Harnessing speculative fiction to reimagine and rewrite our relationships to the climate crisis and the future of our local environments

ABSTRACT

In this article, we examine the fraught task of doing drama-based work on the climate crisis with youth in schools at a time of increasing climate fatalism. We focus on what a virtual, speculative fiction writing and performance workshop achieved with students in Coventry, Kaohsiung and Bogotá by inviting them to rewrite the futures of local environments. We harness the concepts of agency, memory, desire, repair and care as part of a deeply situated yet expansive aesthetics in which youth can imagine more hopeful futures in their worlds.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate crisis
• speculative fiction
• writing in role
• virtual drama
• desire
• care

Disclosure statement

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

Ethical statement

This work has obtained ethical approval from the University of Toronto Research Ethics Board, RIS Protocol #: 38014.

Notes

1 Each global site works with a local team in their own site. Our research network includes: Dr. Urvashi Sahni, Samarth Shukla, Aarti Singh, Felipe Pozo, Dr. Chialing Yang, Betsy Lan, Dr. Jorge Arcila, Fredy Gonzalez, Dr. Rachel Turner-King, Dr. Bobby Smith, Kelly Walsh, Dr. Myrto Pigkou-Repousi, Dr. Kathleen Gallagher, Dr. Christine Balt, Ashleigh A. Allen, Nancy Cardwell, Lindsay Valve, Celeste Kirsh, Munia Tripathi, Eddie Belanger, and Andrew Kushnir.

2 The participants of the research choose their own pseudonyms and their preferred social identity markers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant Number 435-2019-0298].

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Gallagher

Kathleen Gallagher is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a distinguished professor, and Director of the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her most recent book is, Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Alternative.

Ashleigh A. Allen

Ashleigh A. Allen is a poet, writer, researcher, educator, and doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research interests are curriculum development, teacher education, pedagogies of care, literacy, arts-based research methods, and queer theory.

Christine Balt

Christine Balt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. She is interested in drama education and arts-based research. She has published articles in Theatre Research in Canada, Research in Drama Education, Studies in Theatre and Performance and Children's Geographies.