Launching on Earth Day 2025 this fascinating creative collaboration brought together Dr Emmylou Rahtz from the University of Exeter and Phyllida Bluemel from Falmouth University to exploring how visual scale helps shapes our perceptions of nature.
Our 2025 FX Creative Exchange was‘Perspective Shifts’, a creative collaboration which brought together Dr Emmylou Rahtz, Research Fellow at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Environment and Human Health in Penryn, and Phyllida Bluemel, Lecturer in Illustration at Falmouth University.
Between April and July 2025, the pair explored the effect of scale and awe in nature, focusing on individuals' sense of orientation in relation to the environment. Together they examined how people perceive the world and their place within it, and how this affects their connection to the environment.
You can watch a short film about their collaboration below.
When Phyllida and I first met up, our conversation developed in a really exciting way. New ideas bubbled as we found parallels and new frames of reference for our existing interests, particularly with our shared fascination for shifts in perspective, albeit coming at this idea from slightly different angles. I’m delighted that we’ve been awarded the funding to take the conversation further and expand it through speaking with other people.
As well as collaborating with one another, the pair brought together the voices, expertise, and knowledge of researchers and academics from both Universities, as well as other specialists working with scale, to gain further insights into this idea from a variety of different viewpoints.
These conversations led the pair to co-produce an illustrated publication designed by Phyllida, which itself may play with scale, to poetically document these conversations and provoke readers to challenge themselves with scaled perspectives, and to perhaps experience awe and a sense of connectedness. If you would like to obtain a copy of one of the publications please contact artsandculture@exeter.ac.uk.
Emmylou and I have found there are so many overlaps in our thinking, and many more questions left to answer. We feel very lucky that this funding gives us the opportunity to go there. In fact, without this opportunity - we may never have crossed paths in the first place. I’m most looking forward to bringing other researchers into our discussions and being able to talk about and work with ideas that don’t fit neatly into any of the normal disciplinary boxes.
The project was part of the FX Creative Exchange programme, an initiative supporting collaborations between early-career/emerging researchers across the University of Exeter and Falmouth University. The programme aims to supports the development of a shared research culture around the themes of ecology, creativity, sustainability, and environment.
When art and science collaborate, new perspectives emerge and fresh ideas take flight. Early career researchers have the unique opportunity to bridge these worlds, creating innovations that challenge, inspire, and transform.
The FX Creative Exchange is co-funded through a partnership between the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), Falmouth University, and Arts and Culture, University of Exeter. You can keep up to date with the project and find out more about the FX Creative Exchange here.
The heart of the FX Creative Exchange is curiosity. That’s what drives research and creativity. Bringing staff across institutions together to start something. Recognising and celebrating different ways of thinking and doing. To nurture ideas, to dream up new projects, to begin things. We really do hope that the FX Creative Exchange will continue to do this.
About Phyllida Bluemel
Phyllida Bluemel is an artist, writer, designer and lecturer in Critical Studies on the Illustration BA at Falmouth University. She mostly works to document ideas, research and projects through publication design and illustration. Recent collaborations have seen her working with The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University; Hospital Rooms; The Cornish Fish Producers Organisation and the Penwith Landscape Partnership Trust. As a researcher, she’s interested in scale effects and the visual history of the ‘view from above’, and its use in environmental thinking and rhetoric. Her ongoing research critically considers the persistence of spiritual, rhetorical and illustrative functions to aerial and cosmic perspectives.
About Dr Emmylou Rahtz
With expertise in realist research, epidemiology and qualitative methods – particularly creative approaches – Emmylou uses mixed methods research to explore to explore how social, cultural, and natural environments shape the mind-body connection. Her current work focuses on tackling health inequalities in access to urban green spaces, aiming to enhance physical and mental well-being through inclusive and equitable engagement with nature. She also has experience and an ongoing interest in researching transformative and spiritual experiences that arise from time spent in nature.
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