Envisioning desirable futures in small-scale fisheries: a transdisciplinary arts-based co-creation process

Envisioning desirable futures in small-scale fisheries: a transdisciplinary arts-based co-creation process

Blog Article

Despite the critical importance of small-scale fisheries for food security and well-being and the role of fishers as stewards of aquatic ecosystems, their future is uncertain.Tackling narratives that portray small-scale fisheries as obsolete, disparate, and inefficient requires collectively imagining and articulating new, creative, and inspiring narratives that reflect their real contributions and enable transformative futures.Drawing on a transdisciplinary country-level case study, we analyze the process and outcomes of co-creating desirable, plural, and meaningful visions of the blackmores ache relief focus review future for small-scale fisheries in Uruguay.

Using an arts-based approach and leveraging the agency of emerging innovative initiatives throughout the country, different food system actors (fish workers, chefs, entrepreneurs) and knowledge systems (local, experience-based, and scientific) were engaged in a creative visioning process.The results of this arts-based co-creation process include (1) a series of desirable visions and narratives, synthesized into an artistic boundary object; here and (2) the stepping stones to a transformative space for collective reflection, learning, and action.Although the artistic boundary object has proven instrumental among multiple and diverse participants, the transformative space encouraged academic and non-academic participants to plan collective actions and to feel more confident, motivated, and optimistic about the future of small-scale fisheries in Uruguay.

With this paper we provide a tool, a platform, and a roadmap to counter the dominant bleak narrative, while also communicating the elements that constitute desirable futures for small-scale fisheries in Uruguay.On a broader scale, our contribution reinforces the emerging narrative of the key role that small-scale fisheries have, and will play, in local and global food systems.