Rewriting Climate Narratives: Hope, Justice, and Youth Empowerment Through Creative Engagement

Rewriting Climate Narratives: Hope, Justice, and Youth Empowerment Through Creative Engagement

In this workshop, Grace Nosek is joined by youth climate advocates Jamie Hill and Uma Le Daca Jolicoeur to explore Grace's PhD research on the fossil fuel industry's impact on democracy and her community-engaged work with young climate activists. Drawing on her #hopepunk young adult novel, ROOTBOUND (think Greta Thunberg x The Hunger Games with heaps of queer joy and swoony romance), Grace will discuss how community-engaged research and creative writing can combat climate obstruction and encourage civic participation through stories rooted in justice, hope, joy, community, and systemic change. The session will focus on the need for new narratives that challenge the prevailing themes of climate despair, misplaced individual responsibility, and the misleading savior role of the fossil fuel industry. This discussion is especially crucial as misinformation and apathy grow in the lead-up to key elections in Canada and the United States.

About Dr. Grace Nosek

Dr. Grace Nosek is a legal scholar, youth climate justice organizer, and author identifying and pushing back against the toxic climate narratives seeded deep in our public imagination and political reality by centering justice, joyful community, hope, agency, and systems change in her work and scholarship. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto working on empowering youth engagement in municipal climate action and researching how to inoculate youth against climate despair. She holds a BA from Rice University, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and a Master of Laws and PhD in law from the University of British Columbia.

Special Guests

Jamie Hill (she/they) is an environmental communicator and strategist living on unceded Musqueam and Qayqayt lands. An SFU alumnus and communications professional by trade, Jamie believes in storytelling as a tool to imagine and advocate for a just and equitable world, especially when marginalized narratives are centred at the heart of collective change. As Director of Development at Embark Sustainability, Jamie works to deepen relationships between local organizations, grassroots efforts, and university students while exploring promising practices in climate knowledge mobilization and advocacy. In her free time, you’ll find Jamie watching copious amounts of television, noodling on the keyboard, and hanging out with her cat.

Uma Le Daca Jolicoeur is originally from Vancouver and is currently in the fourth year of undergrad at McGill University in Montreal, completing a Joint Honours Thesis Program in Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. From the age of 15, Uma was lucky enough to be involved in climate justice movements. Today, Uma is involved in a range of activities and projects, from student involvement to community-led research, most of which have allowed Uma to continue exploring the intersectional nature of the impact that climate change has had on communities around the world.