SSi - Sense and Sensibility in Interactivity: Connecting children and youths to nature through the design of sensory, experiential and aesthetic experiences

  • Nacional
  • National Research Project
  • 2021 to 2023
Summary:

To connect younger generations to nature, the SSI project explores novel approaches to promoting environmental literacy and nature connection amongst children and teenagers. The general materials can enhance our awareness of the natural world. The project proposes an design-led investigation of how storytelling and visual communication for interactive storytelling can promote sensory, experiental, and aesthetic encounters with nature to incite curiosity and willingness to learn about fauna and flora, and to engage in their conservation. Set in the Azores, a volcanic archipelago and one of the Portugal's most isolated biodiversity hotspots that faces today significative challenges as climatic shifs alongside human intervention negatively impacts indigenous species, the SSI project will design, test, and evaluate mediated experiences that expose participants to local biomes.


Funding Institution:

FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Ref. EXPL/ART-DAQ/1444/2021.


Partners:

Project management: ITI-LARSyS (https://iti.larsys.pt).

Principal Investigator: Prof. Sónia Matos (ITI-LARSyS & Free University of Bozen-Bolzano).

Co-Principal Investigator: Prof. Ana Moura Arroz (cE3c - Azorean Biodiversity Group).