2 minute read
Introduction: Why and How We Did It
This collection of short stories, We Still Have a Chance, has grown out of the success of the University of Exeter’s Green Futures poetry project, One Chance Left . Here some magical alchemy happened when a team of climate scientists and health professionals joined together and co-created poems connecting climate facts, findings and emotions to communicate that we urgently need to repair and improve planetary health . These 12 poems were showcased with the Met Office in the Science Pavilion at COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow in 2021, and they have been shared widely since . The effect they had, (and continue to have), inspired others to join our expanding team . Driven to do something bolder, over 150 scientists, health professionals, academics, youth climate activists, writers, artists, and translators from Egypt and Exeter came together to use storytelling to show that the need to heal and protect the planet is URGENT . Virtual creative writing workshops enabled us to forge a bridge between the global north and the global south . By focussing on the COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022, and their themes of Water, Food and Adaptation we compared, contrasted, investigated, explored thoughts, emotions, concerns, landscapes, interdependency on the natural world, and our own climate stories, to aid awareness about how our places are changing in unique and connected ways .
Universal threads that erupted and bind these narratives include biodiversity, loss of species, future livelihoods, justice and equality, migration, wellbeing, alongside fear for uncertainty that change will bring . Characters were invented who, outside their comfort zones, question the conflicts around taking climate action; others show both resilience and vulnerability, some are desperate to find resolutions against the odds . In a unique creative, editorial and transformative process, these 12 micro stories are a weaving of everyone’s ideas, conversations, research, submissions of writing . While each story stands alone, a meta-narrative emerges across the whole, connecting past and present to provoke questions to challenge the ‘what is’ to ‘what if’ to reimagine new possibilities . Our aim is to share these stories and our interdisciplinary and collaborative way of working globally . The stories in Arabic and English are already inspiring recordings, new performances, digital visualisations, murals and music in Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El-Sheikh, Exeter as well as being adapted in education . As António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN writes: ‘This is a global crisis . It demands a global response . ’ Storytelling is the way we make sense of the world and of ourselves . Stories are driven by action and incident and are a perfect form to connect past, present, and future . By linking health, climate science, and the arts We Still Have a Chance stories reveal what we value most and what’s at stake and that we, the people, have the power to protect and create fuller, happier, healthier, and socially just lives . It’s in our grasp .
