Ecological knowledge dissemination: the role of cultural intermediaries

A healthy ecosystem is vital to all our lives, and so there is need for high-quality information on which to base decisions (Hill et al. 2005) and this should not only include scientific research, but a better understanding through cultural consumption. After all if cultural dimensions of environmental issues are ignored, any adaption and mitigation responses will fail to be effective (Adger et al. 2013). Culture is a lived experience (Hooper Greenhill 2000), comparable in many ways to the process of experiential learning (Kolb 1984). Learning is a continuous process; the formation of new ideas and also the discarding or alteration of old ones (Kolb 1984). Cultural production communicates, and has the power to shape society (Hooper Greenhill 2000).

Cultural intermediaries are prominent in promoting art; they can change cultural aspirations and may also play a role in ecological understanding. Given the global environmental crisis cultural intermediaries may hold the key to changing attitudes towards cultural consumption. Especially since their influence may go beyond the formation of value and the contextualization of goods into the “governmental” mobilization of consumers (Smith Maguire, Matthews 2010). Consequently cultural intermediaries are highly important to the cultural sector and also the wider society. Their work can both alert the public to environmental degradation and also influence environmental policy. Cultural understanding of ecological narratives is vital therefore an investigation into the ways in which cultural intermediaries are engaged or not engaged, in the environmental debate, is an imperative area of research.