Posted in News on May 26, 2025.
Ecolit recently held their first public event, The Sound of Trees: A Symphony of Mindfulness, at the University of Cologne.
The event featured biologist and musician Tarun Nayar, aka Modern Biology, along with resident artists from the South Asian diaspora: Senthuran (flute), Moonlit Brooks (poetry) and Zainab Lax (harp).
In collaboration with Cologne's Forest Botanical Garden and urban mushroom farm, Pilzling, the event was an opportunity for collective experience and connection through place-based storytelling, music and poetry.
Attendees were invited to immerse in:
EcoLit is an interdisciplinary research and development project at the University of Cologne. It explores the potential of arts education to address ecological crises by incorporating artistic perspectives into awareness and understanding of socio-ecological contexts.
Participating research institutions are the Institute for European Ethnomusicology, the Department of English II, and the research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) at the University of Cologne, a lead partner in the University of Cologne BRIDGES Planetary Hub for Wellbeing.
The project considers itself a component of the UoC’s Sustainability Strategy and collaborator with the research initiative Sharing a Planet in Peril, a major project of the BRIDGES Hub at Cologne, and is funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (from 1/2024 to 12/2026).
