Hi, Chip.

Thank you for your interest in the community-centered aspect of our work! Broadly speaking, there are different levels of community involved in this project. First, there are the NOISE Project team members, who together form a culture that is rooted very strongly in a foundation of JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion). As individuals, each of us holds equal weight in terms of our input in conversations, and we strive to ensure on a continual basis that everyone feels safe and valued, and that their knowledge contributions are important to all of us.

Also, there are some organization-based groups with the NOISE Project, and each of these groups has a purpose and mission within their respective communities. These organization have their own funds of knowledge based on their strengths, resources, local community challenges, and other factors. As such, some of the specific inquiries are guided by insights that are revealed at this more local level and shared through collaboration and reflection with the wider NOISE Project team. 

Finally, we have the broader community outside of the NOISE Project team that we connect with directly in order to inform not only our inquiries, but also the types of resources we can provide to address the socio-economic, health, and environmental challenges related to noise pollution. The demographics and specific noise pollution issues of different places, and even for different individuals, are variable. As such, our inquiries and the resources we aim to provide are meant to be accessible and serve as at least a good starting point for anyone and everyone who wants to know about the health and wellbeing effects of noise pollution, as well as the relationship between noise pollution (and other environmental issues) and social justice and equity.

Best, Lisa (NOISE Project team member)

Greetings Chip,

Thanks for your interest and question. Our project strongly values the interests of the community. We constantly check in to make sure that the research and tools we develop are relevant to our communities.

This research project is led by 4 community co-principal investigators from across the country. Each of us has different community priorities and provides different backgrounds of expertise. We also have the opportunity to create our individual research, tools or opportunities for our communities. My organization in San Diego for example is interested in wellness. We wanted to understand how the outdoors and sound could be a solution to noise pollution. From this initial curiosity and interest, we began researching plant intelligence through plant music. We found that not only is there plant communication happening beneath the earth that can benefit or affect the ecosystem but that plants emit a certain frequency that can be translated through technology that can benefit our wellbeing.

Through COVID we found that gardens like ours can act as buffer zones against noise pollution and as places of refuge or sanctuaries. It's especially important for frontline communities to have a safe outdoor environment in urban cities.

Wow that is really interesting research Makeda. Is there somewhere I could read your work about plant frequencies? 

Shakuntala, thanks for your interest in our project.

Below I have a few links to blog articles we've written over the course of the project.

• "Music of the Plants"
• "The Time I spent with plants"
• Local Newspaper
• Plant Music sample

My community is also building a small website for our project in San Diego and we will feature it on our website. Meanwhile I invite you to keep up with the full project using our Noise Project website.

Thank you Rita,

Our Co-PI Bobby Wilson of Metro Atlanta Urban Farm is adamant that science is everywhere. We frontline community organizations don't separate culture and science. Yes Rita we live there too and thanks for recognizing that.

Hi Nancy! Thanks for this question. As someone who collaborates on the Noise project, I can say that the non-negotiables shaped the Noise Project tremendously. You can think of the non-negotiables as a community co-created IRB. The existence of our non-negotiables acknowledges that there are ethical and cultural considerations for doing research in communities that are not accounted for in the IRB. Having non-negotiables that are created by the community gives space for these considerations to be highlighted. This set of principles really impacts the project because they provide guidelines that institutional researchers are required to follow in order to ensure that the research is beneficial and respectful towards the communities we collaborate with. These principles shape how we do research, how we communicate with each other, and how and who disseminates our research! These are just a couple of ways that I personally see the project is shaped by our non-negotiables, but there are definitely many more.

Hi, Nancy.

I second all of Mateo's comments. In addition, I would also note that his response went from past tense (per your question about how the non-negotiables shaped the project) to present tense (These principles shape how we do research...). Although we set up the working agreements, non-negotiables, and our community framework from the start, they are an active component of our team's dynamic process, and we continually, reciprocally, give them life as they simultaneously serve to guide us. 

Finally, if you haven't already, we invite you to see our list of non-negotiables and the place they have within out process: NOISE Project Process. Our hope is that you and others in the STEM community, and in the community at large, will consider the benefit and significance of having these types of equitable and inclusive agreements in place to reflect a shared vision, mission, and values!

Greetings Shihadah / Shay,

First I'd like to commend you on the work you're doing in New York with women and young girls in STEAM. One of the ways that I see sustainability in this project is that we are each creating projects in our respective communities that can be integrated as core programs or tools for each of our organizations. Some of us are incorporating a similar set of non-negotiables for our organizations, others have created wellness toolkits for their community that can be used in the future, or activities around equity and noise, others like my organization have created an outdoor healing sanctuary. For my community, this sanctuary is our garden and with this project, we were able to intentionally create programming and add sound elements to create calming effects.

I feel that we are each committed to equity in science in our own way.

Thank you Makeda for your response and recognition of my work.

Hi, Dan.

Thank you for the positive feedback and for your question. As a member of the NOISE Project team, I would say that part of the answer to your question is in the question itself: we're actually practicing co-creation and co-production (i.e. these are not just goals on paper). We've all made a promise to listen and to speak our voices; to be sincere and also respectful; and to learn and grow in sometimes uncomfortable and unfamiliar ways, knowing that truly flipping the established approaches to science is a lot harder than talking about/planning/hoping for this change. We're all committed to the belief that there is a more equitable, diverse, inclusive, just, and—frankly—valid way of doing science than we've been exposed to. And this shared commitment is a vital component to making each of our team members know that we have a unique and important role in this project and in this process, as well as a role to serve for all of those who are willing to learn from our experience.

Best, Lisa

Thanks for sharing your insight!

Shakuntala, you understand it completely.

Yes, collaborations and co-creation can be challenging. We're all from different parts of the country and have different backgrounds. Community-based organizations working with dominant culture institutions can be challenging too but we valued the work that we're doing because we're living the mission. The  To meet these challenges we adapted working rules based on the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing

• Be inclusive
• Emphasize on bottom-up organizing
• Let people speak for themselves
• Work together in solidarity and mutuality
• Build just relationships among ourselves
• Commitment to self-transformation

We have been committed to our mission: to equitably and inclusively transform the sciences through underserved community voices and perspectives.

Hi Leah,

Most of the Community Based Organizations that are a part of this project we're also part of another NSF funded project where we formed as ICBOS and created our research protocols and materials around creating equitable and authentic collaborations between science institutions and community-based organizations. The NOISE project does have a few new members which some of us have collaborated with before. We have members whose first language is Spanish and we always make sure everything is understood by providing translation when asked as well as translated material. We also make space to showcase our various talents including those that are artistic to disseminate our work.

And yes I believe you are referring the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing. I'd like to also invite you to our website where we show various processes that we've adapted to the project.

Thanks!

Hello, John.

Thank you for the acknowledgement of the value of co-creation in research paradigms! SONYC is a great citizen science research example, and there are indeed many similarities between that project and what many other citizen science projects are doing in terms of incorporating citizens into science. Their focus on noise pollution, of course, dovetails with ours. I would highlight, however, that a crucial distinction between their work and what we're presenting lies in the people and the process of our research. Our People page on our website looks very different from nearly all other citizen science research projects. Our process is grounded in the notions of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion—at all levels from the inside out, not just the public that we invite to join us.

Thanks again for thinking of how our work connects with that of some many other important projects going on around us. We definitely value the benefit of sharing support with other STEM projects! And we're hopeful that what we're doing isn't just a step forward, but becomes a reality in the here-and-now for all who embrace the co-creation process.

Hi Sarah, Thanks for your comment! The cool thing about this project is that it isn't about involving community - it is about the communities leading! Makeda and Berenice from the WorldBeat Center, John Annoni from Camp Compass Academy, Bobby Wilson from Metro Atlanta Urban Farms, and Tanya Schuh from Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio are co-Principal Investigators and there are a total of 15 community leaders making all decisions and shaping the project. 

Greetings Marley,

Thank you for your interest. The local knowledge is light, power and is amazing when you co-create, the results that can be obtained are amazing.

Greetings Lydia,

Some of the images that you see are from our annual in-person meeting. Last year, of course, we weren't able to meet. Throughout each year of the project, we work remotely from our various locations and meet online and on the phone "a lot". We have full project meetings and working group meetings to help us advance our research and necessary decision-making. During the pandemic, we continued to strive for consensus and even more embrace solidarity and mutuality amongst ourselves. In the early part of the pandemic, we allowed ourselves to honor each of our community's and organizations' needs. Each of our four Co-PI communities had different priorities and as we adapted so did each of our site projects. Here in San Diego, our project programming went virtual with online streaming.

Thanks so much for your interest.

Hi Lydia,

My name is Mateo and I work with the Noise project! Supporting everything Makeda has shared, I wanted to add a comment because it's been so interesting to see how this project took on pandemic work with so much patience, care, and intentionality. One thing that was cool for me to witness was that our project didn't seem to struggle as much when we had to switch over to fully virtual work. Logistically speaking, it did not feel as overwhelming as I noticed it was for my friends and colleagues in their own projects and work. When I thought about this I realized that by working to communicate in ways that were inclusive and accessible, our project had basically already implemented the tools necessary to accommodate for a global pandemic! We were already used to using all methods of communication (email, text, phone calls, scheduled meetings, unscheduled meetings, surveys, polls, video calls) to work. This came from the fact that we aim to have communication be accessible to everyone even when project members are working in different time zones and work schedules. I found that switching over to fully virtual work gave me an opportunity to reflect on how intentional we were with communication and how central that is to our collaboration! 

Thanks for your question :)

¡Hola Cecilia! ¡Que proyecto tan importante! Me preguntaba si pudieras hacer algunos comentarios sobre cómo ha sido el proceso de incorporar a miembros de la comunidad en proyectos como el suyo. ¿En que maneras se ha beneficiado el integrar conocimiento comunitario a proyectos STEM? ¿Han visto algunas formas de organización mas colaborativas?

Lo pregunto porque en nuestra investigación hemos observado que aprender para beneficiar a una comunidad es un propósito común del aprendizaje en algunas comunidades mexicanas, indígenas y otros grupos que no han sido representados históricamente en espacios como las universidades.

Gracias, Josmar, por tus palabras. También nos enorgullece trabajar lado a lado con comunidades y líderes como tú que centran la equidad y la inclusión en todo lo que hacen.