This project addresses climate anxiety by exploring the creation of empowering learning spaces aimed at exploring sustainable futures. It enables students to engage with their climate-related emotions, overcome apathy, and cultivate resilience to actively contribute to climate action.
Climate change disproportionately affects the young. We recognize the growing anxiety, distress, and anger among students, due to the ominous reality of climate change. Studies have consistently shown that creative expression builds resilience, and engaging students in a range of empowering activities caters to different learning styles, strengthening autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
The initiative delves into three innovative forms of learning spaces, which empower students to “re-act”, “re-imagine,” and “re-create,” thereby granting them agency in confronting the climate crisis as a complex issue that goes beyond individual experiences.
These learning spaces/practices comprise:
- An exploration of the Polak Game as a tool to find common ground for collective action (‘re-act’);
- Ecocritical modifications of iconic games and game franchises contributing to transdisciplinary climate imaginaries (‘re-imagine’);
- The development of community gardening and food forest initiatives on the UU campus and beyond (‘re-create’).
By cultivating and evaluating the utilization of these spaces, the project aims to bolster students’ individual and social resilience and agency towards climate action, as well as enhancing their general resilience. Teaching modules will be disseminated through UU-wide teacher inspiration projects, with the effects on students’ wellbeing and learning being scientifically monitored.