Transdisciplinarity

Our project aims to solve a social complex community challenge to increase awareness and engagement with nature within Birkenhead Park. Our aim was to overcome this difficult concept via our approach. One characteristic or benefit of our approach is the power is shared during working in a transdisciplinary way which in turn can produce action and problem solving (Knapp et al. ,2019). 

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We consist of a multidisciplinary team but each holding a common desire to achieve similar outcomes that support our vision. The varying skills of our collaboration whilst forging forward in this new way have been drawn together via a mixture of research, adaptation, integration, and participation.  

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Our approach echoes similarities to some other practitioners such as using local knowledge (Pohl and Hirsch, 2007) addressing sustainability science issues (Blackstock & Carter, 2007) and gathering new knowledge from practitioners outside of creative arts including various stakeholders (Lang et al., 2012). This was done via a series of meetings on site and remotely between all participants. 

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Our project was hindered at one stage despite our multidisciplinary teamwork efforts when agreement was not conclusive for the desired outcomes. This was further investigated and supported again drawing on other practitioners and specialists (Blackstock & Carter 2019) and readdressing the stakeholders’ opinions (Lang et al., 2012). 

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Despite initially lacking the skills to work in a transdisciplinary way our project has allowed us to immerse ourselves in working in a transdisciplinary manner. This has been further enforced and supported by additional knowledge gained in guest lectures and visits to outside organisations such as (Metal and TyPawb, 2023). Being able to identify and relate to practically important projects such as the promotion of edible planting supporting communities was highly beneficial in growing and developing our own skills within transdisciplinary practice. 

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By understanding how these approaches operate in different organisations, it has allowed us to equalize our own powers and democratise our whole project. This then led to us being able to produce outcomes that enabled capacity building which we considered to be important (Knapp et al., 2019). We felt this was highly useful because it facilitated good grounding for expansion of the project to other similar sites. We also recognise that it may improve chances of acquiring available funding because policy decisions may be supported by this approach (Arts Council ,2023). 

Fortunately, our practice has not been impacted by some of the usual hinders such as power asynchronies however we recognise this can affect some projects and inform outcomes. Our use of (ILK) indigenous local knowledge has been very useful in informing our processes for outcomes. We responded to reflect zero impact for encouraging any antisocial behaviour. This further strengthened our goals in maintaining balance with the natural world. 

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We engaged ourselves as a (PAR) participatory action research collaboration working group to commence the processes, and this was useful in enabling us to apply our knowledge. By encouraging the community to engage with our project we hope that they feel their knowledge can be recognised and empower them to feel more included and useful. Others have argued that by entangling the community with academic practice it can introduce complex challenges. We feel the introduction of the I Naturalist app may help with overcoming this enabling more inclusivity. Further supporting this, it has been argued that when things are looked at more closely it can bring about a deeper appreciation resulting in greater love and care (Adams, 2015). This would again add value to our work in making it a stronger transdisciplinary project. 

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We are unanimous in our view that our project is transdisciplinary due to the reasons mentioned earlier however others, may argue that it is simply multidisciplinary, we do feel that our project has longer lasting benefits than a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary project. We suspect this is predominately due to the educational aspect of the works linking to the use of I Naturalist and the educational literature the trail presents. However, with the diverse terms used, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary trans disciplinary etc it is sometimes difficult for practitioners to navigate between the various terms and confusion can have an impact (Tress et al.2005), (Marshall & Bleeker, 2019). Despite any confusion or disparity of opinion we feel the strength of our communication links can positively impact any disciplinarity issues. 

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An example of this we could argue which supports our statement for our mostly transdisciplinary approach is when we visited with a similar attitude as quoted by Claudia Mignone of the European Space Agency in her recommendations to visiting artists “be prepared, have an idea and a plan, but be ready to change it entirely” (Stoker & Hirsch, 2017). This categorically turned out to be the case on our second site visit. 

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As our project has been deemed a successful one so far, we strongly would support that the transdisciplinary capacity should be reinforced at every opportunity (Russell et al., 2007) particularly within education. 

 

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References 

Adams E. Looking with skill: Nature conservation and the need to engage.https://www.actionforconservation.org/post/2016/09/30/looking-with-skill-nature-conservation-and-the-need-to-engage 2015. 

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk 2023. 

Birkenhead Park, https://birkenhead-park.org.uk, 2023. 

Blackstock, K. L., and C. E. Carter. “Operationalising Sustainability Science for a Sustainability Directive? Reflecting on Three Pilot Projects.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 173, no. 4, 2007, pp. 343–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30130630.  

Brandt P., Ernst A., Gralla F., Luederitz C., Lang D., Newig J., Reinert F., Abson D., Wehrden H., A review of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science, Ecological Economics, Volume 92, 2013, Pages 1-15, ISSN 0921-8009, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.04.008. 

Dani Admiss, Sunlight doesn’t need a pipeline, 2019 https://ljmu.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=c6dcdcff-b365-4e0b-8cbc-afa400ace675 

https://www.inaturalist.org  

Knapp, C. N. et al. (2019) Placing Trans disciplinarity in Context: A Review of Approaches to Connect Scholars, Society and Action. Sustainability. [Online] 11 (18), 4899. [online]. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su11184899. 

Lang, D. J., Wiek, A., Bergmann, M., Stauffacher, M., Martens, P., Moll, P., Swilling, M., & Thomas, C. J. (2012). Transdisciplinary research in sustainability science: practice,principles, and challenges. Sustainability Science, 7, 25-43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0149-x 

Marshall, John & Bleecker, Julian. (2010). Undisciplinarity. 

Metal Culture http://metalculture.com/about-us/our-sites/liverpool/ 2023. 

Pohl, Christian & Hirsch Hadorn, Gertrude. (2007). Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research. 10.14512/9783962388638. 

Stoker G., Hirsch A. J. The practice of Art and Science, 2017. 

Ty Pawb  https://www.typawb.wales/ 2023.