar local arts-based participatory engagement to identify and communicate heritage and biodiversity elements could contribute to community-engaged, epistemologically informed, global strategic thinking and actions regarding conservation, adaptation, and sustainability. Digital infrastructures for data and metadata can facilitate discovery and sharing. UNESCO’s emphasis on education as a means toward sustainability goals supports culture-considerate thinking currently absent from externally imposed land development in Barbuda. Making space to consider world views or values that may not be invited or included in sustainability discussions is one way that arts-based research can add value.

LITERATURE CITED

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