Bodies of water, bodies at sea: The sea is all around us

Beyond community engagement: Transforming dialogues in art, education and the cultural sphere is part of the Transformative Pedagogies in the Visual Domain series. This new series is underpinned by the premise that transformative pedagogies are not limited by geographical, institutional or disciplinary boundaries and that the 'visual' is a powerful tool for igniting the quest for knowledge and understanding across many different disciplinary areas. This book will reconsider fundamental questions about relationships between community engagement, art and education within cultural spheres. The focus of this chapter is the artwork The Sea is All Around Us (2015), a multi-layered project that acknowledges and raises awareness of the often difficult and dangerous working lives and journeys of seafarers by making visible their role in transporting commodities, materials and objects to and from Australia's shores. The Sea is All Around Us aims to make a personal connection with a mobile community of seafarers, by using an aesthetic object ' a souvenir ' as a vehicle of welcome and connection. The continuing project was initiated through a performative installation at the Mission to Seafarers in Melbourne's Docklands in 2015, and continues through a website which traces the mobile life of seafarers using customised and trackable souvenirs (www.sensingtheremote.net) The ongoing life of the project reveals ways in which objects can hold and carry meaning, trigger intangible, affective qualities and forge connections between people and place. Combining creative practice as research approaches, of drawing, interaction, writing and design together with an interdisciplinary theoretical framework from cultural geography and tourism, the project tests the potential for a designed artefact to activate social networks that cross geographic boundaries and borders of occupational isolation.