ACEER recognizes that arts and culture are key facets of conservation and sustainability, and we prioritize bridging science, arts, and culture.
While arts and culture is integrated into many of our experiential education programs, we implement programs specifically focused on arts and culture through our Artist-in-Residence program. Artists from around the world, including local communities in Peru, form a cohort that employs a multimedia approach to address global conservation challenges.
Artist in Residence
ACEER’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program integrates involvement with Indigenous communities and in-depth lectures and workshops led by local specialists in the scientific field. It provides a meeting point where participants can investigate and challenge their creative practices in a stimulating environment. Through critique and collaborative engagement, participants explore ways to understand, represent and arrive at creative solutions to the issues facing Amazonia. This three-week residency program is hosted by Camino Verde Reforestation Centre and coordinated and run by ACEER and institutional partners Studio Verde and Amazon Aid.
Its interdisciplinary approach combines artists’ unique abilities to transcend language, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic barriers with scientists’ unique skills to collect and translate data that deepens our understanding of the natural world. Bringing international and local artists together in an immersive Art & Science program in the Peruvian Amazon provides participants an opportunity to form a deep understanding of the challenges of Indigenous communities and conservation practices faced in the Amazon rainforest.
At the end of the AIR program, Artists offer the local community an opportunity to engage in their findings by planning and executing a public exhibition and/or Artist talk in the ACEER Art Gallery in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Artists are also encouraged to participate in talks, workshops, and film screenings held during the residency.
Meet our Artists in Residence!
“My artist residency was unlike most typical residencies in that I went with a group of scientists, not fellow artists, and I assisted in field research during most of my days, working alongside the Indigenous Maijuna Community of the Sucusari region of Peru.
My goal with this residency has been to create colorful artwork that shares the story of the vulnerable biodiverse rainforest and the Indigenous Maijuna community in their fight against a proposed highway corridor threatening their land and livelihood.”
~ Lindsay Schmittle, Gingerly Press
Art Gallery in Peru
In 2021, ACEER renovated and expanded our office in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, to create an Interpretative Nature Center and Art Gallery with space to offer many hands-on workshops. We are embracing the educational concept of STEM to STEAM. This approach investigates Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through a problem-based creative learning process to include the Arts and Humanities. ACEER is working directly with Nature Explorers to implement programming and exhibits in this space.
