The Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr Torsten Ketelsen, attended The UWA School of Agriculture and Environment (SAgE) Silverscreen Science event on Tuesday 5th June 2018. The event saw the Australian premiere screening of the award-winning documentary “Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin”. The documentary explores the pressures and opportunities in the changing landscapes of urban nature across Berlin’s recent history; giving guests the opportunity to explore how we might rethink urban nature in Perth and Western Australia.
The documentary screening formed part of the teaching preparation for second-year UWA students who are preparing to embark on a two week field trip across Germany as part of their International Fieldwork in Geography and Planning unit.
For more information about the documentary see https://www.naturaurbana.org/
About SAgE Silverscreen Science
“Science has the power to change our world for the better. UWA’s Faculty of Science is harnessing this power to improve society, save lives and protect our environment”.
In keeping with this Faculty of Science ambition, our SAgE silverscreen science initiative is aimed at having accessible and intellectually rigorous debate around contemporary issues and challenges facing humanity.
Our inaugural event acknowledges that people, place and nature are at the heart of healthy cities and healthy urban futures. Although set in Berlin, this documentary raises challenging questions for cities around the world. For Perth, given our own distinctive legacies across history, continuing urban sprawl, and damage to our unique biodiversity, we need to rethink urban nature and plan differently for a healthy Perth now and in the future.
By building on our own local knowledge and learning from powerful stories from around the world, we can have a richer understanding of the people-place-nature relationship and respond to the contemporary growth pressures on our city. Natura Urban challenges us to consider how might we can rethink urban nature in the way we plan buildings, places, and communities here in Perth and across Western Australia. What would a healthy sustainable future for 21st century Perth look like? What can communities, planners, governments, and developers do to support healthy urban landscapes across the city?
