Educational art project Life-Giving Seagrass is devoted to Seagrass protection in the Philippines and supports local community educational programs by Big Blue Network.
The exhibition of local Dumaguete artists Cil Flores and Angelo Delos Santos represents the beauty and fragility of marine animals and their habitat.
While working on the project, the team from Caus Planet visited a Big blue Network marine summer camp in Zamboanguita and spent a day taking video of the learning process and activities with the kids. The resulting seagrass film was shown during the opening of the exhibition and is now available online.
An educational brochure and posters were designed to help raise awareness about seagrass protection in the Philippines. You can download it from the links below.
All original artworks were displayed in The Flying Fish Hostel (Dumaguete city) during 2 weeks from 30 of June until 14 of July 2019. After were transferred to Natura Spa Dumaguete, to the old Spanish house, until the end of July.
The marketplace with promotional items, art prints and organic bags was arranged during the opening of exhibition.
Big Blue Network team holded educational activities with visitors with seagrass identifying through the foldscopes.
Seagrass theme has a lot to explore. As a real plant they have their own root system, flowers and seeds which artists highlighted in their art. It is the habitat to many fish and invertebrates, and the main food source for such creatures as green sea turtles.
To promote Dumaguete artists and attract more people to the opening of exhibition we created video teaser of the event.
“As an artist, I want to help raise awareness and inform the viewers of the importance and protection of seagrass through my art. The world is already suffering from climate change and I want to play my part and use my art to relay messages about the current state of our seagrass and the environment. I am also doing this to inspire artists and other people to take a stand and get involved in protecting our ecosystem.” — Cil Flores.
“I combine sea creatures, corals and seagrass in my artworks because it is my way of showing people that in order to protect marine lives, we also need to protect their habitat. I chose pen and ink to express the beauty of wildlife in black and white.” — Angelo Delos Santos.
Apart from local Facebook groups our project was featured in PNA Newsroom, Philippine News Agency and Dumaguete Metro Post.
We are really grateful that we had such opportunity to promote local Dumaguete artists and to support environmental protection organisation in the Philippines.