Event
Critical and Creative Approaches to Environmental Communication – Storytelling as, and for, Sustainability
Date: March 12, 2025 - March 13, 2025
On 12-13 March 2025, join the Mistra Environmental Communication research programme for their ‘’Environmental Communication Conference 2025’’. This year, the theme of the conference is ‘’Storytelling as, and for, Sustainability’’.
About the conference
Storytelling is an important means of communication and meaning-making in sustainability transformations. Storied communication can make human experiences and complex scientific information more intelligible and relatable, facilitating empathy and offering emotional and cultural resonance in a way facts and statistics, while essential to the production of knowledge, often fail to do. Stories can give tangible shape to the experiential impact of devastating environmental degradation. They can form narratives of hope and foster a deeper connection to the natural world, and amplify voices less commonly heard and the experiential knowledge of those communities most vulnerable to a changing environment. But… storytelling can also reproduce dominant power structures. Collective storytelling provides communities with shared narratives, shaping cultural values, collective identities and a common language. Storytelling is uniquely placed to invoke the imagination of more sustainable futures.
Aim of the conference
The conference will explore the multi-faceted role of storytelling as, and for, sustainability, touching upon questions such as:
- What potential does storytelling as a form of communication have for sustainability transitions? What are its limits?
- What are the opportunities and risks of storytelling for sustainability in a post-truth world? How might storytelling be used and abused in the public discourse around sustainability?
- How can storytelling approaches bring new voices to bear on sustainability thinking and give agency to un- or under-heard individuals and communities?
- What role can storytelling play in creating a transdisciplinary space of sustainability thinking?
- How do we take care of the stories told? How can, and should, we make room for individual and place-based stories to sit next to expert knowledge?
Please note that the deadline to register is 28 February 2025.