Image source: birdsonparade.com
When the 27th International Ornithological Congress came to Vancouver in August 2018, the world’s elite bird researchers were greeted by a parade of masked avian stilt-walkers, choruses singing the birdsongs of local and migratory birds, and bird puppets. Birds on Parade! was a community initiative, the product of a collaboration of community and artistic groups. Individual members of the public learned about individual species from their region before representing or embodying those specific birds in a community celebration.
Flocks of bird puppets and choruses gathered that August not just in Vancouver, but also in Enderby, Regina, Toronto, Yellowknife, Victoria, and Williams Lake. Of course, it’s when you get to know your local or your seasonal birds that you’ll begin to notice changes to their behaviour and patterns—changes brought about by the rapid rate of climate change. Birds on Parade! humanized birds and avianized humans to concretize the local impact of a global phenomenon—something with which scientists and media outlets still struggle.
These puppets taught the researchers how effective knowledge translation is done.
I believe that effective knowledge exchange, public scholarship, and community engagement involves the bi-directional flow of information between on- and off-campus partners. Academics have information they can share with the public, but so too does the public have information that academics ought to listen to--in the case of Birds on Parade!, that information was about how to effectively convey to the public information about climate change in their region.
Two elaborations on take on knowledge exchange include:
- “Influence U: Going Beyond the Op-Ed.” Review of Public Influence (Sucharov, 2019). Literary Review of Canada, September 2019.
- “Puppets are the Anti-Bullshit: Enriching Literary Research through Knowledge Exchange.” Co-authored with Claire Battershill. Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Annual Conference at Congress 2019. Vancouver, BC: June 2019.