Dr. Theresa Avila, Veronica Contreras, Maya Contreras, Megan Hall, Heidi Jimenez, Natalia Luna, Milos Markovic, Hazel Rabago, Yareli Reyessevellon, & Monica Uribe
During the spring 2024 semester, students in Art History (ARTH 371 – Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art) and Communication (Comm 332: Media and the Environment) courses focused their combined efforts and skiils on environmental issues. Moving beyond abstract notions of global climate crises, course discussions consider local and immediate issues. Our focus of investigation is creative climate action by artists and concerned citizens alike. Water pollution and food scarcity are two major themes that students chose for their final signature assignments. Students are encouraged to draw on their own strengths and skills as they develop their own interventions on the environmental issues they are concerned about. Key components in student’s climate action efforts are creativity, dialogue, activism, and community engagement. Students are working to clean water and transform their documentation and the debris they collect into works of art. Another group of students will host interventions on campus to address food quality and scarcity. For this project, students think together about a range of issues from diverse perspectives as they learn to be engaged citizens and creative climate activists. The posters for presentation will showcase how students developed climate actions engaging joy and the skills they already have, how trash from a beach cleanup was recybled and transformed, a photo display captures conditions at local beaches, and a student survey on beach activities and pollution will provide insight into how the CSUCI student community engages with local beaches.