5.5ft helium balloon, 1000ft string, programmed RasPi camera
Mapping Greenness, 2019
Participatory aerial photography balloon-mapping across seven urban greening sites with > 70 young citizens.
Research published in the Lancet medical journal linked access to photosynthetically active greenspace to improved mental and physical health. Greenness is a proxy for photosynthetic activity. As part of Mapping Greenness, Mo linked the urban greening in Nottingham, analysing these for greenness to draw links on a hyper-local scale.
Press
+ Social Art Award Interview
+ PAN comunidad des artes feature
Winner of the International Social Art Award Third-Place Prize 2021 by the Institute of Art Innovation, presented in Berlin, Germany.
“The conversation it introduces is about knowledge production and intersectionality, access and inclusion, environmentalism and the arts. So far, who has been given the resources to contribute to our public realm and greenspace? And what could happen if we distributed that power to the communities that live and breathe it? In ‘Mapping Greenness,’ those making the maps are also the people who inhabit them, who grow up, grow old and pass through them: the true experts. It shows a personal connection which inspires specific, relevant and intimate imagination to generate collective futures.
Environmental racism is so stark in UK cities. We need to go beyond greening. New Greening encompasses diversity in heritage seed, diverse species, and access to greenspace in the public realm across diverse communities. These maps are not a compartmentalized view that separates natural and artificial or human and non-human. What is being captured is the total environment: topography, weather, people, pubs, animals, insects, buildings, plants, history, scenes, community. These maps recognize that this total environment is nature.”
- extract from the interview
Research published in the Lancet medical journal linked access to photosynthetically active greenspace to improved mental and physical health. Greenness is a proxy for photosynthetic activity. As part of Mapping Greenness, Mo linked the urban greening in Nottingham, analysing these for greenness to draw links on a hyper-local scale.
Press
+ Social Art Award Interview
+ PAN comunidad des artes feature
Winner of the International Social Art Award Third-Place Prize 2021 by the Institute of Art Innovation, presented in Berlin, Germany.
“The conversation it introduces is about knowledge production and intersectionality, access and inclusion, environmentalism and the arts. So far, who has been given the resources to contribute to our public realm and greenspace? And what could happen if we distributed that power to the communities that live and breathe it? In ‘Mapping Greenness,’ those making the maps are also the people who inhabit them, who grow up, grow old and pass through them: the true experts. It shows a personal connection which inspires specific, relevant and intimate imagination to generate collective futures.
Environmental racism is so stark in UK cities. We need to go beyond greening. New Greening encompasses diversity in heritage seed, diverse species, and access to greenspace in the public realm across diverse communities. These maps are not a compartmentalized view that separates natural and artificial or human and non-human. What is being captured is the total environment: topography, weather, people, pubs, animals, insects, buildings, plants, history, scenes, community. These maps recognize that this total environment is nature.”
- extract from the interview
