CreatiNG ConnectiNG CommunicatinG
AMPLYFIYING VOICES
Joseph Gerard Photography
Creative
Engagement:
a mode of Communication
I am a composer and socially-engaged artist using creative engagement and imaginative thinking as a form of connection and communication. With practice grounded in music, anthropology, and creative pedagogy, I use co-creation to amplify the voices of communities and their relationships with place through soundscapes, performance, and installation
What defines my work:
Co-creation as a research ethic and artistic methodology
Making as knowing — knowledge shaped through the creative process
Rooted in trust, collaboration, and relational listening
Amplifying community voices: combining ethnography, sound, and performance
Working in partnership with universities, cultural institutions, and public sector bodies
Affiliations:
Visiting Scholar at Queens University, Belfast
Centre for Creative Ethnography, Queens University, Belfast
sound art:
Music, Sound - in collaboration with climate scientist becomes climate risk communication.
Sonic elements from field recordings, composition and sonified climate data combined into soundscapes offer a route to exploring how sound, sustainability and climate resilience converge. Community stories shared through soundscapes informs ecological awareness and policy. Co-creation and climate risk communication promotes active citizenship as a force for sustainable change.
Joseph Gerard Photography
Performance art:
Voice, Movement - in collaboration with communities becomes community building.
Theatre devising techniques build relationships with individuals and groups in a co-created space. The emergent social art gives voice to the lived experiences of ordinary people through sharing a creative expression of their learning and resilience. This transformational experience can become a tool for local activism in community building.
Joseph Gerard Photography
PRACTICE AS RESEARCH
Ingold`s (2013) “thinking through making” informs my approach to exploring the lived experiences of communities and the amplification of their voices to wider audiences through co-creation. In addressing issues such as the challenges of climate change or displacement due to war I raise questions around co-creation, knowledge sharing and the role of creative engagement as communication. I am interested in the potential of this approach for bridging the knowledge exchange gap between communities, researchers and policy makers.
Sounds for Sustainability:
Climate Folk – Dance of the Carbon Cycles / Dublin 6-7 June 2025
Paper presented:
In at midnight, gone by morning: Creative engagement as a tool for climate risk communication
ICTMD Ireland / CITCR Éireann 20th Anniversary Conference/ Dublin 7-8 March 2025
Paper presented:
Co-creation as Climate risk Communication in Flood Affected Communities in Ireland
