Reperceiving Communities: Prototyping the More-than-Human Community Toolkit

The More-than-Human Community Toolkit (MTH-CTK) aims to design, test and share an open-source public engagement toolkit that uses low-cost imaging and bioacoustics technologies to empower communities as agents for pro-environmental and pro-social behavioural change. In 2019, Lewisham Council launched its Climate Emergency Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. Environmental citizenship implies recognising that private actions have public implications. As part of the “Greener, Adaptive Lewisham” initiative, the council seeks to enhance the biodiversity of driveways and front gardens by 2025. Jackson (2005) argues that pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours can be promoted through participatory, community-based processes, which are crucial to negotiating new social norms and unfreezing habitual behaviours. Meanwhile, advances in affordable digital imaging and bioacoustics enable researchers to discreetly and continuously study the natural world, fostering connections with nature that decentre humans within the tree of life. Based on the question, what is urban nature communicating about environmental change? we will explore how creative applications of mobile sensing technologies can support ecological citizenship and safeguard local biodiversity. The MTH-CTK will be developed in Lewisham, southeast London, to explore the largely unseen more than human communities existing in urban environments, collaborating with human communities that often feel unseen themselves. The initiative will place mobile imaging and bioacoustic technologies in the hands of researchers and local residents to co-design biodiversity-focused resources to empower citizens as advocates for climate action. The Project will be delivered by a partnership between Goldsmiths, University of London (GUoL) and The Natural History Museum (NHM) in collaboration with Phoenix Community Housing (PCH). In Spring 2025, Design researchers from GUoL, Life Science researchers from NHM and residents from PCH will co-design, prototype and test novel public engagement tools and activities employing imaging and bioacoustics technologies at three nature sites across Lewisham. Whether employing bioacoustics to eavesdrop on the health of Waterlink Way River Park or mapping the Pipistrelle Bat’s flyway, design will tactically engage researchers and residents with typically imperceptible urban wildlife. These experiments will inform the production and delivery of the MTH-CTK in Lewisham during the summer of 2025, with support from PCH, two research assistants, and a research associate with specialist audio-visual expertise. The MTH-CTK has four key objectives: Fostering stakeholder collaboration through initial workshops and training in order to identify sensors and their capabilities for exploring nature. Co-designing a set of prototypes by deploying and experimenting with sensors at three nature sites. Sharing the prototypes at a series of public events to provide broader communities with encounters of nature through guided, experimental exploration. Publishing a manual for community groups and interdisciplinary researchers with instructions for making tools with examples of and reflections on use. Through these objectives, MTH-CTK will co-produce biodiversity-focused resources that deliver awareness of Lewisham’s wildlife. It will serve as a testbed for an open-source sensing toolkit for public engagement to explore how creative sensing technologies can support experiences of ecological citizenship and guide conversations and practices around safeguarding local biodiversity.