Prairie Restorations: Arts-based engagement for sustainable farming futures
New
Challenge
Despite incentives to maintain Minnesota’s remaining prairie, grasslands continue to be threatened due to cropland expansion. Sustainable farming practices sometimes lack buy-in from landowners who see these policies and practices as impractical and costly.
Impact Goal
Partnering with outstate communities and an Indigenous science educator, this project will utilize community-based theater as an innovative communication tool to translate scientific research, sustainable farming practices, and farmer narratives through co-developed theatrical performances in Minnesota communities.
Funding
Partner Organization(s)
Project Leads
Department of Theatre Arts and Dance
Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve
Department of Theater Arts and Dance
Community Theater for Minnesota's Prairies
Over 100 years ago, western Minnesota had millions of acres of connected prairie. Now, less than 2 percent of that original prairie remains in fragmented pieces. These remaining grasslands still play an important role in sustaining soil, flood mitigation, and carbon storage. Despite incentives and policies to encourage sustainable farming, grassland restoration and maintenance, prairies continue to be converted to row crops.
A persistent barrier to prairie restoration and sustainable farming in Minnesota is the lack of shared understanding among ecosystem researchers, outstate farmers and urban consumers. We do not yet have enough spaces where these groups can attend to one another’s experiences and challenges to enable collective action.
Over the past 15 years, Sod House Theater has developed methods that use performance to engage rural Minnesota communities in embodied reflections about sustainable resources including land, water and foodways. This project team partnered with Sod House to conceptualize Prairie Restorations, which will bring together ecological research, farmer knowledge and community-engaged theater to create spaces where these perspectives can interact and inform collective action.
Through interviews, workshops, performances and facilitated dialogue, the production of Prairie Restorations will test and assess how community-engaged performance can strengthen ecological systems thinking and cross-identity dialogue around prairie restoration and sustainable farming in Minnesota.
Project Goals
- Conduct multi-site performances integrating scientific and farmer narratives
- Hold structured post-performance dialogue sessions to activate diverse positions and model collective conversations
- Produce a comparative dataset examining differences in systems thinking and sustainability attitudes between rural and urban audiences
- Produce a short documentary to share findings more widely
- Develop an adaptable workshop toolkit
Meet the Project Team
Project Lead
Additional Team Members
Project Status
Last Updated
Aug 05, 2026
Impact Location
Minnesota
Start Date
Expected Completion
Jun 30, 2028