By Raquel Ajates, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
Three educational guides with seed-related activities for schools, colleges, universities and community events have been launched and are available open access in English and Spanish.
These guides were produced as complementary resources to three art commissions exploring the beauty of seeds, their socio-ecological dimensions, and the challenges faced by seed savers. This art-science-education collaboration was part of the research project “Seed wars go digital: sustainability, big data and the social movement for open source seed systems” led by Dr. Raquel Ajates, at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain).
In the context of the climate emergency and the increasing digitisation of our material reality, art can act as a powerful way to convey complex information through engaging and inspiring artworks and experiences. Seeds are the basis of life, and of healthy and sustainable food systems. However, we are far removed from their beauty, their cycles and the challenges that characterise these tiny pillars that make agriculture possible and become our food. The call that resulted in these three artistic commissions and educational guides was launched to bridge this gap and create pathways of understanding and inspiration.
The objective of the call was to communicate scientific concepts about seeds in an original and thought-provoking way, and to move from knowledge to positive action on cultivated diversity. The call had the following categories: travelling seeds, physical seeds and digitalised seeds. To extend and expand the impact of the resulting artworks beyond their exhibitions, three educational guides – one for each artwork – were created. The guides include multimedia resources – such as text, graphics, video and audio – organised with detailed steps and timings into engaging activities that can be carried out in schools, colleges, universities and community events. The activities are relevant to a variety of subjects, such as biology, social sciences, botany, art and coding.educational guides with seed-related activities.
Download the educational guides with seed-related activities:
The guides – produced by each of the three creative teams, and edited by Dr. Raquel Ajates and Red Planea de Arte y Escuela – are available open access in English and Spanish in the following links:
The Dance of Seeds. The germination of knowledge, by Associació Varietats Locals in collaboration with Lluís Vidaña (visual artist), Nívola Uyà (illustrator) y Enric Socias (transmedia artist). This guide offers students and teachers multimedia content, games and interactive activities on seeds and traditional crop varieties, covering sustainability, botany, socio-economic and cultural concepts, among others. The guide also counts with activities around four varieties, one for each of the main four crops – vegetable, cereal, legume and fruit – through which participants will learn more about these traditional varieties and the people who have contributed to their conservation.
Seeds in motion by Marco Ranieri, artist, artivist, independent researcher and Associate Lecturer. This guide proposes different agro-artistic practices to activate in an educational centre. The guide includes different activities step by step, such as how to prepare seed bombs, to how start an allotment in a school or community garden, with clear explanations from how to dig the soil to make a ridge to the different irrigation methods that can be used. It also presents a list of the main types of vegetables and other plants that can enrich and nourish the vegetable garden through companion planting. Finally, it presents some activities to be carried out Seeds in motion together with the participants, which connect cultivation processes (such as pollination) with artistic practices and collective interventions.
SonificADN by Javier Forment, Phd in Biological Sciences, specialised in bioinformatics and musician. This guide offers students and teachers the possibility of establishing and internalising both the concept of genetic sequence and the concept of a sound artwork by establishing a parallelism between a sequence of nucleotides (a gene) and a sequence of sounds (a song) by means of a computer program. It combines concepts of genetics, music and computer science that invite us to think transversally and ask ourselves if a gene can resemble a score or create a song.
Exhibition 2024 and 2025 in Spain
The artworks, educational guides and a display of local open-source seeds have been exhibited at Escuelas Pías UNED (Madrid), Museu Terra (Tarragona) and Caixa Forum (Palma de Mallorca). A fourth exhibition at Can Domènech, Alcúdia, Consorci de la Ciutat Romana de Pol·lèntia (Mallorca) will be held from 4th to 31st October 2024. A fourth exhibition at Can Domènech, Alcúdia, Consorci de la Ciutat Romana de Pol·lèntia (Mallorca) is being held from 4th to 24th November 2024. The next exhibition will run from 29th November 2024 to 16th February 2025 at the Escola Municipal de Mallorquí in Manacor, Mallorca.
