Citizen Science: at the Schuylkill Center and Beyond
June 22, 2017By Guest contributor Anna Forrester
Seven years ago, my partner and I became the enthusiastic owners of an abandoned farm in central Pennsylvania. The property included an early 20th century bank barn, complete with a resident colony of bats. Reports of white nose syndrome and its devastating effects on the area’s bat populations had recently begun appearing in the media and – though we hadn’t had any up-close, intimate experience with our bats -- we soon found ourselves working to help track the spread of the disease and the fate of our bats by participating in the Appalachian Bat Count…
See, Saw, Sau… Playing with History in the Pine Grove
June 21, 2017Guest contributor Aaron Asis, 2017 Making in Place Artist
Last month, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education launched, Making in Place, a creative collaboration featuring the work of 14 different Art in the Open artists invited to create (or update) work to be displayed within the Schuylkill Center’s art gallery and/or at choice locations throughout the Schuylkill Center's grounds and trails.
As one of the selected artists invited to participate in Making in Place, I was invited to walk the grounds back in September to explore potential project sites and site-specific concepts. Easier said than done, but we found our…
Celebrating LGBTQ Environmental Leaders
June 16, 2017by Anna Lehr Mueser, Manager of Communications & Digital Strategy and Jenny Ryder, Communications Coordinator
There’s been plenty of discussion, and some research, about the overlap between LGBTQ people (and activists) and environmentally conscious people (and activists). So, today we’re talking especially about environmental leadership – about people from the LGBTQ community who have stood up to be leaders for climate justice, for environmental science, even the woman who gave modern American environmentalism its birth.
The people who worked to ban DDT and protect nesting birds, who helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency, who help communities find the resources to relocate before…
Schuylkill Center’s Statement on the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord
June 2, 2017By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
SCEE visitors added their climate stories at 2016's Naturepalooza Earth Day Festival.
A big environmental shoe dropped yesterday when President Trump announced, not unexpectedly, his intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
The Schuylkill Center, along with not only the global environmental community but also, surprisingly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, oil giant ExxonMobil, the World Coal Association, Pope Francis, Goldman Sachs, Apple, GE, Weather.com, and the majority of American people, expresses our disappointment in this decision.
We also note our commitment not only to fact-based climate change education, but to high-quality science…
Weaving Good and Bad
June 1, 2017By Liz Jelsomine, Environmental Art & PR Intern
When you think of weeds, you probably think of unwanted, unsightly plants invading and stealing vital nutrients from your lawn or garden. While this may be true for some species, further thought about weeds brings up interesting questions. What is it about a plant that categorizes it as being invasive, and could these pesky plants be of any benefit?
Artists Kaitlin Pomerantz and Zya S. Levy explored ideas such as this at the Schuylkill Center as part of their LandLab Residency, an environmental art residency program that integrates art, ecological restoration, and…
Nature: Fostering children’s social interactions
May 26, 2017By Rachel Baltuch, Nature Preschool Teacher
Children Need Nature is a monthly blog column from our nature preschool program. Read more posts here.
While researching the effects of unstructured play time in nature for young children, I discovered that the benefits are vast and encompass most aspects of children’s development. Play time in nature tends to affect children’s cognitive development, which includes intellectual learning, problem solving skills, and creative inquiry, and can lead to increased concentration, greater attention capacities and higher academic performance.[1] These children also demonstrate “more advanced motor fitness, including coordination, balance and agility, and they are sick less often.[2]
Additionally,…
Maintenance as Art
May 19, 2017By Anna Lehr Mueser, Manager of Communications & Digital Strategy
Every week or so one of us (usually our Director of Environmental Art or one of our art interns) heads out to Rain Yard, an interactive environmental art installation by Stacy Levy, for a regular check up. Rain Yard is designed to be education, art, and intervention. The steel sculpture, painted a rich blue-purple, collects stormwater runoff from our Visitor Center roof, slowing the movement of nearly 100,000 gallons of water a year. Some of the water flows through a rain garden, over which visitors walk, and some goes into…
Making in Place: Art in the Open exhibition
May 16, 2017By Anna Lehr Mueser, Manager of Communications & Digital Strategy and Liz Jelsomine, Environmental Art & PR Intern
This summer 14 artists will extend the Schuylkill Center’s art gallery onto our trails, with art that explores concepts in placemaking, reused materials, and natural-unnatural sound. These works were forged as part of Art in the Open, a public art event which brings art-making into public, along Schuylkill Banks in May. Dozens of artists participate in the biannual Art in the Open event and afterward, each brings their work to a gallery or art site around the City of Philadelphia, reinventing their…
Hollow Perspective
May 12, 2017By Liz Jelsomine, Environmental Art & Public Relations Intern
Perched on tree stumps, floating on water, hidden in the reeds - artist Katie Murken's painted gourds were scattered across the land at the Schuylkill Center in 2007. Debtor's Inheritance was created as part of Green Machine, a multi-media exhibition on our grounds. The project was formed in collaboration with P'unk Ave, a Philadelphia based design studio with a focus on non-profit organizations, that helped Murken create her site specific and interactive work at the Schuylkill Center.
Murken described the Schuylkill Center as a place that exemplifies habitat that was once…
Introducing Fox Glen: a new chapter in land stewardship
May 10, 2017By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Where our Grey Fox Loop and Wind Dance Pond Trail meet, just uphill from our beloved 19th-century springhouse and its pond, is a section of our forest that has been overrun with invasive plants. But on May 20 we’re turning it around, planting over 200 new trees and shrubs to stabilize the land and reforest the area. We’re calling it Fox Glen.
I hope you’ll transform it with us. (more…)
