Voices of the Future: Collaborating with Young People to Reimagine Treescapes, 2022-2024

The aim of this project was to explore how children in primary schools talk about nature and the value of trees in their lives. Working with diverse groups of children in the Northen Forest region (name of the city), we investigated the relationships between children, young people, trees, and the affordances of treescapes (trees in school, parks and on the streets) in fostering learning, belonging and hope, which we consider critical to ensuring a sustainable future.

We used methods such as audio-recordings, creative arts, and short films to explore treescapes, focusing on children’s knowledge to understand the opportunities and barriers to engagement. The work informs a shared understanding of how sensing materials, arts methods, and scientific approaches to tree mapping can be combined to attend to children’s and young peoples’ experiences of treescapes.

This project, conducted from January 2022 to April 2024, employed a co-productive approach to involving primary school children aged (7-9) as co-researchers. Child-led, art-based creative methods were used to explore children’s everyday experiences with trees in various locations such as neighbourhoods, schools, homes, or other transnational geographical areas. The methods included filmmaking, still photography, drawing, and designing. Children were equipped with digital tools, such as iPad and voice recorders to document their activities, and notebooks for recording field notes. Adult researchers also documented their observations through field notes at the end of each research activity.

The data consists of Fieldnotes, Multimodal Transcriptions, Still images and drawn images by children (Artefacts).
Ethical approval to conduct this research was obtained by the university ethics committee. Special ethics assemblies were conducted with children in both schools to explain research processes. Children, their parents, and school teachers were given copies of participant information sheets and consent forms to read and make an independent decision about their voluntary participation.

本项目旨在探究小学儿童如何谈论自然以及树木在其生活中的价值。研究团队与北部森林区域（城市名）的多群体儿童开展合作，探究儿童、青少年与树木之间的关系，以及树木景观（treescapes，即校园、公园及街道中的树木）的可供性（affordances）对学习、归属感与希望培育的助力作用——我们认为这对于保障可持续未来而言至关重要。

本研究采用音频录音、创意艺术创作、短片拍摄等方法探究树木景观，以儿童的认知为核心，旨在理解儿童参与相关活动的机遇与阻碍。本研究成果可为如何融合感知类材料、艺术创作方法与树木测绘的科学手段，以充分考量儿童与青少年的树木景观体验提供共通的认知框架。

本项目于2022年1月至2024年4月期间开展，采用协同共创式研究方法（co-productive approach），邀请7至9岁的小学儿童担任共同研究者（co-researchers）。本研究采用以儿童为主导、基于艺术的创作方法，探究儿童在社区、学校、家庭及其他跨地域空间中与树木相关的日常体验。所用方法涵盖短片拍摄、静态摄影、绘画与设计创作。研究人员为儿童配备了iPad、录音设备等数字工具以记录其活动，并提供笔记本用于撰写实地笔记（field notes）。成人研究者则在每项研究活动结束后，通过撰写实地笔记记录自身观察结果。

本研究数据集包含实地笔记、多模态转录文本（Multimodal Transcriptions）、儿童拍摄的静态影像与手绘图像（研究制品，Artefacts）。本研究已获得高校伦理委员会的伦理审查批准。研究团队在两所学校分别面向儿童举办了专项伦理说明会，以讲解研究流程。向儿童、其家长及学校教师提供了参与者信息告知单与知情同意书，供其阅读并自主决定是否自愿参与研究。