Act of hope: a story of climate change and water puppetry performance along the Red River, Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This case study explores a collaboration between young people, researchers and artists which captured stories of how people in the Red River Catchment of Northern Vietnam are responding to climate change, and then used the local art of water puppetry to communicate those stories to a wider audience. The performance evoked the interdependence of the human and physical worlds, showing the impacts of climate change but also people’s adaptiveness. In this way, the piece highlighted how communities along the Red River are practising how to ‘live with hope’, as Gallagher describes it (2022), and how others could do so, too.

KEYWORDS:

• Red River Catchment
• climate change
• community resilience
• youth
• water puppetry

Acknowledgements

We would like to both recognise and offer a special thank you to all the Youth Union members involved in this project and their community members from Lào Cai, Phú Thọ and Nam Định who generously gave their time in supporting this project and whose stories shaped the research, including the water puppetry performance. We would also like to recognise and give thanks to all members of the Đồng Ngư Water Puppetry Troupe. Finally, we offer another special thank you to our project’s Youth Advisory Board members for their ongoing support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

The project received relevant University of Hull Ethical Committee clearance. All project participation was voluntary, informed consent was utilised throughout and withdrawal without consequence was possible up to project completion. Socially, culturally and ethically appropriate processes were also followed throughout (e.g. liaison with community leaders/verbal permissions).

Additional information

Funding

The project titled ‘Youth-led Adaptation for Climate Change Challenges in Vietnam: Social Action, Inter-generational and Inter-cultural Learning’ was funded by The British Academy [Grant number YF\190165], as part of their Youth Futures Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.