Tools for Multispecies Flourishing
2024
The call for “Ecotopian Tools for Multispecies Flourishing” is presented in partnership with Morris Arboretum & Gardens.
About Multispecies Flourishing
This year’s tools will introduce “ecotopian” tools, whether conceptual or realized, that might be used by visitors and inhabitants of Morris to support diverse, multi-species communities, including humans, and to connect them to other places of refuge amidst the ongoing crisis of extinction fueled by habitat loss, climate change, and other Anthropocene woes. By “multispecies” we refer to “the complexity of living, learning, and becoming with/alongside/through other planetary beings and cosmological phenomena” (Khan and Bowen). Inspired by utopian writing and projects across cultures, traditions, and times, the word “ecotopian” is borrowed from Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel, Ecotopia. This ongoing initiative to craft and share ecotopian tools across the Delaware Valley takes a utopian approach to ecological crisis as a way to confront the feelings of helplessness and apathy that often arise in the face of global warming and the ongoing sixth mass extinction event.
Morris Arboretum & Gardens
The Morris Arboretum & Gardens is primarily located in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia with a portion that sits in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The ~175 acre site spans several geologic formations evident in the sharp turns of the Wissahickon Creek as it encounters the hard Chickie’s Quartzite formation after broad turns over the Dolomitic Limestone in Montgomery County. One part of the garden sits on Wissahickon Schist, notable as the stone used to build many local homes. Before and during the colonial period, the Leni-Lenape people lived in this area for hundreds of years; they refer to the land as Lenapehoking (land of the Lenape). Post-colonization, many Lenape were forcibly removed; some remained and assimilated with white settler colonials.
The land today that bears the name Morris Arboretum & Gardens is an assemblage of properties bought by siblings John and Lydia Morris between 1887 and 1913. Avid plant collectors, John and Lydia created a beautiful summer estate and enjoyed sharing it with others. After their deaths, Morris became a part of the University of Pennsylvania and was initially run by the Botany Department. The Morris later transitioned to a public-facing organization and has grown to be one of the larger gardens in the Philadelphia region with over 170,000 visitors annually.