Using Drama, Music and Film to Understand Ocean and Coastal Community Change

by Dr. Barbara Neis

This article describes a recent week-long field trip we used to launch a key set of artistic endeavors funded through FOCI’s Integrated Work Package 4 (IWP4). The concept behind this work was developed by musicians Nancy Dahn and Tim Steeves in Memorial University’s Faculty of Music. Founders of the Tuckamore Festival of Chamber Music, Nancy and Tim comprise Duo Concertante.

The purpose of this field trip was to record organized conversations between Governor General award-winning playwright Robert Chafe and people familiar with diverse ocean and coastal community changes and their impacts. Filmmaker Barbara Doran, President of Morag Loves Company and videographer, Jerry McIntosh, travelled with Robert to gather conversation and landscape footage for a demo documentary film. In my role as IWP4 lead, I travelled with Robert, Barbara and Jerry. Nancy and Tim joined us for a morning during a school visit in Trepassey, near the eastern tip at the bottom of the Avalon Peninsula, where they performed a concert and hosted a dialogue with the K-12 students.

Robert Chafe is using the recorded conversations collected on this fieldtrip as sources of inspiration for a new play. The play will ultimately première in conjunction with original music composed by Randolph Peters and performed by Duo Concertante, at an upcoming Tuckamore Festival in St. John’s.

As an academic social scientist who has worked for decades on oceans and coastal research in rural Newfoundland, it was fascinating to watch how these artists approached the changes and challenges we are collectively exploring, both within FOCI and within the Ocean Frontier Institute more broadly. What follows is my own account of what we did and a tiny fraction of what I heard and saw.

Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesting Safety Association

The Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesting Safety Association (NL-FHSA) is an industry-led, non-profit organization established in 2012 to promote and improve all aspects of occupational health and safety in the province’s fish harvesting sector. The focus of the NL-FHSA is the creation of awareness and educational campaigns for fish harvesters, promoting positive industry-wide safety culture, increased accessibility and participation in safety education and training, improved safety regulation compliance, and the empowerment of health and safety leadership and knowledge-sharing between harvesters, industry stakeholders, and government.

The Association believes that active involvement in research initiatives is critical in exploring alternative options to respond to the unique challenges faced by coastal and marine workers while advancing occupational healthy and safety solutions for their industries. As a result, NL-FHSA has a long history of collaboration with Memorial University on research programs. Their current partnership with FOCI supports Work Packages 1, 2, 3, and 8, and involves membership in an advisory stakeholder panel to support research and review findings, widespread knowledge mobilization, participant recruitment, and acting as a liaison between FOCI researchers and the fish harvesting stakeholder community in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Bright Future: Researcher Spotlight

Meet Erin Pearson

Erin Pearson is a Master of Science student in the Northern EDGE Lab, based in Memorial University’s Geography department. Growing up on the west coast of Newfoundland inspired a love and curiosity of nature, leading her to complete the Forest Resources Technician diploma at the College of the North Atlantic and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Forestry at the University of New Brunswick. Both her desire to return to studying in Newfoundland and her interest in forest- and tree-level responses to ongoing climate change led her to pursue her MSc at Memorial University. Here, her focus shifted to urban forestry, combining methods and knowledge of forest ecology and conservation, climatology, and urban planning to characterize the urban forests of Newfoundland, and better understand their relationship with the urban landscape.

Erin’s work with FOCI contributes to the ‘Acting on weather & climate: networks and infrastructure for adaptation/mitigation decision making’ Safety Work Package, under the supervision of Dr. Carissa Brown and Dr. Joel Finnis. Urban forests are an important component of both climate adaptation and mitigation practices: they help reduce the effects of climate change and provide a variety of benefits and services to residents. However, the ability of urban forests to persist in the face of ongoing climate change is dependent on the ecological integrity of the ecosystem. The goal of Erin’s research is to assess the role of urban forests in the face of ongoing climate change through i) gaining a better understanding of how urban forest canopy cover alters local weather and climates, and ii) exploring how local climates influence the ecological integrity of urban forests. Integrating these findings of ecological integrity and climate mitigation into both current and future urban forest management practices is necessary to ensure the longevity of urban forests and their benefits into the future.