Finn Arne and Dolly Jørgensen, as founders of The Greenhouse, presented the opening talk at a miniseminar on Sustainable Campus Development put together by Statsbygg (the owner of campus buildings) and the UiS Forskningsnettverket for miljøvennlig energi (Research Network for Alternative Energy). Their talk stressed that we need to have three things to make a successful sustainable campus initiative:
- Lesbarhet (legibility)
- Grønn medborgerskap (green citizenship)
- Medskapelse (co-creation)
The legibility part has to do with how environmental actions, goals, and situations are visualized for campus users, and how those users read and understand the visualizations. Green citizenship has to do with giving the people on campus the ability to make environmentally-friendly choices and creating a culture of environmental awareness on campus. Finally, co-creation is about working the initiative from the bottom up so that students and employees are empowered and have ownership of the activities.
Most of the other presenters stressed the technological and built aspects of campus, so it was good to start things off with a humanities angle.
This miniseminar was just a baby step on the way to creating a sustainable campus initiative here at UiS, but The Greenhouse is there to help the initiative walk the right way! The write-up by a journalist who attended the workshop highlighted the Jørgensens’ humanistic contribution, so the message that humans, not just technologies, are integral to a sustainable campus is getting out there.
