By Katerina Cizek
The climate crisis is a top reason to co-create, according to our new Collective Wisdom study.
We were honoured to present our findings at the first ever Climate Story Lab, run by Doc Society and Exposure Labs in New York City in July. This extraordinary week-long event brought together 12 climate-related media projects, along with more than 200 activists, scholars, policy experts and climate defenders, to meld minds on the challenges of Climate Justice.
The links between co-creation and climate justice ran through the program and design. Here are only a few of the co-creative principles that surfaced throughout my one day there: moving beyond the traps of the single author, the single discipline, the single organization and even single species.
“We need to de-centre the human” in our understanding of the planet, said Jade Begay, Creative Director at NDN Collective. She delivered the morning land acknowledgement, reminding us that the word “Mahatta” means “island of many hills” and might have looked much like Yellowstone Park in pre-colonial times.
“Collective authorship” was key to the viral video A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to Avi Lewis, one of the makers, along with Naomi Klein, Molly Crabapple, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. He said at the Lab: ”We need to tell the truth, make them laugh, and show them a vision of the future they can get motivated by now.”
“Utopian visioning is the left version of the right’s conspiracy theories,” responded Alex O’Keefe of the Sunrise Movement.
“Climate Justice is linked to participatory democracy,” said Sarra Tekola, PhD Student, School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and Climate Activist.
Brenda Coughlin of the Sundance Institute reminded us that not one film, one media project can do the full heavy lift to achieve Climate Justice. The spirit of the lab brought together 12 media projects that might have, in the past been seen in the conventional media industry as competitive rather than collaborative. Brenda stressed that our processes and projects need to remain iterative, and seen as parts of a larger whole.
Three of the 12 media projects
at the Climate Story Lab (from top, clockwise): feature film Raising Aniya, Swampscapes VR,
feature film Greta vs. Climate.Working Films presented Story Shift initiative, a new effort to share and promote co-created best practices for non-extractive storytelling. And Jess Search of Doc Society discussed how Extinction Rebellion (XR) is converting suburban grandmothers into unlikely & effective protesters, sparking a new “summer uprising” in five UK cities.
Co-Creation Studio closed out the first day with findings from our Collective Wisdom field study, which summed up that co-creation and climate justice are inextricably entwined. While we need to move towards a climate just future, we also need to challenge ourselves to a more equitable form of media making.
Special shout outs to Beadie Finzi of Doc Society and Megha Agrawal Sood of Exposure Labs for phenomenal design and facilitation of the lab, which is at the core of co-creation.
This article is part of Collective Wisdom, an Immerse series created in collaboration with Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab. Immerse’s series features excerpts from MIT Open Documentary Lab’s larger field study — Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines and with Algorithms — as well as bonus interviews and exclusive content.
Immerse is an initiative of the MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund, and it receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. IFP is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing media projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.