DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.24701.1 ISSN: 2732-5121

Soil, Sound, Song, Story, Site: The 5S method for soil literacy - Study protocol for a transdisciplinary participatory action research

Ana Fernández-Aballí Altamirano, Santiago Sánchez Cifuentes, Marta Herreros
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This study protocol introduces the 5S Method (Soil, Sound, Song, Story, Site), a transdisciplinary participatory action research framework designed to harness song heritage as a catalyst for soil eco-literacy. By integrating the head-heart-hand eco-literacy model crossed with a pluralist epistemological approach that values ancestral, emotional, and scientific knowledge, the 5S Method seeks to answer a central question: Can song heritage articulate and facilitate a place-based soil eco-literacy process that bridges literacy and stewardship while fostering intercultural and intergenerational bonds? This methodology aims to produce replicable tools for rural communities across Spain and Europe, rescuing field songs – which exist across cultural traditions – to transform soil care into a culturally resonant practice of collective stewardship. The 5S Method operationalizes this theoretical framework through a two-phase participatory action research design. The first phase, 5S Mapping, employs a triangulated approach, combining archival review, semi-structured interviews, and community workshops to populate the 5S Diagnostic Grid. This grid is populated with data across five thematic domains (Soil, Sound, Song, Story, Site) and three epistemological sources (Ancestral, Emotional/Embodied, Scientific) within the dimensions of Literacy (Head), Heritage (Heart), and Stewardship (Hand). The resulting data is spatialized using QGIS to produce a multilayered territorial map that visualizes the intersection of soil characterization, lived community experience and cultural heritage. The second phase, Co-creation of Cultural Anchors, translates these diagnostic insights into tangible cultural artefacts, such as re-signified field songs and digital storytelling installations. These anchors, co-produced in artist-researcher collaborations, serve as pedagogical tools in local cultural, technical and educational settings, aiming to embed soil literacy into daily life and institutional memory while fostering social cohesion among diverse community groups.

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