I propose the application of multimedia, perhaps in CD-Rom format, perhaps on a site on the Internet, to interpret and communicate the characteristics and qualities inherent to a particular bioregion. Such a database would be limited only by the territory of the subject. To begin with it could be a database of the natural world of a particular region. This could then serve as a specimen template for any region to use to fill in their particular regional variations.
It could also be a much broader database of knowledge about the natural world, including the flora and fauna, the soils and morphology of a particular region, defined in bioregional terms.
It could include a cartographic representation of the bioregion and illustrate, by a variety of visual means - video, animated sequences and painting - how the watershed of the bioregion works as an ecosystem, how various species depend symbiotically upon each other and the particular careful balance of food webs involved in the region. Further it could develop associated themes such as how the arrival of humans has changed the ecology to the degree it has.
Academic disciplines such as social history, geographical and ecological history could also be carefully integrated into the multimedia so that both natural and man-made changes to a region over the centuries could be explored to provide a fuller, broader sensitising to the re-making and evolution of the region. The history of land-use, could be subtly explored, so as to understand the history and prehistory of the bioregion.
It could include information, visual and linguistic, about the various historical and prehistorical sites of the bioregion, and the migratory habits of the various populations (human and non-human) through the different historical periods up to the present. It could explore the evolution and changes in the languages of the region, maybe with particular emphasis on special indigenous words.
The primary intention of the CD Rom would be educational, in order to convey the sense and workings of a local ecosystem to and for those in that local area, and to do this within the remit of bioregionalism. It would be an ideal instrument for schools, and for engaging children in their local habitat. Experiential learning about where you live is possibly one of the best ways to sensitise children to the nature immediately beyond the school gates.
For further information please contact Oliver Lowenstein, Fourth Door Research Unit, 1 Grange Road, Lewes, Sussex BN7 lTR (tel 01273 473501).
Previous / Next / Table of Contents