Case / Partnership in place

Before the story, the relationship.

A place-based collaboration grounded in Hawaiian Knowledge Systems, astronomy, and the responsibility of making something together.

A field team walking together near a volcanic landscape in Hawaiʻi — Field learning in Hawaiʻi. The case begins with the team in place rather than with a finished deliverable.

My role: Project lead · team leadership · synthesis
Partner: ʻImiloa Astronomy Center
Field work: September 2024 · Hawaiʻi
Shared outcome: Place-based exchange · Stars in the Sea

The real work was building the conditions for a good partnership.

Our visit strengthened an existing relationship between the Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA’s Universe of Learning, and ʻImiloa.

The purpose was not simply to collect material for a science story. It was to deepen our understanding of our partners’ work and consider what we could responsibly co-create.

At ʻImiloa, conversations with Kaʻiu Kimura and the team, time in the exhibits, and the planetarium’s One Sky Project opened a wider view of the partnership. Astronomy was present alongside language, genealogy, land, and community.

One distinction became especially important in my reflection: Hawaiian Knowledge Systems, rather than “culture” as an added layer of interpretation. The knowledge did not originate with our visiting team. Our responsibility was to listen, ask careful questions, and let what we learned shape the collaboration.

Help the team turn experience into responsible institutional action.

My role was not simply getting six people to the same place. It was helping translate a week of shared learning into decisions, language, and next steps our institutions could actually carry.

Lead the visiting team

I led our six-person team through a field collaboration shaped by our hosts’ knowledge of the place and the partnership.

Make the learning usable

I documented the visit’s themes and practical implications in a detailed reflection for leadership.

Frame a path forward

The wrap-up brought priorities, next steps, partner roles, and continuity into the same discussion.

Keep authority clear

Leading the project did not make me the author of the cultural knowledge, scientific contributions, or media work our collaborators shared.

03 / System

Connection before production.

The week worked as a sequence of relationships and responsibilities, not a content-gathering itinerary.

Pilina · Connection

Introductions and time at ʻImiloa established relationships and helped us understand the center’s approach to learning.

Kuleana · Responsibility

At Puʻu Huluhulu and Maunakea, conversations turned to the responsibilities of observatories and scientists, and the significance of place.

Moʻokūʻauhau + Aloha ʻĀina

Time at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park brought genealogy and love of the land into our learning. The landscape was not a backdrop.

Hoʻokipa · Hospitality

The final days brought us back to the table: sharing work, receiving feedback, and discussing a path forward together.

04 / Evidence

The landscape was part of the learning, not scenery around it.

The documentary record matters here because the project’s meaning lives in place, conversation, observation, and relationship before it lives in a deliverable.

Observatory domes above the cloud layer on Maunakea — Maunakea. Science infrastructure was encountered in relationship to place, responsibility, and the people who interpret both.

Members of the visiting team gathered beside the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi sign — At ʻImiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo, where the week began and returned.

Members of the group observing plants together along a trail — Observation in place. The landscape was part of the learning.

Team members listening during an outdoor conversation in a volcanic landscape — Conversation and observation were part of the field experience, not separate from it.

Stars in the Sea was an outcome, not the whole story.

The video places passages from the Kumulipo in conversation with an astronomical account of the early universe, stars, and galaxies.

The film is a shared outcome. The partnership behind it is the larger story: the conversations and responsibilities that shaped what we could make together.

Celestial Tour: Stars in the Sea title frame over a rocky coastline — Celestial Tour: Stars in the Sea. Cultural and scientific contributions remain with their respective contributors; see the published record on ViewSpace.

Listening changed language

The collaboration sharpened distinctions around knowledge systems, authority, and how institutions describe what they encounter.

Field learning changed planning

The team carried practical implications into discussions of collaborative media, youth engagement, feedback, and continuity.

Leadership changed shape

The most important answer was not always mine to provide; sometimes the work was holding space for what the team needed to carry forward.

06 / What travels forward

A partnership has to change how you work.

A finished resource matters, but so do the questions behind it: whose knowledge is shaping the work, who has room to respond, and what decisions change because of the collaboration?

Next: partnership as network infrastructure →