How do we create a space that inspires engagement and action around water? In #OpenRivers, Aron Chang writes about his work with the Civic Studio and the Water Leaders Institute, explaining how installations of big river drawings using painter's tape invite people into environmental learning.

Looking for reading that will give you hope, joy, & connection to people and place? Open Rivers Issue 28 | Mississippi River Open School draws together practices and strategies for social connection, action, and restoration that reinvigorate social and ecological communities along the Mississippi.

Open Rivers welcomes participants from any university and any graduate program to join its Graduate Student Committee. Members will gain professional experience in digital media, editing, and publishing while exploring public scholarship. Learn more at openrivers.lib.umn.edu/gsc/.

In his intro to #OpenRivers Issue 28, guest editor John Kim explains the power of solidarity programs to help people reconnect with each other and with other-than-humans. Based on his experiences, Kim argues for educational practices to respond to "the geosocial disaster that unfolds around us."

We are pleased to announce #OpenRivers Issue 28, featuring work from the Mellon-funded Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange. These ambitious pieces offer strategies for reimagining education, invigorating our connections to place, and confronting environmental challenges.

Never miss an issue! Open Rivers Issue 28 will be released to our subscribers in early April. Subscribe now (for free!) at z.umn.edu/ORsubscribe to be sure you receive these stories fresh in your inbox.

Thanks to all who joined #OpenRivers at the @umnengagement.bsky.social Public Engagement Conference for our workshop on writing about community-engaged work in ways that are accessible & stimulating for campus & community audiences. Reach out to learn more and help our vision come to life!

As we approach #OpenRivers Issue 28, let's look back through the thoughtful work in last fall's Issue 27. As editor Laurie Moberg writes, its articles offer "the prospect of seeing the conditions of our environment a little differently, widening our scope, and animating potentials for the future."

Flying out of MSP for Spring Break? Be sure to check out poet and #OpenRivers author Laura Rockhold's two exhibits in Terminal One: Minnesota Waters, at gate E8, and Minnesota Landscapes, at gate F10. You can also read her moving essay "Do You Know Where You Are?" in #OpenRivers Issue 27:

To commemorate International Women's Day, we invite you to explore these aritcles from our Women and Water series. Through scholarly inquiry and personal testimony, across geographies and disciplines, these authors challenge and deepen our understanding of women's relationship with waterways.

As #BlackHistoryMonth draws to a close, we are proud to offer this collection of #OpenRivers pieces from our archive that celebrate and uplift Black perspectives, frame water and place around Black art, song, and culture, and offer theoretical frameworks for building an environmentally just world.

In #OpenRivers Issue 13, Lisa Marie Brimmer calls When They Blew The Levee "a lyrical baseball bat... for the residents of Pinhook, Missouri to wield" in the wake of their all-Black town's intentional flooding at the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers. #BlackHistoryMonth #EnvironmentalJustice

Minneapolis prides itself on the egalitarian character of its parklands. In this article from #OpenRivers Issue Six, however, Kirsten Delegard and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg expose how property deeds and restrictive covenants excluded people of color from homeownership around parkland. #UMNProud

In this peer-reviewed article from #OpenRivers Issue 21 (Spring 2022), Ayooluwateso Coker shares her journey to becoming an environmental scholar, outlining the immense hurdles Black scholars in STEM fields face and offering solidarity, advice, and hope to her peers. #BlackHistoryMonth #UMNProud

As climate change-fueled disasters destroy communities and climate grief and despair abound, Marceleen Mosher's review of All We Can Save from #OpenRivers Issue 27 shows how the anthology can be a guide toward a hopeful, intersectional, and powerful climate justice movement.

In this #OpenRivers feature from 2021, Trinity Ek uses Minneapolis' Bassett Creek, a waterway whose course once marked a redlining boundary, to examines how waterway restorations can honor historically-disempowered communities and promote ecological and community health. #BlackHistoryMonth #umnproud

As a digital journal, #OpenRivers understands the way images and media shape our work. For example, Vivek Ji's photography of his pilgrimage around the Narmada River brings clarity to both the river's spiritual significance and the ways human activity has damaged it. Read it at tinyurl.com/24tv9znd

For centuries, Black American communities have been forced to occupy environmentally marginal areas. From #OpenRivers Issue 2, Richard Mizelle, Jr. offers Princeville, NC as a case study of an all-Black town that persevered against environmental challenges and racial violence. tinyurl.com/2xrfvdxc

In #OpenRivers Issue 27, @sigmac.bsky.social and Juli Clarkson's peer-reviewed feature, Rivers as Creative Ecologies, explores how artists and scholars can move from seeing rivers as inanimate bodies of water to seeing them as cocreative forces. openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/rive...

At Open Rivers, we are humbled to have worked with so many incredible authors in 2024. We invite you to explore a few featured articles from a multitude of perspectives that demonstrate what Open Rivers does best: transform the conversation around water and environmental injustices.

Laura Rockhold, a Minnesota poet and visual artist, writes about how her experiences with Dakota leaders, culture, and language have shaped her artistic connection with Bdóte, the sacred meeting place of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. More at: openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/do-y... #umnproud

Vivek Ji shares the experience of his recent Narmada Parikrama, a storied pilgrimage around the Narmada River. He contrasts the river's spiritual and historical significance with the damage to the ancient basin from dams, deforestation, and climate change. openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/narm...

Reviewing "All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis," Marceleen Mosher praises the work's breadth of voices, especially its perspectives from outside academic spaces. It's a "prescient read for all," she writes. #umnproud openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/all-...