A Personal Totem is one for your own home. It could be on a balcony, in your garden, on your roof. Maybe it is hanging from the branch of a tree, or attached to a wall. But no matter the scale, all Totems share the common attribute that they are beautiful and attractive to both people and their targeted guests.

We imagine Personal Totems are smaller, lighter, and less complex than the other totems, but also more free in terms of their location, longevity, materials and integration with their surroundings.

A Community Totem is possibly a larger undertaking, involving a community group. With access to more resources, and shared spaces, a Community Totem could be more ambitious in scale, or involve multiple elements that reflect the diversity of the team.

Schools, nature societies, birding groups, neighbourhood groups, housing complexes - are all communities which could bond over creating new habitats for species with limited options.

Community Totems could be larger, and would need to be carefully designed and fabricated to take into account their community nature - height, safety, maintenance and lifespan start to become important considerations.

A Institutional Totem is a statement by a corporation of their commitment to the environment.

Combining public art with ecology by hosting living creatures, the Totems are a powerful message and medium that do all their own communications.

Institutional Totems provide a focal point to forecourts, courtyards, rooftops and sky terraces, and would involve a professional team of artists, ecologists, designers and engineers.

Institutional Totems have access to advanced materials and fabrication techniques through these professional services, and can be of impressive scale and dimensions.

In many cities there are percentages for public art requirements in construction projects. A Institutional Totem involving a named artist can satisfy both the cultural aspirations and the ecological commitments of an enlightened developer.

Civic Totems can be placed in the public domain, in major parks, plazas and nature reserves, as well as streets, playgrounds and on infrastructure.

Civic Totems can form part of an urban ecology masterplan, and be a tool to assist the spread of species from island refuges to reclaim the city as their territory.

Many species are unable to spread from their refuges due to a lack of nesting holes, which do not exist due to civic tree maintenance practices and safety concerns.

Civic Totems can be designed and engineered to the same standards as other pieces of urban infrastructure, such as light poles and telecoms towers, and so fit within the risk profile of the city.