Ground Works is a platform for exemplary arts-inclusive research projects and reflection on the processes that drive interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Creating Knowledge in Common
Editors: Shannon Criss, Kevin Hamilton, and Mary Pat McGuire
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Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Submit by January 30, 2026
Special Issue: Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Guest editor: Dr. Elizabeth McLain
Ground Works launches its Reco(r)ding CripTech online archive...
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Ground Works Pilots CRediT-FAIR Framework for Non-Authorial Contributions
December 2, 2024
Ground Works staff has adapted the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) Contributor Roles Taxonomy, known as CRediT.
CRediT has gained traction in sc...
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here-ing: Place-based, Artistic Research at a Biological Field Station
here-ing is an environmentally embedded artwork by Janine Antoni commissioned by the Spencer Museum's Arts Research Integration (ARI) program in collaboration with the University of Kansas Field Station and School of Architecture & Design. Working across architecture, art, audiology, and environmental science, this project offers embodied and culturally responsive practices, including place-based and artistic research methods, for reconstructing healthier native grasslands and understanding the ecological relationship between the environment and human body. here-ing is a three-acre labyrinth stretching across three former farm fields and designed in the shape of the anatomy of the human ear. The creation of here-ing was a multi-year process that began with a prescribed burn, plotting the design into the fields, and carving a large-scale finger labyrinth onto a native limestone boulder placed at the trailhead to orient visitors and increase accessibility. Visitor footsteps on the labyrinth trail create and maintain the path for those who come after them. If the path ceases to be walked, it will be reclaimed by the tallgrass prairie and only remain through story. Visitor participation in creating the piece ultimately demonstrates the nature of good land stewardship: a committed relationship to nature and place that bridges diverse cultures to better nurture the land. Since its inception in 2021, here-ing has continued to evolve through public participation, re-seeding, and ongoing workshops and education around collaborative Indigenous-led cultural burns to stimulate healthy native species regeneration.
Prairie Block: Designing and Building Community Resilience in the Heartland
Design for community resilience requires a multi-dimensional approach addressing the three pillars of sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental. The Prairie Block project in Lawrence, Kansas integrated all three pillars in a novel way to generate a replicable model of sustainable design that can be used in other communities.
Within the context of a U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-identified low-moderate income neighborhood, vanguard public, private, nonprofit, and institutional partnerships were facilitated by university design-build architecture students, faculty, and a community leader. Through this constellation of partners, a formerly under-utilized park was transformed in five months and with zero budget into a thriving neighborhood landmark complete with a community orchard, shade structure, walking trails, and creek access.
The catalyst of this revitalized public amenity is Kaw Pavilion, an artistic shade structure fabricated by the students that honors the area’s Indigenous and other early inhabitants while celebrating the neighborhood’s iconoclastic character and strong activist identity.
Other park improvements include a 35-tree free-fruit community orchard and walking trails, with prairie plants and carved limestone benches, that connect the playground and the creek. Subsequent park additions include a new splash pad, public restroom, and bus stop. The park now serves as a node on a trail network that connects all the neighborhoods in Lawrence.
Prairie Block strengthens a sense of place and fosters sustainability on economic, social, and environmental levels by pulling together shared history, present-day neighborhood identity, and connections to the rest of the city. The Parks and Recreation Department is replicating this partnership and multi-faceted design model in other low-moderate income neighborhoods on the trail system.
Choreografish: an arts-based, virtual reality, anxiety intervention for autism
Featured Commentaries
Invited commentary on Vibrant Ecologies of Research
Cripping Media Art Ecologies
By remaking the creative design cycle through an accessibility and disability justice lens, Leonardo CripTech Incubator scaffolds new forms of artistic access. Bringing a disability justice lens to art-and-technology research practice and to this incubator’s design, we position ourselves as facilitators in this vibrant ecology, calling up other critical voices in this process.
Reviewer commentary on Choreografish: an arts-based, virtual reality, anxiety intervention for autism
Reviewing “Choreografish” for Ground Works
Lise Worthen-Chaudhari
July 2021 · 10.48807/2022.1.0006
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