SOILSCAPE: Spreading Open and Inclusive Literacy and Soil Culture through Artistic Practices and Education
The Project:
SOILSCAPE harnesses the power of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), artists, and civil society organizations (CSOs) to promote soil preservation across Europe and beyond. Working with experts from the worlds of soil sciences, arts, decision-making, and humanities, this project seeks to cultivate soil literacy and celebrate soils through creative approaches, engaging citizens & professionals on this journey.
SOILSCAPE’s objectives include understanding human-soil relations, building a network of more than 120 relevant actors in 8 countries, onboarding at least 320 individuals from the society, providing financial and technical support to CSOs, CCIs, schools, artists, and institutions, distributing 80 soil literacy certifications to inspiring initiatives, and reaching international scales through UNESCO and Coalition of Action for 4 Soil Health.
To achieve these objectives, SOILSCAPE uses a multilingual and multi-actor approach, focusing on cultivating artistic soil intelligence, promoting context-based soil literacy, enhancing awareness through innovative communication strategies and a soil literacy portal, organizing 2 editions of national soil festivals across Europe, and extending its actions to 30 regions by 2028.
The project unfolds through 4 key stages:
1. Contemplation: Consulting stakeholders to understand individual perception on soils, arts, and links with societal values; Investigating soil narratives and the potential of arts and arts-based methodologies to engage in soils.
2. Preparation: Developing people-centric transformative strategies, including an artistic and creative international soil network.
3. Action: Conducting and monitoring the SOILSCAPE creative activities, including the support to 28 arts-soils initiatives led by third parties.
4. Sustainability: Validating and replicating the SOILSCAPE initiatives at large scale.
The role of the Colge Game Lab:
The Cologne Game Lab of the TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences will be responsible for mobilising the population through mobility, events, contests, hackathons, and certification.
This task will include the detailed planning and distribution of mobility grant and technical support to 3rd parties and citizens. The OCs will be responsible for designing contests and hackathons that will take place in each of their countries (at least one), including at the festivals, with the support of TH Köln. TH Köln will be responsible for creating a framework
for the hackathons, firstly by providing preparatory documents and guidelines for partners to describe the format of the competitions, the number of winning teams, the amounts and frequency, as well as the eligibility and selection criteria.
TH Köln will also be responsible for setting up preparatory workshops prior to the hackathons at local level and deploying game development support to the selected teams after the hackathons, and for reporting back to the consortium and the EC as appropriate. The selected teams will also be supported by THK to organise demonstration stands at the Soil
Festivals(T3.3).. Promotional activities will be coordinated with WP6, and festival-based contests closely with T2.3. A SOILSCAPE related event (M42) will take place at UNESCO field office in Venice (T6.3). In parallel to these activities, CER, AFES, and EQY will work on a certification (D4.2, M24) that stamped the legal persons & projects engaged in soil literacy, after evaluation of their actions. Application forms will be available in the Portal from M24, and the stamped organisations will be showcased in the virtual map that links to their own projects and events.”
