Salt is something we encounter every day. It flavors our food, preserves medicine, and helps keep roads safe in winter. Yet this familiar mineral also offers a powerful way to think about ecosystems and the many ways humans shape, and are shaped by, the natural world.
Join us for an interdisciplinary workshop that explores salt as both material and metaphor. Supported by the 2025 a2ru Emerging Creatives Challenge Grant and presented in collaboration with the MSU Museum, this program brings together art, geology, and storytelling.
Participants will take part in the co-creation of an Indian salt painting and a crankie theater performance (a form of hand-cranked visual storytelling) with live music. Through these creative processes, the workshop invites audiences to reflect on how even a tiny grain of salt can reveal the complex ripple effects between people, landscapes, and ecosystems.
This program is in conjunction with the MSU Science Festival and MSU Museum exhibition The Science of Salt.