Digging in the dirt: Searching for effective tools and languages to promote soil awareness

• Soil degradation worldwide shows lack of awareness of soil vulnerability. • Weak soil perception is due to semantic, cultural, religious reasons. • Soil connectivity needs to be empowered and diffused. • Visual arts represent a promising tool to vehicle soil issues. • Art, talking through images, overcomes difficulties posed by scientific language. The aim of the paper is to propose additional viewpoints aimed at enhancing soil perception among the general public that could foster soil awareness, valorisation and, consequently, protection and stewardship. Starting from soil security concept, introducing the pillars (the five Cs ) for securing soil, the paper focuses on connectivity, with the aim of suggesting new perspectives to look at and deal with soil. In particular, the article encompasses semantic issues, analyses new attributes, and proposes communications tools, other than scientific language, that can effectively reach a broad audience. The article focuses on art because, in the present era of image-based communication, artworks show an effective and promising way to spread a “soil culture”.