Hope in Folded Pages: Zine‐Making, Decolonial Praxis and the Power of Participatory Arts for ‘a Peaceful and Sustainable Life’

Abstract

This paper presents the co-creation of River of Hope, an animation exploring climate resilience among communities along the Red River in Northern Vietnam. Developed through a transnational collaboration between Vietnamese youth, UK and Vietnamese researchers and a UK-based animation artist, the project demonstrates how participatory digital arts can surface cultural connections and insights often obscured by generational and linguistic divides. Central to the project was the use of zine-making as a creative, accessible and culturally responsive method of Participatory Action Research (PAR). Far from a simple data collection tool, zine-making became a transformative, process-led method through which youth expressed emotional responses to climate change, shared local knowledge and shaped the animation's themes and imagery. The tactile, visual nature of zine-making enabled participants to communicate beyond language, cultural and generational barriers, engaging deeply with both personal and collective experiences of environmental change. Crucially, the process of making zines was itself a site of learning, trust-building and creative agency. It supported intercultural dialogue and positioned youth as co-creators, not subjects, of climate knowledge. This methodological innovation highlights how arts-based participatory methods can democratise research, amplify marginalised voices and humanise climate discourse. In digital and hybrid research settings, zines functioned as both method and medium, offering inclusive and emotionally resonant pathways for youth engagement. Our findings show how embedding participatory arts within a decolonial, youth-centred framework can bridge cultural divides and advance more just, locally grounded approaches to global climate action