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GENERATIVE LISTENING

                                                                     Photo Credit: Presencing Institute

One of the main takeaways from our two weeks with Renee Lertzman was the importance of shifting from telling to listening. I’ll attempt to deeply internalize this guidance as I move forward with my work in environmental communication. The chapter, “Listen Deeply” in I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, emphasizes the value to be found in the practice of listening  (Hoggan, 2016, pp. 145–154). Hoggan shares the insights of Otto Scharmer, founder of the Presencing Institute. Scharmer guides students through a process of deep listening, empathetic understanding, and an openness to new possibilities (Hoggan, 2016). This signals a profound shift from environmental projects that are often focused on achieving a goal or imparting a specific message.

“Scharmer believes profound change and true leadership can evolve by moving through the deepening process he calls the Theory U which happens on three levels:

The level of the mind, which involves suspending old habits of judgement

Opening the heart and beginning to see problems through the eyes of other stakeholders, walking in others’ shoes

Gaining the capacity to let go and let come” (Hoggan, 2016, p. 148)

Scharmer’s method teaches people to truly listen, moving them through a process from judgmental listening (what you know) and factual listening (what you didn’t know) to empathetic listening (seeing through another’s eyes) and generative listening (allowing something new to emerge) (Hoggan, 2016, p. 151). I visited the Presencing Institute website and found several tools that can be useful for environmental educator-communicators to improve their listening skills. Here are a few examples: 

Shadowing: a way to gain a deeper, more intuitive understanding of a leader

Sensing Journeys: going into unfamiliar settings to experience the perspectives of various stakeholders

Stakeholder Interviews: an alternative approach to stakeholder interviews—conversations that help you see your own role through the eyes of the stakeholder

Case Clinics: generating new ways to approach challenges through a group process of capturing metaphors and feelings, mirroring, and generative dialogue. 

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INSIGHTS

Last week, as a group of environmental educators and communicators, we met to dig down through the layers of human behaviour and examine that which is underneath. Today, back at home, I’m sifting through our findings—what gems did we find that can guide us from here? Here is a collection of insights, thoughts, and advice offered by the ground-breakers in our field—Renee Lertzman, James Hoggan, Jeff Kiehl and others—that we can weave into our work and ourselves.

Bring the authenticity of who you are

Focus on guiding rather than righting, dialogue rather than debate

Be mindful of the attitudes that we bring to our work

Pay attention to the affect within settings

Things start to shift when we make space for acknowledgement

Meet people where they are

Tune in to what is underneath

How frame your question will define your answer

Aim for integration of approaches

Narrative can transcend polarization

Hope is in who we are, in our strengths and values

Develop the ability to tolerate uncertainty

Provide safety, containment and acknowledgement

Hold space around ambivalence

Truth-telling can be transformational

Think about how to disarm protective mechanisms

People need to be heard before they can move on to solutions

See anxieties, ambivalence, aspiration as doorways in

Shake up your own assumptions to see what else is going on

We have a fundamental need for reflection—create windows and spaces to reflect

Inviting, evoking stories

Use storytelling as an invitation to engage

Start where people are comfortable

Conversations change lives

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FROM THE INSIDE OUT

On the fronts steps of one of the faculty-in-residence houses on the RRU campus, Renee Lertzman and I had a talk about the connections between psycho-social approaches and social mobilization for climate action. Lertzman directed me to a thesis by a MAEEC alumni, Kerri Klein: Leading Change from the Inside-out: Negotiating the Psychosocial in Sustainability Engagement. 

Klein’s thesis explores the ways in which psychosocial dimensions are navigated by sustainability practitioners who are working on social mobilization projects. For her research, Klein conducted interviews with seven sustainability engagement practitioners from a range of professional backgrounds. She identified four different professional modes that “represent an overall strategy for how the practitioners…approach subjectivity in social change:” coercive, managerial, pluralistic and innovator (Klein, 2012). As I was reading Klein’s research outcomes, the modes reminded me of my own professional experience in the environmental field and also of transitioning through various learning approaches and subject matter in our MAEEC program.

The coercive mode is characterized by a stance in which the sustainability professional is trying to persuade others that his or her position and understanding of an issue should be adopted (Klein, 2012, pp. 52-55). Klein notes that this is often during a professional’s younger years (2012), when we’re more likely to be idealistic and eager to share our “new” insights with the world. A managerial mode emphasizes a technical approach to social mobilization and solving environmental challenges—if we just have the “right” information, we’ll be successful (Klein, 2012). The pluralistic mode reminds me of many of the concepts we explored in our Worldviews course: an acceptance of the input and ideas of others. In this mode, there’s an understanding that many valuable perspectives on a sustainability issue can coexist (Klein, 2012). However, there may also be anxiety or ambivalence around how to incorporate many different perspectives. Klein then provides an overview of the innovator mode, in which her participants demonstrated a deeper level of self-reflection. In this mode, practitioners are able to integrate various parts of themselves and see a link “between their personal transformation and the development of others” (Klein, 2012, p.65). One of the primary benefits of this mode is allowing for the “messy” parts of sustainability and a focus on “creating conditions for collaborative solutions and shared decision-making” (Klein, 2012, p.67). The innovator mode reflects many of the topics that we’ve been exploring in our class The Psychosocial Dimensions of Environmental Education and Communication.

Klein’s research provides a valuable guide for sustainability practitioners, facilitating further reflection on psychosocial approaches to their work, and on how engaging “with the ‘inner’ dimensions of sustainability” (Klein, 2012, p. 74) can improve their leadership capabilities.

Klein, K. A. (2012). Leading change from the inside-out: Negotiating the psychosocial in sustainability engagement (Order No. MR84892). Available from Dissertations & Theses @ Royal Roads University; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1287062632). Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1287062632?accountid=8056

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THE POWER OF LISTENING

Today, Dayna Reggero talked to our cohort about the goals of the Climate Listening Project: to create a safe place for conversations on climate change, to talk to real people about how they’re dealing with climate impacts and to provide a hopeful, positive, solutions-oriented focus (personal communication, August 10, 2016). It was valuable that she reiterated our in-class learning by highlighting the power of conversation. Conversations provide a doorway into talking with people from various worldviews about polarizing issues.

The Climate Listening Project appears to be an integrated project that takes approaches from multiple quadrants into consideration. From a socio-cultural point of view, Dayna Reggero, works with organizations to target and listen to specific groups of people such as farmers, faith groups and youth. Once the conversations take place and become a mini-documentary of sorts, that can then be used by the organization to reach more individuals in their target audiences. Many of the videos relate to a systems or social innovation approach, as the content of some videos depicts innovative methods of adapting to climate change. From an emotional quadrant perspective, Reggero’s approach reminds me of conversations we’ve had about approaching tough issues indirectly. Instead of asking, “How do you feel about climate change?” and potentially triggering a person’s defenses, she employs a subtle approach to the conversation. Reggero mentioned that she doesn’t even use interview prompts, rather, she just tries to be herself and allows the dialog to evolve as it will.

I enjoyed Reggero’s approach and intentions, but I feel a disconnect when I go to the website to view the videos. The production values of the videos don’t seem to reflect the same conversational tone—they have more of a glossy, flashy marketing quality. However, despite this, Reggero said that the videos are being well-received by the sponsoring organizations to reach their target audiences. She seems to have a genuine affection for the people she listens to—expressing that meeting them and hearing their stories are what sustains lasting motivation her work.

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RESISTANCE NARRATIVES

If you let your guard down for a moment and look—really look—at the feedback we’re seeing in the biosphere, it can feel like a world of pain is coming our way. But no one wants to hear that, particularly not from an environmental educator. Climatologist Jason Box caused himself all sorts of problems when sent out a tweet last year saying, "If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd" (Merchant, 2015). No one—especially the board of directors at his research institute—was impressed. Thus, a suggestion that we focus on extreme uncertainty or risk, can be interpreted as a radical idea.

In the midst of our study of narratives, I’ve been trying to better understand my own interest in this type of material, questioning, “Why is it that I have a desire to understand the darker side of the human relationship with climate change and environmental risk?” Fivush writes:

Narratives move beyond a simple script or chronology to imbue a sequence of actions with causal links that explain why one action follows another, and, critically, does so within a folk psychology that interweaves actions in the world with human thoughts, motivations, and emotions. (2010, p. 89)  

I started thinking about how a couple parts of my life story play into this orientation toward looking at environmental risk. First, when I was in my teens in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I couldn’t understand the resistance to environmental issues in mainstream culture. I thought, “Why isn’t everyone talking about what’s happening to the planet?” I was deeply frustrated when I observed the impulse for people to turn away and say, “that’s just too dark and depressing to really examine.” Secondly—and bear with me here—I married a punk rocker. Even though I myself missed the heyday of punk rock and don’t give off much of a Patti Smith vibe, I have always been attracted to those counter-culture voices and those who are willing to tell it like it is. A punk rock outlook can be described as a “resistance narrative:”

Through claiming the authority to author the narrative, and especially the evaluative moral stance conveyed in the narrative, resistance narratives can create chinks in the dominant narrative and begin to allow for the construction of new, more nuanced cultural narratives to emerge. (Fivish, 2010, p. 93–94).

Author, Buddhist and punk, Brad Warner, did a great job of presenting a punk rock narrative and explaining its relevance in his book, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality. Essentially, it’s in line with many of our current conversations on facing the dark sides of reality and finding safe spaces to sit with it. Warner writes, “The state of ambiguity—that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now—is enlightenment itself” (Warner, 2003).

References

Fivush, R. (2010). Speaking silence: The social construction of silence in autobiographical and cultural narratives. http://doi.org/10.1080/09658210903029404

Merchant, B. (2015). If We Release a Small Fraction of Arctic Carbon, “We”re Fucked’: Climatologist | Motherboard. Retrieved August 9, 2016, from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/if-we-release-a-small-fraction-of-arctic-carbon-were-fucked-climatologist

Warner, B. (2003). Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.

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WALK CAREFULLY & EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY

Image credit: The World is as Sharp as the Edge of a Knife (1993) by Robert Davidson

In a written accompaniment to his painting, The World Is As Sharp As The Edge Of A Knife, Haida Artist, Robert Davidson, shared a Haida proverb: “When you walk this earth you must walk carefully, underneath your feet is the knife’s edge, and you could fall off this world” (Davidson 1993). 

I kept thinking of Davidson’s painting, and how to understand it, during a short video clip of the film, The Great Turning. In the video, Johanna Macy highlighted the importance of being able to face the uncertainty in our world. She emphasized that we can’t say for sure where the complexity of our time will lead, and she drew attention to the power of not knowing. We don’t know if our visionary plans for green buildings and bike paths and renewable energy transition will be a success, and allow us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Macy gives the viewer permission to accept ambiguity in the circumstances where we most desire change; and more than that, she suggests that this is the very place that our power lies. Macy acknowledges that human societies are on the “knife edge of uncertainty,” but that this is where we come alive and can access our most creative abilities (TheGreatTurningFilm, 2010) .

When people ask, “When we look at the scale of the environmental problems we’re facing, how can I be optimistic?” or lament, “There’s really no hope, so why should I bother taking action?” it’s an opportunity for environmental educator-communicators to frame a different way of interacting with shades of future possibilities. Macy encourages us to embrace uncertainty and take action regardless, even without a money-back guarantee. This is a message worth sharing. More and more, I’m seeing that hope isn’t linked to some idealized future outcome. Instead, authentic hope is closer aligned with an outlook that embraces life’s journey along a knife-edge, with all it’s messiness, uncertainty and wonder.

Davidson, R. (1992). The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife. [Web log]. Retrieved from: http://www.robertdavidson.ca/writings.php

TheGreatTurningFilm. (2010, June 11). The Great Turning Film: Joanna Macy on Uncertainty [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/soZ7ztuqTdM

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SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED SILENCE

After reading Hoggatt’s article Climate Change and the Apocalyptic Imagination, I wanted to read more of his work. I came across the article, Socially Constructed Silence? Protecting policymakers from the unthinkable, in which Hoggatt and Randall discuss “socially constructed silences,” which have arisen among people working on climate issues, particularly scientists. They describe the reluctance of some climate scientists to speak publicly about their findings, especially in a policy context, since those who do are sometimes criticized by the media or their own colleagues (Hoggatt & Randall, 2016). Thus, this atmosphere of socially constructed silences takes root. Hoggatt and Randall provide excerpts of interviews with climate scientists to illustrate the issue:

As one scientist put it when discussing the goal agreed at the Paris climate conference of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C: “There is a mentality in [the] group that speaks to policy makers that there are some taboo topics that you cannot talk about. For instance the two degree target on climate change...Well the emissions are going up like this (the scientist points upwards at a 45 degree angle), so two degrees at the moment seems completely unrealistic. But you’re not allowed to say this.”

Worse still, the minority of scientists who are tempted to break the silence on climate change run the risk of being seen as whistleblowers by their colleagues. Another research leader suggested that—in private—some of the most senior figures in the field believe that the world is heading for a rise in temperature closer to six degrees than two.

“So repeatedly I’ve heard from researchers, academics, senior policy makers, government chief scientists, [that] they can’t say these things publicly,” he told us, “I’m sort of deafened, deafened by the silence of most people who work in the area that we work in, in that they will not criticise when there are often evidently very political assumptions that underpin some of the analysis that comes out.” (2016)

As an environmental communicator, particularly one who’s a little weary of sugar-coating in the field of sustainability planning, I find it challenging to provide clients, students, or audiences with a balanced message, one that provides authentic hope (Moser, 2014). I’m familiar with this feeling of a socially constructed silence. As a planner, I often found that the public would arrive at meetings, eager to hear how governments or other agencies had “sorted everything out,” and set all the tidy, sound policies in place that would divert ecological impacts. Of course, that is an absurd expectation when we consider the complexity of scales and interplay of systems within our changing environments.

But when you’re working on behalf of policy-makers, you’re really not meant to share the fact that they don’t have all the answers. Hoggatt and Randall stress that “If climate change work is stuck at the level of ‘symbolic policy making’—a set of practices designed to make it look as though political elites are doing something while actually doing nothing—then it becomes all the more important for the scientific community to find ways of abandoning the social defenses we’ve described and speak out as a whole” (2016). This appeal relates to Moser’s emphasis on the importance of truth-telling (2014). Breaking through socially constructed silences to speak the truth of where we’re at is a step toward real solutions.

References:

Hoggatt, P. & Randall, R. (2016) Socially constructed silence? Protecting policymakers from the unthinkable. Transformation. Retrieved from: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/paul-hoggett-rosemary-randall/socially-constructed-silence-protecting-policymakers-fr 

Moser, S. C. (2014). Whither the heart(- to-heart)? Prospects for a humanistic turn in environmental communication as the world changes darkly. In A. Hansen & R. Cox (Eds.), Handbook on Environment and Communication. London: Routledge. (Pre-publication Draft 9-1-2013)

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This image  showed up in my feed, so I thought I’d share it with my fellow MAEECers. It reminds me of our position as enviro-communicators, often caught in our ambivalence, right smack in between our aspirations and the industrial reality we’re embedded within. 

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CONVERSATIONS

This afternoon I went for a walk in the Hatley Park Gardens surrounding Royal Roads University. Since beginning the MAEEC program, many of our classes have taken place outdoors in the garden. Wandering around today, I remembered some long discussions we had on both hopeful and despairing responses to environmental degradation. These memories inspired me to reflect on the Dark Mountain Project presented by in class yesterday. Some of the responses to the project questioned its usefulness, expressing discomfort that it doesn’t incorporate a solutions-based approach.

However, I’m confused by an interest for all projects to be action oriented or solutions-based. When we look at other examples of periods in history that are characterized by great social or ecological change, we will most likely find that there were painters, musicians, poets and authors making art about what they felt or observed. Perhaps it is the urgency of environmental challenges, that creates discomfort around a project like Dark Mountain? Reading Bill McKibben’s article What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art provided me some relief in knowing that I’m not alone in wondering about this. McKibben queries:

Here’s the paradox: If the scientists are right, we’re living through the biggest thing that’s happened since human civilization emerged…But oddly, though we know about it, we don’t know about it. It hasn’t registered in our gut; it isn’t part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas? Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS in the last two decades, which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect. I mean, when people someday look back on our moment, the single most significant item will doubtless be the sudden spiking temperature. But they’ll have a hell of a time figuring out what it meant to us.

Art provides us with a platform for conversation, to question ourselves and our approaches to life. It’s my hope that as environmental educators and communicators, we will invite, rather than turn away from, unique forms of conversation about ecological and social change—even when, or especially when, it challenges us to look at the darker sides of human nature.

McKibben, B. (2005). What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art. Grist Magazine, (April).

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EMBODYING HOPE

Photo credit: Ralph Morse

In my living room, there’s a photograph of a couple walking in London’s Hyde Park, just before D-Day in the spring of 1944. My husband’s grandfather Antony, a WWll veteran, gave us this photo and often spoke of its significance. He described a heightened sense of awareness, as well as a feeling of anticipatory loss in daily life at that time. The photo always reminds me of the courage with which he faced that time in his life; I reflect on this during moments that I need to face my own fears. I thought of this photo—and what it means to me—while listening to author and public relationships consultant Jim Hoggan talk about the insights in his book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot.

In environmental communications we often discuss the impact of messaging that sits on either end of the spectrum between hope and despair. Often, a perception arises that communications will be framed by only one of these outlooks. Hoggan broke through this polarity when he said that hope is not only in looking toward solutions, rather it’s found in who we are; hope resides in our values and the way we chose to live our lives (personal communication, August 2, 2016). Just as courage is something that we embody, Hoggan re-framed hope as something that we live in the present, rather than a future state that we long for. The presentation reinforced emerging ideas in the field of environmental psychology. Dr. Renee Lertzman writes: “Living and being with hope and despair, as integrated and inseparable elements on a dynamic continuum of experience, is coming from a true place of strength and resilience” (2016). It’s an inspiring message: that even in times of great challenge or change, we can still choose to live with hope and courage.

References:

Lertzman, R. (2016, January 18). Beyond hope and despair? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://reneelertzman.com/2016/01/beyond-hope-and-despair/

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WEST COAST CITIZENS & THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

Tofino Botanical Gardens

If you dig a little deeper, and look beyond the spas set on rocky cliffs and the postcard views of crashing waves, you’ll find that many people living in the small communities on the West Coast of Vancouver Island aren’t just residents, they’re citizens. Those we met over the course of our week studying socio-ecological change in the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve—like Terry Dorward, Anita Charleson-Touchie, George Patterson, and Laura Loucks—don’t just live in Tofino or Ucluelet, they are active participants and key drivers of change in the community system. This concept of citizenry, as highlighted for us by Dr. Rick Kool (personal communication, July 26, 2016), is characterized by an engaged manner of living in community, and is a significant strategy for renegotiating social contracts to better reflect social-ecological resilience principles.

Seated at a long outdoor table, framed by drying garlic bulbs, full summer blossoms, and tall cedars, we had the pleasure of meeting George Patterson, founder of Tofino Botanical Gardens and something of a local legend. Patterson captivated us with tales of early Tofino days, when waterfront land could be purchased in the mere tens of thousands of dollars. At that time, there was little hint of the worldwide tourist destination the town would someday become. He described how the lush, artistic botanical gardens, had once been an unwanted 17-acre, clear-cut plot of land on the market for 3 years before he purchased it. Patterson explained how he envisioned creating a place that could pay tribute to the memories of transformative action to change forestry practices in Clayoquot Sound—known as the “War in the Woods” and defined as the largest civil disobedience movement in Canadian history. 

This struck me as a beautiful concept: a living place to embody the successful renegotiation of social contracts that took place at a specific time in history. I was moved by this extremely inventive creation, which allows visitors to the region to learn and reflect on the type of positive change that a motivated citizenry can generate. And the garden, in turn, creates a feedback loop, seeding these concepts—engagement, citizenry, change, socio-ecological balance—in others so they may bring them forth in their own communities.

When Patterson was forming his vision of a botanical garden or proposing that the region might be designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, he was acting as a citizen. In his own way, he was nudging the social contract to transform. There was no guarantee for Patterson or others in the region that change would occur as a result of their actions. But through interaction with a system, an engaged citizen acts as an lever point, making new connections and bringing new energy to an existing structure. Adger highlights the importance of these links: “Interconnected communities need to function effectively across all levels, and this requires both horizontal and vertical links. These links can provide for the flow of knowledge, learning, and other resources, and may facilitate more inclusive, participatory, and democratic decision making” (Leach et al., 2012). Patterson’s work is a extraordinary example of these links, particularly of how global connections can provide feedback to the local: the film Striking Balance: Change in West Coast Communities describes how a trip to Costa Rica, and observing that country’s biosphere reserve, inspired Patterson to suggest a similar model for the Clayoquot region. The eventually creation of the Clayoquot Biosphere Rerserve and the network of many different people and groups living and working within it, though not perfect, is an inspiring reflection of how citizenry can renew the social contract.

Leach, M., Rockström, J., Raskin, P., Scoones, I., Stirling, A. C., Smith, A., Thompson, J., Millstone, E., Ely, A., Arond, E., Folke, C. & Olsson, P. (2012). Transforming innovation for sustainability. Ecology and Society, 17(2), 11.

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SEARCHING FOR EQUALIBRIUM

I recently spent an evening in the setting sun with my family  on Wickaninnish Beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. In the surreal mist and light filtering down through layers of clouds, we walked on hard packed sand through smooth stones and driftwood, which provided endless fun for my five-year-old son. In a place so naturally majestic and wild, the current global stressors that we’re facing seemed very far away. As we walked through the deep soft sand on the upper foreshore, my husband picked up a long, blonde piece of driftwood and tried to balance it on top of another perpendicular piece of wood poking out of the sand. On the third or fourth try, the wood finally swayed on it’s perch, finding a precarious balance. We lingered for a moment to watch it, knowing that at some time after we walked away, the wind or another beach-goer would knock it down.

Observing the vulnerable equilibrium of the driftwood reminded me of the many communities and ecosystems under stress—those that Loucks describes as pushing up against the edges of their boundaries (personal communication, July 25, 2016). Along with my fellow RRU graduate students, I’ve been contemplating First Nations relationships with the environment over the course of our stay at the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ (Ucluelet) First Nations Reserve in the self-governed community of Hitacu. Reflecting on my own worldview and how it shapes my interaction with the systems around me, I notice that Western worldviews, which currently emphasize the primacy of individual needs over the shared resources of the commons, threaten system boundary thresholds. Consumption patterns that favour an individual’s unlimited use of resources, rather than ecosystem protection, can lead to ecosystem disruption.

A First Nations worldview, which focuses more on interconnectivity than individual needs, offers a pathway to restore and repair strained communities and ecosystems. McKeon urges environmental educators to embrace this shift, “The severity of the global ecological crisis require a radical departure from current global Western-dominated knowledge and education models” (2012, p. 145). Here on the West Coast, counselor and healer Anita Charleson-Touchie describes a Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations worldview that embodies the concept of hiishooksih tswalk: everything is one, and everything is connected (personal communication, July 27, 2016). Touchie explains to our group that this worldview explores the interplay between all levels of reality—self, family, community, nature, and spirit.

Today, on the same beach I visited a few nights ago with my family, we sat in an informal outdoor classroom, grateful for a learning space in which to breathe the fresh Pacific Ocean air, gaze at the movement of clouds and discuss our thoughts on a path forward, while the many boundary thresholds and the consequences of passing them hovered on the periphery of our awareness. Our classroom felt far from the constricting walls of institutionalized Western learning that directs student on a path of individual career choices that will eventually enable them to engage in modern consumption levels. Here in Nuu-chah-nulth territory, we are becoming immersed in the worldview that “the universe is unified, interconnected, and interrelated” (Atleo, 2005, p. xix).

When we returned from our beach session, we met Gordon, a Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ elder, at the front door of the community centre. He inquired about our outing, and when I told him we visited Wickaninnish Beach, he gently corrected me, telling me that the name is Kwisitis. Then he shared his stories with us, his memories of family picnics on Kwistis Beach—fresh bannock rising, salmon fillets on stakes around a fire and clams with kelp buried in the sand under smoldering coals (Gordon, personal communication, July 27, 2016). I listened. And as I listened I realized that although we are from different worlds, we are up against many of the same boundary thresholds. We are, in fact, interconnected.

References

Atleo, E. R. (2005). Tsawalk. Vancouver, CA: UBC Press. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

McKeon, M. (2012). Two-eyed Seeing into Environmental Education: Revealing its ‘Natural’ Readiness to Indigenize. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 17, 131-147.

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MUSIC & CLIMATE CHANGE

Photo Credit: Climate & Development Knowledge Network

Here’s an initiative that stood out to me as noteworthy: 

Imagine that you walk into a workshop on climate change mitigation, and instead of being handing a survey, you are giving a set of plastic shakers to create a musical performance. How would you feel?

Our readings highlight the importance of finding creative ways for participants to engage (Lertzman, 2015, p. 13) with environmental issues. In the article below, I was intrigued by the use of music as a way to encourage creative thinking on climate action. The Development & Climate Days events at COP21 (and previous climate conventions) offer unique workshops for participants—things like participatory games and role playing. At COP19 in Warsaw, researchers set up a workshop to see if group musical improvisation might encourage creative responses to climate disasters. This workshop seems like a good example of how to “access our capacities for creative engagement with our world” (Lertzman, 2015, p. xv). The workshop organizer Pablo Suarez, Associate Director for Research and Innovation at the Climate Centre, “suggested that this unconventional proposition might shake people out of their comfort zones and lead to new innovations” (Dupar, 2013).

It makes sense to me that when educators or communicators engage participants in an unconventional way when they attend a program, that they might be able to move people out of their normally defined roles. Instead of coming to a workshop thinking, “I am a manager, administrator, technician, etc.,” perhaps activities involving music or other creative methods can allow attendees to loosen up, shift the way they identify themselves, connect with others in a more direct, authentic way, and thus, free them up to tap into more creative and collaborate thinking.

Check out the full article, which also highlights other musically inspired engagement approaches: music-offers-a-breakthrough-for-communicating-on-climate-change.

Dupar, M. (2013). Music Offers a Breakthrough for Communicating on Climate Change. Retrieved from http://cdkn.org/2013/11/music-offers-a-breakthrough-for-communicating-on-climate-change/?loclang=en_gb

Lertzman, R. (2015). Environmental Melancholia. Routledge. http://doi.org/10.4324/9781315851853

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That kind of sums things up.

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Hey, British Columbians

Something that’s come up in both of our classes is the concept of reciprocity, that if we feel a sense of wonder, engagement and gratitude to the world around us, we may be compelled to respond in kind.

One way for those living in BC to give something back is to review and provide input on the BC Climate Leadership Plan. As Rick said, you need to push on the system for it to reveal itself to you.

Here’s a chance to push a little:

http://novosolar.com/bc-climate-leadership-plan-voice-your-opinion/

The deadline for the survey is Aug 17 2015 and Sept 14, 2015 for written submissions.

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IECA

As I try to refresh myself on all the environmental communications theories, I was reminded of this great resource. Some of the member blogs are pretty interesting.

ICEA (International Environmental Communication Association) first emerged as the Environmental Communication Network from one of the early EC conferences, the 1991 Conference on Communication and Environment.

“The IECA is a professional nexus of practitioners, teachers, scholars, students, artists and organizations engaged in research and action to find more ethical and effective ways to communicate about environmental concerns in order to move society towards sustainability.”

https://theieca.org/

[anthropocenecaravan]

Health Frame

I see a lot of the communication on the US Clean Energy Plan uses a health frame. Looks like they’ve taken an environmental communications class or two. :-)