Contribution short abstract:

Climate Stories Project collects and shares personal climate change stories on our website and teaches climate storytelling and oral history workshops. Place-based climate storytelling enriches the conversation, fosters new climate communication skills, and creates a more just environmental future.

Contribution long abstract:

Climate change is happening everywhere and affects everyone. Started in 2014, Climate Stories Project (CSP) is an artistic and educational climate change communications forum that collects and publicly shares personal climate change stories on our website, https://www.climatestoriesproject.org/. Additionally, we teach climate storytelling and climate oral history workshops to schools, universities, local government organizations, libraries, and community groups both in-person and online. Oral history and storytelling are uniquely situated to reckon with the challenges of climate change by making the abstract concepts of the crisis more concrete and personal.

CSP’s workshops compliment environmental science by rooting conversations about the climate crisis in the personal - specifically in ideas of place - in order to construct personal climate stories and climate story interviews. Participants are invited to consider how climate change is affecting the people and things they care about in their home-place or community, along with additional considerations for emotional responses to the crisis. Climate storytelling and interviewing enriches climate change communication, fosters new skills for talking about the crisis, and gives people the opportunity and space to consider how climate change is affecting them now, while also allowing them to imagine routes to a more just environmental future.

This paper will examine how using climate change oral history and storytelling methods can help people think about climate change from a less familiar personal perspective, create a deeper, richer connection with their local community and environment, and support various responses to the climate crisis.