Sustainability Stories

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing society today. Whilst policies and programmes have been put into place, business as usual continues for many. However, altering behaviours on an individual, community, national and international scale is imperative to ensure sustainable life can continue.

The proliferation of climate change and sustainability media content has become an increasingly important route for disseminating knowledge and information about how societies impact the global environment. Examples include the BBC's 'Frozen Planet II' and the BBC radio podcast, 'The Climate Question'. Given the ongoing challenges of climate change, communicators and storytellers have a crucial role in closing the information and narrative deficits across society in the communication of climate research and the related social and economic justice issues.

The 'Sustainability Stories' project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through XR Stories Creative Cluster at the University of York, explored how professional communicators within the creative sector could advance public knowledge about sustainability and climate change challenges through the stories they develop.

As part of this knowledge gathering process for this project, the team engaged with XR Stories Creative Cluster stakeholders and with 3 SMEs tasked with producing a sustainability themed digital content for the XR Stories Climate Change Challenge. In particular, the team worked closely with Sustainable Arts Leeds (SAIL), a not-for-profit organisation supporting net zero and sustainability initiatives in the Yorkshire arts and cultural sector, in the development of an immersive carbon literacy VR experience, Home Planet.

The team developed a theorised, structured framework for communicators to utilise when seeking to unpack climate and societal sustainability issues, or to convey to audiences progressive and alternate future pathways for combating the climate emergency. The Critical Sustainability Stories (CriSS) Tool is designed to grow storyteller global challenge literacy and increase storyteller use relevant research and important knowledge bases (for example, experts by experience, underrepresented communities). Through carefully chosen questions within 6 themes (critical activity, audience, storytelling journey, context, quality of information and justice), the CriSS Tool promotes critical thinking by communicators, and can be used in the development of diverse content types.

The collaborative research project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through XR Stories 'Creative Media Labs: Innovations in Screen Storytelling in the Age of Interactivity and Immersion' at the University of York.

Research team

Principle Investigator: Dr Alexandra Dales, Senior Lecturer at York Business School, York St John University

Co-Investigator: Dr Rory Padfield, Associate Professor at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds

Post-doctoral Research Assistant: Dr Gemma Bridge, York Business School, York St John University

For further information contact Dr Alexandra Dales at a.dales@yorksj.ac.uk.

Climate stripes image created by Professor Hawkins, University of Reading 2018.