Patrick Fuery
Patrick Fuery is a professor and Director of the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at Wilkinson College of Arts in California. He received a grant for “Rewilding and the Invisible.” This project will explore the concept, philosophy, and actions of rewilding through an awareness of the “invisible” presence of animals. He writes:
As humanity becomes more isolated and removed from the wild, strategies are needed to re-engage with those very elements—broadly animals, and the exemplar here of the wolf—that are crucial to this rebalancing. The distance humanity has acquired from wilderness has come at the cost of a diminishing natural world and a loss of our own inner sense of the wild.
Since he received this grant, Patrick has presented his rewilding research at the Green Institute Conference ‘Nature is Calling’ (June 2021) and the United Nations’ International Conference on Sustainable Development (Sep. 2021). He is set to publish his work in an upcoming book in early 2023. As for his original goal with the project, Patrick took college students and faculty to the Wolf Connection sanctuary in Palmdale, California. While there, Patrick and the visitors he brought focused on the ways human interactions with wildlife can impact our own understandings of ourselves, particularly through “wolf therapy.” Additionally, Patrick had his students engage and learn about the social work done by the organization itself.
