Partner Spotlight: Conversational Reflections on Rambles and Art-Science Engagements

About this Conversation with Kim Boustead and Jessie Merriam

Community-engaged research has been a priority of the MSP LTER from its inception in 2021. Indeed, one of its core research areas is Community Engagement Assessment. From the outset, the Community Engagement Assessment Team has served a dual role at the MSP LTER—one in research and the other in direct community engagement. Its researchers explore how inclusive research shapes both scientists and the communities where they do their work, over the long-term. As part of this effort, the team has involved community leaders and local artists to facilitate respectful and reciprocal relationships between the site’s researchers and the Twin Cities community. Artists-in-Residence Kim Boustead and Jessie Merriam were central to providing opportunities for such researcher-community engagement throughout their work from 2023 to 2025.

In this interview, Kim and Jessie reflect on their work with the MSP LTER over the past two years, the pitfalls and triumphs of community-engaged research, and look to what’s ahead.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is a Ramble?

Kim: All of the Rambles we did were proofs of concepts—trying to demonstrate how a site-specific event with an art activity could help connect people with scientific and lived experience of an ecological issue. We also experimented with methods of building comradery between researchers with internal Rambles. At every event we brought an ongoing Mississippi River embroidery project to different spaces—which we called the LTTR (Long-Term Table Runner).

Jessie: And the core idea is that if your hands are busy, you can talk more freely and find connection. If you are embroidering the shape of the river with buckthorn berry-dyed thread, making DIY box fan filters while discussing air quality monitoring, printing ash tree bark eaten by emerald ash borer, then you get to talking about those issues and learning from each other and building trust differently than in an expert-recipient format.

Ramble Highlights

Kim: What were your favorite Rambles?

Jessie: I thought the Tamales y Bicicletas (TyB) Ramble demonstrated the benefits of building trust at a site, and pairing a partner’s questions with relevant LTER skillsets. The garden is in the East Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis, with a legacy of arsenic and lead in the soil from the Roof Depot site and other industries, and air pollution from the Smith Foundry (now closed) and the several highways that surround it. MSP LTER postdoctoral researcher Lindsey Kemmerling and I had met at the garden as volunteers in 2022. She was already working with them to test their soil and find grants for raised beds. For the Ramble, we brought together: ecologists studying lichen air quality monitors; Information Manager Mary Marek-Spartz, who understood the data collection and wifi needs for digital air quality monitors; the East Phillips Health team to make DIY box fan air filters; and Jose Luis (TyB Executive Director) had us all plant tomato seeds for the garden. It was cool to have the mix of talking about data and its use to create change while poking our hands in potting soil.

Kim: And we were playing around with printmaking using inks made with river clay and garden soil.

Jessie: Yes, the clay was much better than the soil for printmaking!

Kim: We are often playing around with ink and expanding on workshops we’ve developed. The Beltrami Park Ramble about urban contaminants in soil (in the Summer of 2024), took place at a dye garden I started. We had flower pounding, botanical printmaking, and herbalist Emily Pearson Ryan guiding walks about edible weeds and leading a related bingo game.

Jessie: Participants liked hearing from Emilie Snell-Rood (MSP LTER Urban Contaminants Team), who did an informal talk about soil remediation, calling on other knowledgeable people there to add information.

Kim: The Crosby Farm Ramble was my favorite. First of all, it's personally one of my favorite parks to visit. Before collaborating with the LTER, I, and probably many others, had no idea that there was a long-term silviculture study on-site. We created a site-specific art activity for folks: printing bandanas using tree rings slices or “cookies” of ash and other trees. To prepare for the event, we toured the site with Rebecca Montgomery, one of the project leads. She helped us chainsaw some downed ash trees to make the cookies, including some with emerald ash borer galleries in the bark.

Jessie: And at the Ramble, Rebecca led a group through the park to visit the silviculture plots. We stopped in a clearing where many ash had died from emerald ash borer, and talked about how the forest changes in the open gaps. We visited a control plot with native trees, and the plots with native tree species from farther south, and then southern species that were really taking off—sycamore and pecan. We read the “resistance,” "resilience," and “transition” interpretive signs made by Willard Malebear (developed in partnership with Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi) and talked about the community caretakers of the plots who’ve been invested in tracking the trees’ growth and other phenology since the start of the experiment. Being able to walk through the trees, touch the leaves, see fallen ash—all of these issues of disturbance and change sunk in more.

Kim:  There were some really gorgeous bandanas made, and we hoped folks would want to tell the story about how they made them and what they learned about the silviculture study.

Jessie: And the tree-ring printing has been a great engagement tool for connecting people to tree ecology.

Learning from Experience

Kim: The salt Ramble last spring was the first Ramble where we worked with an MSP LTER team to identify an issue and an audience from the start. The other Rambles had been prototypes that were open to anyone from the public. But, for this one, we encouraged the Surface Waters Team to identify their ideal audience. They wanted to have watershed management folks there to put their heads together about salt impacts on fresh water. There was a lot of back and forth about the best images to convey data, usage rights for maps and graphs, and what meaningful audience participation would look like. I was designing visuals to make what the team shared more approachable.

Jessie: We ended up inviting watershed managers and the general public, but I think we learned that it can be helpful to develop iterations of an event for different audiences, and to think about giving more notice for specialized audiences.

Kim: There are different levels of “community” that the MSP LTER engages with—and being clear about the audience helps everything else fall into place, including what information makes sense to share, what the visuals are, and what the activities are.

Jessie: In the future we can build on the Salt Ramble framework, and other Rambles, to have outreach formats that engage the different communities of concern and inform data collection and data representation. Ideally, we can also return to the same settings to share progress as research continues and community concerns evolve.

Looking to the Future

Kim: That brings us to your new position.

Jessie: Yes, my new title is Community Engaged Research Coordinator with the MSP LTER,  based in the University of Minnesota’s Center for Changing Landscapes. I’m excited about doing illustrations and thinking about sharing data creatively. I’m also excited about connecting land-use history and cultural practice into ecology outreach and understanding local ecosystem concerns. We’ve done a lot of events that are open to the public, but I’m interested in inviting participants from a wider array of professional and community experience rather than just relying on self-selection. Programs like Tap Water Ambassadors and Science Deep Dive are also exciting to engage with in these conversations, involving teens who have their own investments in ecosystem research and protection.

Kim, you and I did our last internal Ramble together last December, using your natural ink play station. What are you working on this year? What are you excited about?

Kim: My freelance work has been a balance of graphic design, illustration, and workshops (similar to Rambles) that tie to environmental issues. I’ll continue doing this work and experimenting with fresh ideas. But I also am looking forward to finding time to work on personal art projects. A big project that I dreamed up recently will be an attempt to direct print (“gyotaku” style) as many Minnesota fish species as possible, both native and invasive, with the hopes of creating an educational art exhibit and book. The MN Fish Print Project will rely on partnerships to connect to folks who have fish I can print and who can contribute informational and anecdotal content. I started this in May and am really looking forward to working with and learning about all kinds of different fish!

Jessie: I love your fish work! And want to give a shoutout to the amount of work that you put into investigating materials—finding experts, finding sites, playing with ingredients. The workshops you create are built on hours and hours of exploration. You’re always on the lookout—pausing on a bike ride to gather more sumac for one more batch of ink…Reminds me of our very first Ramble, when we bonded with some MSP LTER grad students while clipping buckthorn shoots in the woods on Nicollet Island for the wreath-making workshop.

The LTER has inspired many connections! Including our upcoming collaboration with the Fairfax Beaver Lab: an educational beaver gathering and celebration featuring a beaver puppet parade! It will be a free event, September 27, 2026, 2:30-5:30pm at Graco Park (the day before BeaverCON comes to the Twin Cities). We will share more soon on the MSP LTER Events Page!