Natural capital: Illuminating the true value of nature's services through community-engaged, site-specific creative production and exhibition

Abstract

The Natural Capital Project is an interactive community mapping and storytelling project designed to promote the non-market value of nature's essential ecosystem services in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada, and shed new light on the importance of fragile coastal ecosystems in people's lives. The project was developed through a two-semester cross-disciplinary studio-based community projects course in the Faculty of Culture + Community at one of Canada's leading postsecondary art institutions, the Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver), in partnership with one of Canada's leading environmental organizations, the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF). Through a dynamic and collaborative approach to documentary practices, postsecondary art students across a variety of levels and disciplines created a series of digital narratives for an app in development by DSF designed to bring to life their report on aquatic ecosystems in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. The study estimates that the region's wetlands, beaches, and coastal areas provide at least 30 to 60 billion in economic benefits to residents every year. The course culminated in a museum exhibit at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery (GoGC) in Steveston, British Columbia, offering students the opportunity to see the effects of their work in a public space and feel like their input could have an impact on the environment and in changing hearts and minds.