The drama of resilience: Learning, doing, and sharing for sustainability

This is the final version of the article. Available from Resilience Alliance via the DOI in this record.We discuss the use of participatory drama and transformative theatre to understand the sources of risk and resilience with coastal communities. We analyze and describe two performances developed as part of a project exploring people’s resilience to extreme weather events and to coastal dynamics in the face of climate change. We examine the process of devising the performance, which used various elicitation techniques to examine what matters to people in times of change and how people are able to respond to changes now and in the future. We discuss how creative practices such as participatory drama may contribute to the understanding of resilience, challenge assumptions, and bring new perspectives. Finally, we discuss how participatory drama informs action- and solutions-oriented work around resilience, poverty, and change.This research and PI Brown are the beneficiaries of a financial contribution from AXA Research Fund for the project “AXA Outlook Climate Change and Resilience.

Reflection Methods : Tools to Make Learning More Explicit

This manual describes a number of tools for facilitating reflection processes in courses, to advance learning and promote positive change. The tools can be used to facilitate the process of reflecting on the knowledge and experiences participants of short courses acquire, with the aim of making their leaning more explicit and articulated and contribute to their professional performance in their own working context

Uncommon worlds: toward an ecological aesthetics of childhood in the Anthropocene

In addressing the need for a more robust engagement with aesthetics in posthumanist studies of childhood and nature, this chapter makes some tentative steps towards an ecological aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. In doing so, the chapter takes an alternative theoretical approach from much of the ‘common worlds’ scholarship that has emerged in recent years, while making the case for a new aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to the accelerating social, technological, and environmental changes of the Anthropocene epoch. Our approach foregrounds the singularity of children’s aesthetic experiences as relational-qualitative ‘intensities’ that alter the fabric of nature as an extensive continuum held in common. We therefore argue that every moment in the life of a child is an uncommon and unrepeatable occasion through which the common world of nature is felt, perceived, and experienced differently. This eco-aesthetic approach is developed further through the analysis of photographs taken by children as part of the Climate Change and Me project, which has mapped children and young people’s affective responses to climate change over a period of three years in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than working with images as representations or analogic signifiers for children’s experience, we analyse how each photograph co-implicates children’s bodies and environments through affective vectors of feeling, or ‘prehensions’. This leads us to reframe aesthetic notions of image, sensibility, perception, and causality in relational terms, while also acknowledging the individuation of childhood experiences as ‘creaturely becomings’ that produce new potentials for environmental thought and behaviour

Jhum Meets IFOAM: Introducing Organic Agriculture in a Tribal Society

Worldwide organic agriculture (OA) is seen by many as a promising alternative for the present `unsustainable' farming systems. The conversion to `organic' is often accompanied by the introduction of universal principles and standards that allow for certification. This study explores the interface between two knowledge systems: organic agriculture as interpreted by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and the slash-and-burn-based Naga shifting cultivation system (Jhum) as it still functions today in the Northeast of India. The study demonstrates that in some cases the introduction of a universal knowledge system such as IFOAM may actually be counteractive in the development of contextually appropriate and workable sustainable land management (SLM) systems. Instead of imposing OA on local communities, in a well-meant attempt to establish a more sustainable agriculture system, the authors conclude that alternative paths towards sustainable development are needed, paths which take into account differing perceptions of what `sustainable land use' means in a specific context

Climate Change Education : A New Approach for a World of Wicked Problems

Human activity is the most important factor determining our future. The rapid growths of population and materialistic ways of living have given rise to what many geologists now call the era of the Anthropocene. We argue that in order to solve the wicked problems of the Anthropocene—such as climate change—we need education to be organized around sensing and actualizing the full potential of a human being. It is necessary to clarify the goal of education and the ideals of society toward that pursuit. Climate change education supports building societies that are characterized by flexible, creative, adaptable, well-informed and inventive sustainable well-being communities. In this article, we define the special aspects of climate change education and ask: how could we educate people for transformation toward a sustainable future? What kind of holistic change in thinking and action is needed for the construction of hope and of a sustainable future? What kind of pedagogical approaches can promote full humanness?Peer reviewe