UBCO Professor Jodey Castricano, left, along with graduate students Zach DeWitt, Madeline Donald and Annie Furman, is planning a multispecies storytelling workshop at Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre on July 21.
What: Storytelling symposium and workshop
When: Wednesday, July 19 and Friday, July 21.
Where: Graduate Collegium, ASC 460, Arts and Sciences building, UBC Okanagan and Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre, 969 Raymer Road, Kelowna
A global collaboration is bringing together humanities researchers who will use storytelling practices to aim the light on planetary agendas regarding climate change.
Participants in the ongoing research exchange between UBC Okanagan and visiting faculty from England’s University of Exeter are planning a two-day event that will bring artists and scholars together to discuss planetary injustices.
The event, Telling Stories: The Humanities in an Age of Planetary Agenda-Setting, includes both a symposium at UBC Okanagan on July 19 and a Multispecies Storytelling Workshop on July 21 at Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre.
The initiative involves a collaboration between Professor Jodey Castricano, with UBCO’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) and Drs. Ina Linge and Paul Young with the University of Exeter. This collaboration originated when Dr. Castricano was invited to the University of Exeter for a Visiting International Academic Fellowship.
This is the second of a series of events housed at both University of Exeter and UBC Okanagan. It will help advance an arts and humanities scholarly response to climate change, mass extinction and environmental degradation, in order to drive healthy, sustainable and just social and environmental change, explains Dr. Castricano, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in FCCS.
“At a time when demands for environmental sustainability and food system justice are increasingly urgent, and planetary agendas are being set by scientific and financially interested parties, this project explores how arts and humanities scholars and artists can contribute to agenda setting and climate justice through storytelling methods,” Dr. Castricano says. “This approach is important because stories serve to naturalize certain ways of thinking about and acting in the world because they invite and inspire meaningful social and cultural engagement and action.”
By engaging scholars, thinkers, makers and creative people, the two-day event aims to reframe and rewrite climate justice narratives and stories that are currently exclusive to science, technology and economics.
To find out more and register for the events, visit: fccs.ok.ubc.ca/telling-stories
This event is supported by UBCO’s FCCS and the UBC Okanagan-Exeter Excellence Catalyst Grant and is organized by the Post-Anthropocentrism and Critical Animal Studies Research Group.
