{"id":3838,"date":"2019-09-09T16:20:08","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T16:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=3838"},"modified":"2020-05-19T16:47:25","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T16:47:25","slug":"if-you-have-no-hope-you-cant-act-patrick-david-chandler-on-bridging-science-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2019\/09\/09\/if-you-have-no-hope-you-cant-act-patrick-david-chandler-on-bridging-science-and-art\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Have No Hope, You Can\u2019t Act: Patrick David Chandler on Bridging Science and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Alison Gilchrist, CSTPR Science Writer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo above: Patrick Chandler during a performance of Inside the Greenhouse’s musical for youth engagement, Shine, on Earth Day 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halfway through my interview with Patrick David Chandler<\/a>, a current Environmental Studies<\/a> graduate student based at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR), I told him that it felt like his career trajectory had been a straight line\u2014that each job he has had was a natural progression from the one before it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh no, definitely not a straight line,\u201d Chandler said,\nlaughing. \u201cIt\u2019s been swirly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite this protest, it seems that Chandler has\nnaturally made a career out of caring about the natural world, wanting to\neducate people about these spaces, and incorporating art into his life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately after college, Chandler worked as a professional\nraft guide in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But he quickly became more focused on the\neducational aspect of the trips he was leading. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe places where I was finding value, the trips I enjoyed\nmost, were those where I got to engage people about the human and natural\nhistory of the area,\u201d said Chandler. \u201cSo, I transitioned to environmental\neducation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler moved to Homer, Alaska to work for the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies<\/a> and teach intertidal ecology and marine biology. Soon after, he was offered the position of Special Programs Coordinator, which included the role of International Coastal Clean-up Coordinator for the State of Alaska. His job was to provide resources and education for communities that wanted to be involved in research and clean-up of marine debris; he also recorded all of their data in the International Coastal Cleanup database<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was incredibly emotionally taxing and intense work,\u201d\nsaid Chandler, about the position. He explained that Alaska has over 40,000\nmiles of coastline, which is more than the rest of the United States combined,\nand very few people. A surface current pattern moves across the Pacific from\nAsia and another that moves up from the continental United States, so there\u2019s a\nhuge amount of plastic pollution and marine debris moving towards Alaska. The\nresult of that ocean current is striking and horrible: \u201cThere were beaches that\nwere a quarter to a half mile long where we\u2019d pick up 10,000 pounds of plastic\nevery year. Clean it completely, come back the next year, clean it again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler found that he was disappointed by the impact even\nhis best efforts were having: \u201cWe weren\u2019t really doing much as far as shifting\nthe needle on awareness, on policy, and action. It just was an endless cycle of\nheartbreak.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he discovered Washed Ashore<\/a>, a project devoted to making community-based art with washed-up debris from beaches. The art made something beautiful out of serious environmental problem, and brought new people into the conversation about marine debris.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI watched the way that people engaged with the work. It\nstarted conversations in a way that no amount of talking and data could\npossibly do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler became Education Director for the Washed Ashore\nProject, and toured the country with some of the sculptures, engaging people\nfrom all different backgrounds on the issue. At the same time, he was also\ntalking to educators about the effectiveness of using art to talk about marine\ndebris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kept getting the question: \u2018can we do this here?\u2019,\u201d said Chandler. \u201cNo! And you shouldn\u2019t do this here, you should get scientists, artists, and educators together in a way that enables your community to give voice to an issue that matters to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Washed Ashore exhibit shown at the Denver Zoo in\n2017.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, marine debris was a specific topic that Washed Ashore was tackling. Chandler is deeply aware that a project that connects scientists, artists, and the community must have community buy-in. Marine debris isn\u2019t the issue that will necessarily spur community buy-in from places like Boulder or other cities, especially land-locked cities. Instead, scientists and artists should engage with their communities and ask for feedback on what issues are important to them. The process is iterative: scientists and artists can collaborate to create something that explains a scientific issue, and the community can respond with what worked for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ideas are the foundation of some of Chandler\u2019s current dissertation work. Chandler won a CU Engage Graduate Fellowship in Community Based Research<\/a>, and is currently designing a curriculum on climate communication with a team from the Inside the Greenhouse Project<\/a>, CU Natural History Museum<\/a>, and Jefferson County Schools for teachers, using the principles he learned with Washed Ashore. His goal is to work with teachers, and use their feedback iteratively, improving the curriculum and piloting it at new schools over the next few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to get to a place where teachers can pick it up and\nuse it and it works without us,\u201d said Chandler. \u201cIf you can\u2019t do that, it\u2019s\npretty pointless for mass distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler also won a fellowship from the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts<\/a>, along with David Oonk. Together in partnership with the Inland Ocean Coalition<\/a>, they are working on a project about microplastics in Rocky Mountain streams that they hope will educate the local community in an engaging way. Chandler is trying to impress upon locals that just because you can\u2019t see the plastic pollution in places like Rocky Mountain National Park, doesn\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese pristine places… what is pristine?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cThese beautiful streams and parks in Colorado: they\u2019re still touched by our\ntrash. We can\u2019t be in a place that\u2019s unaffected by our actions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Chandler what it feels like to work on issues\n(marine debris, microplastic pollution) that are so large, and that are very\nobvious signs of negative human influence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt makes you feel hopeless,\u201d admitted Chandler. \u201cAnd the\nonly way to move beyond that is to acknowledge and settle into the idea that\nwe\u2019re more than just the facts we compile. Through our creativity, through our\nintuition, through our emotion, we can create. And we will re-create the world\nin the next one hundred years, inevitably. So, it\u2019s up to us if we\u2019re going to\ndo that intentionally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler thinks that this is why the arts are so important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not belittling the importance of science: we must have\nthe wit and technology to enable some of the things that we can dream up and\ncreate. But if we lose the idea that we can create a new paradigm, that we can\nshift this polluted sphere we live in to be sustainable\u2014if you don\u2019t believe\nthat, you have no hope. And if you have no hope, you can\u2019t act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler has been guided through several jobs by the\nprinciples of art, engagement, and education. The result is an impressive\nseries of creative and artistic projects that have brought more people into the\nconversation surrounding climate and pollution. He may describe his career\ntrajectory as \u201cswirly,\u201d but sometimes the best art is a little bit swirly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alison Gilchrist, CSTPR Science Writer Photo above: Patrick Chandler during a performance of Inside the Greenhouse’s musical for youth engagement, Shine, on Earth Day 2019. Halfway through my interview with Patrick David Chandler, a current Environmental Studies graduate student based … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentaries","category-science-writer-alison-gilchrist"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-02 23:34:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4346,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions\/4346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}