This is Not a Silent Spring: Listening to bird songs as situated sustainable pedagogies

As educators, artists and researchers committed to increasing attention and sensitivity to the natural world, we have been working with students, university staff and researchers on experiences involving immersion in Nature. As we know, the past few years have been unsettling and even paralysing: in addition to the pandemic, we presently witness wars and acute climate crises. Reconnecting to Nature from our surroundings and working with the physicality of matter may be a way to escape the menaces of catastrophe and unblock creativity in order to imagine other futures. This article aims to reflect on This is Not a Silent Spring , a workshop held as part of the event ELIA Academy 2023 under the theme ‘Exploring Situatedness’ in May 2023, Évora, Portugal. In this action, participants were first invited to immerse in the sixteenth-century frescoes depicting birds at Casas Pintadas and then in the sounds of the birds on site, which they captured and interpreted in the form of an onomatopoeia. A short walk allowed them to collect plant materials, which were used to craft some appealing tributes to these animals – onomatopoeic vegetal objects – against the threat of a silent spring. The drift, the attention to birds, as also the haptic dimension involved in the construction of the objects, allowed for joy and a deepening of environmental awareness in connection with the place and with the more-than-humans who inhabit it.