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Plant Knowledge Workshop
Plant Knowledge as Living Material Culture
Saturday 13 June 2026 | 8:30am-4:00pm
This workshop brings together youth, knowledge holders, researchers, artists, conservation partners and community organisations to explore how plant knowledge can support cultural continuity, biodiversity awareness, climate resilience and intergenerational learning.
Project Summary
Growing Climate Resilience and Regeneration through Intergenerational and Transnational Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Skills Exchange is a collaborative project involving the University of St Andrews and partners in Samoa and Costa Rica. The project explores how traditional ecological knowledge, plant lore, community heritage, and intergenerational learning can support climate resilience, biodiversity awareness, cultural continuity and regeneration.
The Samoa workshop at Tiapapata Art Centre is framed around plant knowledge as living material culture. It will explore the ways plants and trees are used in Samoan cultural practice, including fibre and cordage, siapo, natural dyes and pigments, artisanal paper, fale construction, tools, healing, food, ecological stewardship and cultural memory.
The programme will bring together youth representatives, knowledge holders, artisans, educators, researchers, scientific and conservation organisations, and environmental agencies. It will combine field visits, practical demonstrations, youth reflection, panel discussion and informal talanoa.
Workshop Aims
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Strengthen youth awareness of Samoan plant knowledge and its links with culture, biodiversity and climate resilience.
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Create opportunities for intergenerational learning between young people, community knowledge holders, artisans and technical experts.
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Explore responsible approaches to documenting plant names, uses, stories and cultural practices.
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Encourage practical community action through planting, knowledge sharing and ongoing collaboration between schools, youth groups, science organisations, conservation partners and cultural institutions.
Laufanua Felanulanua‘i – Colours of Samoa
The Pacific has been aptly described as the last frontier of human settlement on the planet. Some 25,000 islands lie scattered across the world’s largest ocean — an ocean larger than all the land areas of the world combined. Near the heart of this great ocean lies the Samoan Archipelago: American Sāmoa to the east and Sāmoa to the west. These islands offer a unique lens through which to consider culture, ecology, resilience, and the enduring relationships between people, land, ocean, and sky.
The English poet Rupert Brooke, who visited the Pacific in 1913, described these islands as possessing “sheer beauty, so pure that it is difficult to breathe it in,” and wrote of “the loveliest people in the world, moving and dancing like gods and goddesses, very quietly and mysteriously, and utterly content.” More than a century later, visitors to the Samoan Archipelago continue to be struck by the vibrant colours of nature, by the deep relationships between people and the environment, and by a rich and distinguished culture shaped by mutual respect, reciprocity, and vā — the relational space that connects people to one another, to the world around them, and to the cosmos. READ MORE.
Archives
In this section you will find our archives - old articles and other documents that hel tell our story.
A presentation made today, World Museum Day, can be read here.
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