Introduction: Artistic cartographies and design explorations towards the pluriverse

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the idea of the pluriverse as one that acknowledges non-humans and treats nature as an equal ‘coauthor’ in the artistic process. It describes arts-based methods as facilitating the mapping and understanding of the human experience and thus offering new materialities for the youth to participate in processes driving for social change. The book explores speculative scenarios of the future of artistic research through an autoethnographic analysis of several case studies from diverse contexts based on a pluriversal approach to research practice, including technology, nature, humans and non-humans. It discusses public art as a way of presenting, redefining and expressing Arctic pluralism in Finnish Lapland. The book argues that recognising and celebrating knowledge plurality is necessary for greater university—community permeability, reciprocity and transformation and that design may be especially well positioned to foster such epistemic plurality.