I loved bringing a community conversation to my moderation of one of AGU 2024’s main plenary sessions. The session, 2024 Arts & Science Plenary - What's Next for Corals?, featured NOAA coral reef ecologist, Derek Manzello, and acclaimed artist and ocean advocate, Courtney Mattison. The presentations explored the future of corals amidst the pressing challenges of climate change, through lenses of coral reef monitoring and ceramic sculpture. Throughout the conversation, I was able to bring in the audience at various points, asking questions that built from a general temperature check to deeper explorations around hope, despair, imagining radically, and how we can continue grow our capacity to care - both for corals and for the broader earth systems and creatures beyond them. The capture of the 400 person community conversation was made possible by game developer Good Games.

Photos from Dwight Owens & Louise Arnal: Orchestrators Extraordinaires.