The future is coming, Run!: re-authoring climate narratives through participatory action research

My project involved forming a small group to undertake critical participatory action research investigating young adults' perceptions of the climate crisis and their role in it. We used narrative and arts-based methods to facilitate a collaborative inquiry and generate accessible and shareable research products. Environmental Education research suggests that much of the climate messaging the public is exposed to is dominated by disempowering doom narratives Four co-participants aged 21-27 and I (26 at the time) worked together to identify, interrogate, and re-author some such narratives. The first component documents my research process and reflects on what I learned through it. Due to the nature of Critical Participatory Action Research, I learned things I didn't set out to learn about topics I didn't set out to explore. By letting my co-participants take me in directions I wasn't expecting, by listening to the stories they told, and reflecting on the ideas they shared, I allowed this process to change me as a researcher and as a person. I have written this paper to document and deepen my personal transformation. This is achieved through including my own and my co-participants' voices in reflecting on each phase of our research process. The second component is a participant created zine consisting of art which challenges unhelpful climate narratives and dystopian futures and explores new narratives and alternative futures. The third component of this thesis is an academic paper that identifies influences (including environmental education experiences) that contribute to the prevalence of unhelpful climate narratives and explores some of the effects that doom narratives have on ourselves and the world around us. For each negative narrative, we co-authored an alternative or counternarrative, and discussed the effects we feel these new narratives have on us personally and could, if they were broadly accepted, have on society. Through comparing and contrasting the doom and new narratives, I have generated a set of recommendations for facilitating environmental education experiences that empower students to organize and act in response to the climate crisis. These three components work together to allow the reader of this thesis to challenge unhelpful narratives around the climate crisis (and the nature of research and its role in the climate crisis) along-side my co-participants and me.