Paper short abstract:

Climate Stories Project (CSP) helps people tell their own personal climate change stories and conduct climate story interviews within their communities. This paper delves into how CSP’s community-based approach to climate change can be used in collaboration with cultural heritage institutions.

Paper long abstract:

The climate crisis is intersectional, encompassing contemporary and historic economic, scientific, and social issues. Climate Stories Project (CSP) is an innovative project focused on helping people tell their own and others’ climate change stories, recording individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences along with the disproportionate impact of the global phenomenon. Utilizing a multi-part workshop format, CSP trains participants in community-based storytelling and oral history methods, enabling them to draft their own personal climate story and conduct climate change interviews within their communities. Archives, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions are uniquely situated within their communities to preserve and promote local knowledge of the climate crisis and to act as spaces where CSP workshops (both in-person and virtual) can offer new skills for climate change communication.

Academic and public librarians and their patrons have participated in numerous CSP workshops over the past three years. This represents the interest for novel ways to approach the climate crisis which take into consideration the mandate of cultural heritage institutions to serve their user base and to preserve, protect, and provide access to knowledge, including about the climate crisis. This paper will delve into how CSP’s personal and community-based approach to climate change makes it an ideal method to use in collaboration with local heritage organizations.