Sand in Sculpture: Creatively Rewilding Ecologies of Health

Abstract

Through this creative-relational inquiry, we pursue a radically new way of conceptualizing, researching, communicating, and practicing health and health care in contemporary times. We write to reimagine what an alternative paradigm that is at once humane, democratic, accessible, inclusive, generative, and resolutely open to diversity in its many forms might look and feel like. We begin by presenting the script of an autoethnographic film that explores health, creativity, and physical activity through an arts-based approach that incorporates moving image, spoken word, soundscape, music, and song. Next, we offer two responses to the film, which embody emotional and empathetic engagement, relational commitment, moral and ethical sensibility, and careful scholarly reflection to extend and develop our inquiry in innovative interdisciplinary directions. Finally, we draw on recent developments in complexity theory and environmental activism to propose a new way to understand and practice health care within complex ecologies of health.