I/CaLL: Community Science Learning

I/CaLL is a four-year project that explores art as conduits for informal science learning on a citywide scale. The project attempts to transform the city of Indianapolis into an informal science-learning museum through the use of sculpture, dance, music, and poetry as educational tools in creating awareness and understanding of the city’s waterways. Specifically, I/CaLL addresses five sites located near and around waterways in impoverished or underserved communities, where art interventions created by artists in collaboration with scientists address topics around water sustainability. Additionally, these interventions are intended to address community needs in order to augment the connections people feel with their environments.

This report looks at a series of discussions I/CaLL team members hosted at local libraries in Indianapolis in which the intersections of art and science were explored, and a range of I/CaLL programming events created to engage the public community of Indianapolis with topics and issues addressed by the project’s efforts. Our findings reveal the importance of engaging the public in the discourse of how art and science can work together to raise awareness. Discussions and events helped forge bridges between these disciplines in the public eye and begin to lay the foundation for creating more pervasive collective shifts in science reasoning through the arts. Specific to this project, these discussions appear to nurture a community in which art and science interventions – such as sculpture, music, dance, and poetry – may begin to plant the seeds of behavior change.