Ecological Footprint Project

Extracting from just one month’s worth of glass, metal, card and plastic recycling generated in the home, I placed the items on the paving outside my house, and used them as stencils to capture their trace. A record of the resources used, and despite their disposal, me and my family are reminded of our ‘ecological footprint’ as we repeatedly walk across the imagery of the resources spent. An 'ecological footprint' is defined as "the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources". [I used discarded spray paint donated by the local school].

Ego to Eco: we are nature

The Ego to Eco project was created by Joanna Rucklidge (Visual Communicator) and Elizabeth Freeman (Eco-psychologist) who share a mutual interest in work about nature connection, environmental issues and wellbeing. They wanted to engage in cross-disciplinary and transformative educational research to create a new way of engaging students with nature, the environment and wellbeing, whilst also enhancing the student experience. 

The project was designed to provoke a psychological transformation among a group of visual communication students. Nature was used as a subject, an experience and a concept to allow students to explore the significance it had to them and to society over a series of creative tasks. These involved writing, image making, time in nature, discussion, research and finally creating an outcome for an audience.

Short video of the exhibition

The Ego to Eco exhibition website