Fóram Idirnáisiúnta ar Thaighde Ealaíonta 2026
An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)
Submission Number: 207
Submission ID: 265
Submission UUID: 5dce9d1f-07a9-4243-a044-5ef22441b147

Cruthaithe: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 - 10:16
Déanta: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 - 12:29
Changed: Wed, 13 May 2026 - 08:13

Remote IP address: 80.233.58.169
Submitted by: Anonymous
Teanga: English

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Given name Lydia
Surname Cumiskey
Email lcumiskey@ucc.ie
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Title Who Gets to Speak about Climate Risk & Resilience?: Artistic Practice as Epistemic Intervention
Format Workshop
Main language English
Abstract The climate crisis necessitates engagement across diverse backgrounds, cultures, and disciplines, each shaped by distinct linguistic and experiential contexts. However, language is frequently homogenised in pursuit of improved collaboration, marginalising lived experience and cultural nuance, and reinforcing power structures. This workshop draws on interdisciplinary projects (BluePrint and DIRECTED), reflecting on challenges in climate risk communication to surface, recognise and integrate diverse knowledge across policy, science and communities. Jointly led by a climate adaptation scientist, design researcher and a facilitator with a background in anthropology and artistic practice, the workshop foregrounds different situated perspectives, revealing how knowledge is created, interpreted, and experienced. Artistic practice is treated as a diagnostic method rather than a tool for engagement or delivery. Ethnographic and arts-based approaches produce and hold situated, embodied knowledge and reveal why unstructured dialogue often fails in complex governance settings.
The workshop invites participants to engage with the challenges of socially engaged art–science collaboration through creative and playful exercises using case studies from shared practice, a performance poetry process and facilitated reflection. This co-production process makes conceptual framing of responsibility, uncertainty and possibility less abstract and reveals the disconnect between technical language and lived experience. Facilitated reflection considers how certain forms of knowledge gain recognition, shaping interpretations and responses. The workshop becomes a shared inquiry into how climate risk and resilience is understood and how alternative ways of knowing can reconfigure dialogue and emerging solutions. Impact is epistemic: it makes power in language visible and sayable, while recognising marginalised knowledge as legitimate in climate risk governance.
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Short biographies of the presenter(s)
  • Dr Lydia Cumiskey is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the MaREI Centre, University College Cork working on enhancing disaster resilience in the EU Horizon funded DIRECTED project. Over the past 10 years Lydia has worked in research and consultancy projects in the areas of flood risk governance, risk communication and climate adaptation. Her recent work in the EU Horizon funded DIRECTED project focuses on capacity building for knowledge co-production in Real World Labs and embracing creativity for collaboration. She led the Creative Ireland funded project BluePrint which co-created artistic risk communication outputs supporting communities and policymakers together with artist Sara Walmsley.
  • Dr Sara Walmsley blends anthropological research, creative engagement and artistic practice to amplify the lived experience of communities facing climate change. Recent collaboration with climate adaptation scientists on flooding (BluePrint 2024) demonstrated that co-creative spaces generating dialogue can inspire new responses to climate risk by building agency and resilience.
    Her current work investigates the potential for data sonification to trigger new perspectives in multi-stakeholder team exchanges around climate disaster risk management (EU DIRECTED) and promote deliberative governance.
  • Natascha Ng is a design researcher working on co-production and capacity development in the DIRECTED project at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Oxford, UK. Natascha employs systems thinking, design mapping, and creative methods – along with community-organizing methodologies – to facilitate co-design for transitions. Prior to joining SEI, Natascha worked as a Researcher at UAL, where she applied Design for Transitions thinking, to co-define problems and co-create pathways, for socially just and ecologically sustainable transitions. Within DIRECTED, she supported SEI to host two student Designers-in-Residence, Dipper Hong and Gigi Wang, who co-designed an exercise using visual metaphors to explore, understand, and discuss language.
Previous presentations or iterations of the research Walmsley, S., Cumiskey, L., et al. (2024). Extract from BluePrint sound installation "In at Midnight and Away by Morning: The Uninvited Guest". Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14036832
Walmsley. S., Cumiskey. L., et al (forthcoming). Strengthening Active Citizenship for Climate Resilience through Artistic Co-Creation. In S.Flood et al (Eds), Community Climate Justice: Building on equitable adaptation practices and the implications for policy, science and leadership. Palgrave Macmillan.
Additional information This 180-minute participatory art–science workshop combines short case studies, creative exercises and structured reflection. After a brief introduction and warm-up, participants work through themed activities using images, voice, tableau and movement. A guided performance poetry process moves from individual writing to group composition and sharing. The session concludes with facilitated plenary discussion linking insights to climate risk and resilience practice.
Spatial and technical requirements • max 20 participants
• room for movement and group work
• tables and chairs for group
• workshop to be in non-public area with suitable acoustics for group work
• Audio/Visual for sharing short extracts
Potential risks or ethical concerns n/a
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Fóram Idirnáisiúnta ar Thaighde Ealaíonta 2026
An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)

Welcome to SAR 2026

Endangered Conceptual Worlds

The 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research takes place from 23 to 26 June 2026. Hosted by the University of Galway on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, the Forum addresses the challenges of Endangered Conceptual Worlds. As the 17th annual conference of the Society for Artistic Research it is the largest conference on practice-based research within and through the arts, bringing together more than 300 international participants: leading practitioners, scholars and policymakers from the entire range of arts-based disciplines.

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Slightly extended deadline for submissions

The 2026 Forum on Artistic Research website has been inaccessible for several hours on Friday night and Saturday morning. Unfortunately, an update to the web server was scheduled to take place, which automatically activated maintenance mode and prevented any work on the submissions during the night and the next morning. We have therefore decided to slightly extend the deadline for submissions to Monday 2 March 2026 at 23:59 GMT. Feel free to work on your proposals until then.