At Chin up festival I lead an educational workshop and walk with groups of about 20 participants. We first used printout maps to mark all the sources of berry bearing plants whilst walking through the landscape. We then made this map into an origami paper bird. This paper bird could then be ‘planted’ at home, thus simulating the relationship between plants and migratory birds. During this activity I gave a talk about the relationships between tree flowers to pollinating insects and the birds who take advantage of this food source. Then about how trees use birds for seed dispersal, how berry colour is used by the plants to signal when fruits are ripe, how that impacts the bands of light that birds see, how our evolutionary ancestors took advantage of this as a food source and finally how this led to our eyes adapting to see the same bands of light as the birds. The umwelt that primates possess is different from that of most mammals; we see much higher into the ultraviolet in order to take advantage of the symbiotic relationship between insects, plants and birds. 

This workshop was intended to manifest some of my developing thinking about how educational and artistic elements should be blended in situational ways.