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Tell Your Climate Story Workshop
November 10, 2023 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST
What is your climate story? Our personal experiences often force us to confront what it means to live in the midst of ecological collapse—unseasonably warm fall days, a shoreline much different from our childhood memories, a sunny afternoon blotted out by wildfire smoke. And yet, we also encounter the whirr of new green technologies, the collective fervor of a youthful protest chant, and community gardens thriving against all odds.
Are you interested in learning how to grapple with our present and imagine radical ecological futures through storytelling and writing? RSVP to join us for a virtual 90 minute writing workshop facilitated by Jason Davis, director of the Climate Stories Project. This event kicks off a new consortium for climate storytelling on the Ecological Design Collective platform and beyond: The Climate Imaginarium, a collaboration between Grist Magazine, the Columbia Climate Imaginations Network, and the EDC. Stay tuned for future opportunities and collaborations with the Imaginarium as it begins to unfold!
About the event:
This climate storytelling workshop will be hosted online through the Ecological Design Collective platform (kindly RSVP by Wednesday, November 8th at the latest for joining instructions; you’ll have to create an account and join the EDC in order to RSVP). For this climate storytelling workshop, participants will learn about climate storytelling and begin writing their climate stories. Participants will be asked to follow a structured writing prompt format which elicits observations of the changing climate, emotional responses to climate change, and motivations to confront the climate crisis. Attendees will then share their stories with a partner or with the group and discuss strategies for using climate storytelling to promote positive ways forward through the climate crisis. Writers will come away with deeper engagement with their personal responses to climate change, increased confidence in their ability to speak with others about the changing climate, and an enhanced conviction to confront the climate crisis.
Although no prep work is required for participants, attendees are encouraged to browse existing climate stories published on the Climate Stories Project website.
About the facilitator:
Jason Davis is a musician, teacher, and the director of Climate Stories Project, an educational and artistic forum for sharing personal stories about climate change. He leads workshops for students, organizations, and community members who learn to share their own stories of the changing climate. Jason also writes and performs original music which incorporates the recorded voices of people from around the world speaking about their personal responses to the climate crisis, with the goal of helping participants and audiences engage with climate change as an urgent human story. Jason teaches music and research methods at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He holds a doctorate in Performance Studies from McGill University and a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida.
About the Climate Imaginarium:
The Climate Imaginarium is an arts and storytelling consortium established between the Climate Imaginations Network at Columbia University, Imagine 2200 at Grist Magazine, and the Ecological Design Collective. The Imaginarium comprises a myriad of collaborators and partner organizations, including Climate Stories Project, whose workshop will inaugurate the Imaginarium’s virtual community space on the EDC platform. The virtual community space will operate in parallel with a physical community space, currently in development in New York City. We hope you’ll join our community, whether virtually or in person, as we continue to weave together opportunities for collaboration, publication, exhibition, learning, research, engagement, and collective imagination in the weeks and months ahead. Check out our website and description below, stay tuned for more Imaginarium programming, and say hi on the EDC group page!
Here’s more on our new Climate Imaginarium:
We leverage storytelling for a regenerative future.
We’re a consortium of climate arts and storytelling organizations leveraging our collective power to imagine transformative and regenerative futures.
The science is irrefutable. Before we’re able to pass legislation and change the system, we need to evolve our culture and dream as big as we can.That’s where we come in. Our consortium is cultivating a community for climate storytellers of all mediums to convene and collaborate, while providing space for learning, exhibition, and engagement with the public.
The consortium also produces climate stories across a range of narrative media — writing, film, theater, immersive media, and more — while informing new pedagogies and research with a measurable social impact.
Let’s dream a better future together.
—The Climate Imaginarium
Learn more at our website — and please join our EDC group!
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Please join us at the Climate Imaginarium for this first of many workshops and collaborations at the intersection between climate futures, the arts, and storytelling:
https://community.ecodesigncollective.org/groups/climate-imaginarium/