Recently SPOTTERON took part in contributing to a book chapter entitled: "Connecting People and the Ocean Through Street Art and Citizen Science". The chapter was published in a book "Blue Kinships: An Exploration of Society & the Ocean" edited by Chiara Certoma. In this blog, we will introduce the journey of the book chapter as well as spotlight our own independent project ArtSpots App which has been running on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science App Platform since 2015.
On August 6th - the book "Blue Kinships: An exploration of Society & the Ocean" was released by Palgrave Macmillan Cham. The book was led by Assistant Professor Chiara Certoma who among other initiatives is leading the EU-funded research project "Participatory Art for society engagement with Ocean and Water (PartArt4OW)". The full journey of the book is available in her recent blog entry here.
The video is a supplementary material of the book "Blue Kinships. An Exploration of Society & the Ocean", edited by Chiara Certomà for Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2025.
Our contribution to this book began after meeting the "From Sea to Street" team which was a citizen science initiative focusing on the interconnection of street art, citizen science and ocean conservation in Spain, Latvia, and the Netherlands. More about "From Sea To Street" available in the proceedings "Change – The transformative power of citizen science": "From sea to street": initiating change for stronger connection with our ocean. The book chapter entitled "Connecting People and the Ocean Through Street Art and Citizen Science" was born from the experience of "From Sea to Street" project and includes 23 reflections on the connection between street art, citizen science and ocean conservation. We have contributed our insights on Citizen Science Apps and use-cases, as well as about the potential of ArtSpots App in future endeavours of similar initiatives.
ArtSpots App - SPOTTERON Video
Life is all about the arts and through this statement in mind, ArtSpots App was born as one of our first Apps running on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science App platform. Originally, ArtSpots App was StreetArt | SPOTTERON app and, over time, has developed as a collection of diverse arts from historic to contemporary art. The interactive app allows the growing user community to share public art sightings and experiences, and includes a wide range of art categories:
Furthermore, the community app adds the possibility to put art-related locations like museums, art galleries, event spaces and more on the interactive map.
ArtSpots App - New Spots and Top Categories
At the moment ArtSpots App holds over 27 000 worldwide entries with Street Art and Graffiti & Tag Culture spots being most present. European cities known for their artistic treasures like Berlin, Vienna, Lisbon are also well represented with numerous entries in the App. Spots from the Pacific Ocean or across the Atlantic Ocean - all represent a diversity of art styles.
As an independent project, ArtSpots App has become a hub for exciting projects. Those include the exchange with the "From Sea to Street" team, student exploration on investigating the connection between nature awareness and street art as well as future ideas about organizing ArtBlitz campaigns via ArtSpots App.
ArtSpots App - Spread and Density of Spots
User Spot and User Spots Collection
Beautiful ocean-themed street art spotted in Vienna! Artist: Naskool
Are you interested in exploring ArtSpots App for your research? The full Citizen Science App toolkit is ready for co-use, and can be utilised in collaboration. With the SPOTTERON Co-Use Program, initiatives, researchers, or NGOs can collaborate on using the toolkit for own data collection and community engagement, and get independent access to the data in their own country/region of activity.
We would be happy to hear from you!
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