Envisioning Climate Change Adaptation Futures Using Storytelling Workshops

Abstract

Engaging people in preparing for inevitable climate change may help them to improve their own safety and contribute to local and national adaptation objectives. However, existing research shows that individual engagement with adaptation is low. One contributing factor to this might be that public discourses on climate change often seems dominated by overly negative and seemingly pre-determined visions of the future. Futures thinking intends to counter this by re-presenting the future as choice contingent and inclusive of other possible and preferable outcomes. Here, we undertook storytelling workshops with participants from the West Yorkshire region of the U.K. They were asked to write fictional adaptation futures stories which: opened by detailing their imagined story world, moved to events that disrupted those worlds, provided a description of who responded and how and closed with outcomes and learnings from the experience. We found that many of the stories envisioned adaptation as a here-and-now phenomenon, and that good adaptation meant identifying and safeguarding things of most value. However, we also found notable differences as to whether the government, local community or rebel groups were imagined as leaders of the responsive actions, and as to whether good adaptation meant maintaining life as it had been before the disruptive events occurred or using the disruptive events as a catalyst for social change. We suggest that the creative futures storytelling method tested here could be gainfully applied to support adaptation planning across local, regional and national scales.

A social science research agenda to accelerate public engagement in climate change adaptation

“…In recent years, climate change research has seen an increased use of a broad spectrum of citizen participation approaches. For adaptation research this has taken many forms including public dialogues ( Brisley et al, 2023 ), interactive art installations (e.g., Burke et al, 2018 ; Aragon et al, 2019 ) and futures thinking (e.g., Harcourt et al, 2021 ). Social science research has at least three significant contributions to make here.…”

Stories of hope created together: A pilot, school-based workshop for sharing eco-emotions and creating an actively hopeful vision of the future

“…Storytelling can be a powerful tool for helping people to engage emotionally with critical situations. Emerging evidence shows the benefits of storytelling workshops to help work constructively with overly negative public discourses about climate change (Harcourt et al, 2021). Telling stories about one's life and experiences is a powerful way to shift perception of oneself as it creates an opportunity to see life within a broader perspective, including sociopolitical and cultural contexts.…”

Using Science Fiction and Design Thinking in Workshops to Share Research Results With Low-Income, Marginalized Communities

“…Love and Fox (2021) describe science fiction as engaging readers in “social dreaming,” in which they can imagine various scenarios of positive and negative societies and contemplate social change. For example, to encourage creative thinking when imagining climate change adaptation and mitigation, Harcourt et al (2021) asked workshop participants to write fictional adaptation stories in which disruptive climate events had occurred. Through this exercise non-expert participants were able to deeply engage with the complex topic of climate adaptation and were able to view adaptation as a “here-and-now phenomenon,” an important implication given the influence of psychological distance on the lack of climate action.…”

“…Another (not mutually exclusive) form is a focus on stories about scientific results (Olson, 2015). Within the umbrella of results-focused stories, researchers increasingly use science fiction stories to communicate complex scientific information (Harcourt et al, 2021;Love & Fox, 2021;Negrete & Lartigue, 2010). Science-fiction stories have also been used in various other arenas and for varied purposes-for instance, by science educators to enhance student learning and problem-solving (Brake & Thorton, 2003;Negrete, 2005) and in local government to enrich deliberation on complex societal issues and build civic capacity (Love & Fox, 2021;McCurdy, 1995).…”