Report on Chancellor’s Fund The Green-Blue-Grey Campus/Rain Garden Project

Abstract

There can be a tendency in art-science projects for science discourses to instrumentalise arts practices, and for arts discourses to instrumentalise science practices, rather than for each to rigorously challenge and inform the other. \nThe Chancellor’s Fund Green-Blue-Grey Campus/Rain Garden project was an attempt to get beyond this limiting instrumentalisation, and to explore new ways of working across the art-science interface in which dialogue can be generated and knowledge produced across diverse discourses, practices, communities and identities. It used innovative art, science and participatory research methodologies to explore, devise and test strategies for successfully integrating green-blue infrastructure in an urban design context, with specific reference to the sustainable design feature of the rain garden in the ongoing University of Glasgow campus redevelopment. \nThis report introduces the Green-Blue-Grey Campus/Rain Garden project, summarises the aims and methods used, and the principle findings generated, before contextualising the work in the broader fields. It then takes a closer look at the art-science methods used, and shares some of the strategies developed. Finally the report outlines some key practical recommendations for the implementation of the rain garden, which emerged from the deployment of these innovative strategies and methods.