Knox County Parks and Recreation Adventure Guide

My primary goal with illustrative choices was to adequately represent the rich variety of children served by KCPR programming. I want every child in the county to find some opportunity to see themselves represented in some capacity by the children depicted in this book. This was assisted heavily by referencing my photographic work with county events, and by deliberately representing an array of experiences associated with age, race/ethnicity, religious background, and disability status. 

The language here went through several cycles of consideration and rewriting. I opted to work away from the traditional "leave no trace" language both out of consideration for the status of humans as a part of an interconnected environment and with an understanding of parks as a space designed for human interaction with nature. I ultimately decided on language that mirrors what many children have already heard about shared public spaces like schools and libraries, which is generally to leave public spaces more or less how they were upon arrival.

Some additional inspirations for this book involved boy and girl scout experiences, so I wanted to involve some element of preparedness and planning for interacting with a natural space. The core elements are focused on physical safety and well-being, and the additional elements are focused on maximizing ways to engage with the nature space.

A significant portion of the space in this book is designed around field notes. This decision is based in early science engagement and youth citizen science philosophy, encouraging children to nurture a natural curiosity and develop a scientific and artistic way of approaching green-spaces. 

Also inspired by scout programs, and by a slight nostalgia for physical printed maps, this segment is designed to help children develop their sense of direction and spatial awareness.

There is a field guide associated with each set of field note pages. These are designed as jumping-off points to begin identifying species through observations. The recommended reading page at the end of the book recommends some more thorough field guides.

The design decisions associated with this page and the associated note pages were based around evoking the image of a local news weather report.

There are three pages of blank field note spaces for each mini field guide. The borders for each are made up of the example illustrations from the guide pages.

I wanted to incorporate some cultural awareness material into this project. Barn quilts are prominent parts of the Appalachian landscape, and I considered the presence of one in a flagship park to be a good opportunity to display the potential for parks spaces as cultural resources.