Participatory Ecological Storytelling

There is still too little urgency and emotional engagement around environmental issues. The difficulty is that the associated risks and challenges are often abstract and unrelatable. We use the persuasive and transformative potential of storytelling and explore how it can nurture a new sense of relationship with the environment. In this workshop, we guide participants to co-create narratives expressing different perspectives through characters carrying the ‘voice of the Planet’ (e.g., human protagonists, mythical entities, anthropomorphized animals). With practical exercises participants learn basic storytelling theory – building profound personas and compelling story arcs. We reflect on the impact of the story creation process on their emotions, perception, and motivation towards pro-environmental behavior, and on potential applications of ecological storytelling in their field.