The project came to an end officially on 10 February. However, we are super keen that the momentum built from this project continues. To support this we have produced a Practical Guide to having action-oriented conversations about climate change called 'Moving Beyond the Crossroads'. You can download this from our Project Resources webpage.
We are absolutely delighted to share our beautiful project video, produced by Kit with animated illustations from Maisy. This can be viewed at the Project Resources webpage, or on the Sustainable Consumption YouTube channel.
Workshop resources on understanding eco-anxiety and interview training are also available from our Project Resources webpage.
January 2023
On 20th January, we held a fantastic project event at the University of Manchester, which was attended by over 40 high school and college students and teachers, as well as adults working in local government, higher education and community services. See our tweet for a glimpse of the energy in the room on the day.
We are very busy working behind the scenes to produce some final resources from the project based on the two events for schools in Manchester and Melbourne - watch this space!
December 2022
On 2nd December, we held a fantastic project event at the University of Melbourne, which was attended by over 60 high school and college students and teachers, as well as adults working in local government, higher education and community services. See our tweet for a glimpse of the energy in the room on the day.
November 2022
The Educators’ Guide to the YPX creative book has now gone live and is available to download from our Project Resources webpage.
We excited to be presenting a short ‘Pecha Kucha’ presentation (a format of 20 slides of 20 seconds each) about some of the creative responses to climate change that have developed through YPX at the Climate, Art and Digital Activisms ‘Festival of Ideas’ taking place in Melbourne and Adelaide from 21-27 November.
Catherine had the privilege of presenting on the YPX creative book at the AGM of the wonderful Manchester Environmental Education Network, speaking alongside an inspiring range of others who are working towards intergenerational responses to climate change in Greater Manchester.
October 2022
We are absolutely delighted to announce that the YPX creative project book is now live and can be downloaded from the Project Resources webpage. This is a fantastic resource for teachers, students, researchers or anyone looking for inspiration and ideas on how we can respond to the challenge of climate change as communities and societies. Keep an eye out on the same page for the Educators’ guide to the creative book, coming soon!
We continue to be busy preparing for the end of project events for schools taking place in Melbourne on 2nd December and Manchester on 20th January.
Catherine gave a presentation from the YPX project about what we can learn about sustainability transitions from multigenerational migrant households at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute’s International Workshop on Household Innovation in Sustainability Transitions in Prato, Italy. The presentation was well received and it was a great opportunity to hear about other research into sustainability and sustainable transitions taking place in households in a wide variety of countries.
September 2022
Another busy month for the project! We were in Newcastle, UK, for RGS-IBG, one of the biggest annual UK and global geography conferences. Our conference session on ‘Storytelling towards Solidarity: representing diverse experiences of living with a changing climate’ included perspectives from the UK, Australia, the USA, Brazil, New Zealand/Aotearoa and the South Pacific. This session was inspired by how young people in YPX interviews had envisaged more creative, story-based and globally inclusive ways of discussing climate change in schools and we came away with lots more to think about!
Catherine was an invited speaker for the University of Manchester’s Sustainable Futures seminar series where she spoke about negotiations of sustainable household practices that have been shared for the YPX project. Catherine argued that people interested in sustainability transitions can learn a lot from households where people have migrated, but that it is important not to romanticise migrant practices or imagine they remain static as people move between contexts.
We have added two new consultant members to the YPX team! Kit Marie Rackley and Nerida Thompson are both former teachers and passionate climate educators. They will be working with us to generate some fantastic resources for schools in the UK and Australia, and they have already made key contributions to the soon-to-be-released creative project book. Why not read more about Kit and Nerida and their fantastic work at our Who is involved in the project page?
We are organising two end of project events for schools to launch the creative project book and other resources. The event in Melbourne will be held on 2nd December 2022 and the event in Manchester on 20th January 2023. If you are a teacher, student or researcher of climate change education, or simply interested in this topic, please contact Catherine to get more details!
August 2022
Lots going on again this month! Work on the project book is continuing, with Maisy giving some sneak peaks at the beautiful illustrations she has produced for the book on Twitter and Instagram.
Catherine has also been busy finalising the text for the project book, following the meeting with educators in July and a meeting in early August with six young researchers who shared feedback on a draft of the project book.
We’re busy preparing for our RGS-IBG 2022 conference session on Storytelling towards Solidarity (organised by Catherine, Ellen and Natascha, with sponsorship by the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group and the Climate Change Research Group) at the end of the month, and we are excited for the conversations that will arise.
Good luck to all young researchers in the UK getting A-Level and GCSE results this month! We greatly appreciate the time that all young people have given to be part of the project during a really busy time in your life.
July 2022
Catherine's online bibliography of Young People and Climate Activism, written together with Benjamin Bowman (see news updates from January 2022), has now been published by Oxford University Press. This can be accessed directly at this link.
Work on the project book is well underway, and it was wonderful to meet with five of the teachers and educators who were interviewed for the YPX project and get their feedback on a draft of the text. Two of these educators will be joining the project team as environmental education consultants from September to produce some additional resources for teachers in Australia and the UK. Watch this space for details!
By the end of July, we had received 11 interview reflections from young researchers, all of which will be included in the project book along with an original illustration by Maisy.
A major milestone was reached this month – all of the data for the project are now transcribed, checked and coded!
June 2022
Midway through the month, Catherine conducted the final interviews and focus group for the YPX project with 8 young people at a school in Manchester. By the end of the project, a total of 40 young people aged 14-18, 16 family members and 14 educators had been interviewed, with many participants also taking part in focus groups, interview training, interviewing family members for the project and writing interview reflections for the forthcoming project book.
We were thrilled this month that Maisy Summer began working with the YPX project. Maisy is an independent Illustrator and Animator based in Manchester, whose artwork for the BERA Manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability caught the project’s eye! Maisy will produce some original illustrations for the project book, including a cover design, creative maps showing family journeys and original illustrations to accompany each young researcher’s interview reflection. You can read more about Maisy’s work on our 'Who is involved in the project?' page.
May 2022
This was an intensive data collection month in Melbourne, with nine new young researchers joining the project from two different schools.
Young researchers who had been trained to conduct interviews with parents in April also completed their interviews and took part in debrief interviews with parents, and we continued to receive reflections from young researchers for our project book of climate adaptation stories (the ‘project book’).
Although still some way off, before leaving Melbourne at the end of May, Catherine began to make plans for an event for schools that will take place in Melbourne in early December 2022.
April 2022
Our five newest young researchers on the project have now completed interview training, and we're excited for their interviews with family members! We're also thrilled to be getting contributions to our project book of climate adaptation stories through from young researchers who have already completed their family interviews.
Once again, it was great to partner with graduates from the University of Coventry's Citizen Social Science course in delivering our interview skills training. You can read more about these graduates and facilitators on our 'Who is involved in the project?' page.
Catherine presented on the YPX research at a lunchtime seminar for the University of Melbourne's School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Science. A full recording of Catherine's seminar, titled Young People at a Crossroads: Researching diverse stories of climate change adaptation in Manchester and Melbourne can be viewed at this link.
March 2022
Members of the YPX team met in person for the first time this month, as Catherine arrived to Australia after a long delay caused by the covid19 pandemic. Having travelled through heavy rain and storms that brought home the urgency of climate action, Catherine, Ellen and project mentor Natascha spent two days in Wollongong, where Natascha works. We discussed the fascinating data generated through the project so far, mapped out our first academic papers and planned our RGS-IBG conference session. Catherine will remain in Melbourne until the end of May.
We've been delighted this month to have another school in Melbourne support our research, leading to 5 new young researchers joining the project, with family backgrounds in India, Sri Lanka, Zambia and Venezuela. Two focus group discussions this month brought together these new researchers along with other YRs on the project to discuss images of climate justice and how these relate to their own lives and experiences of climate education.
February 2022
Another month with some really fascinating interviews led by our young researchers, including the first interviews with grandparents in the research! It was wonderful to witness one of our young researchers and her grandfather discuss the feasibility of scaling up solar energy in Sudan, complete with screensharing to overcome language barriers.
We are thrilled that as our proposed conference session for the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS-IBG) Annual Conference 2022 has been accepted, and will be sponsored by two of the Society's research groups: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group, and Climate Change Research Group.
Our session is on Storytelling towards solidarity: representing diverse experiences of living with a changing climate. This is informed by surveys that show that levels of climate anxiety are high among young people, and educational reviews that suggest that a greater emphasis on the 'stories behind the statistics' can be a way of building solidarity and reducing climate anxiety among young people. We will present experiences from young researchers on YPX as part of the session, but we're also keen to hear from other researchers working on this important topic.
January 2022
This was a relatively quiet month on the research project, against the backdrop of the extremes of the British winter and the Australian summer. Nonetheless, young researchers' fascinating interviews with parents continued, exploring climate, family and cultural connections between the UK, Australia, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Alongside these interviews, Catherine, along with Dr Ben Bowman of the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, was invited to work on a bibliography for Oxford Bibliographies on Young People and Climate Activism (this will be published online in May at this link). There has been a lot of interest in this area in recent years. In compiling the bibliography, we were struck by what a rich area of study this is turning out to be, but also how limited it is to only carry out research with young people who consider themselves to be 'climate activists'. Studies like YPX are teaching us how all young people have really interesting relationships and responses to climate activism, whether they consider themselves to be activists or not. This will further enhance what we know about the important topic of Young People and Climate Activism.
December 2021
This month the project team have been really enjoying a deep dive into the fantastic interview material that the young researchers and their parents have created so far.
A particular highlight has been seeing the similarities between young people’s experiences of learning about climate change in Manchester and Melbourne, as well as in countries where some young people lived before moving to these cities. A message we’re getting strongly from all young people is that technical information about climate change – whilst useful – is not enough to give them a deep understanding of this issue: they want to know more about stories on the ground of living with climate change in diverse contexts.
Looking at the first interviews young researchers have carried out with their parents has also been fascinating as young people’s questions have caused parents to look back on experiences of growing up and talk about ideas they haven’t discussed before. We’ve heard parents’ concerns about deforestation, rising temperatures, and rising costs of living in their countries of origin. Parents have told their children their own stories of first hearing the term ‘climate change’. They’ve also shared things they found unusual when first arriving to the UK and Australia: one mother was surprised and disapppointed that pumpkins, a staple vegetable in the country where she grew up, were mostly grown for Hallowe’en and then discarded without being eaten. This led to some recipe sharing in the interview!
November 2021
Four young researchers have now interviewed their parents for the project and, informed by their interviews, are working on their contributions to a book of climate adaptation stories (watch this space for news on this!).
Another nine young researchers have been trained through our interview skills training in Manchester and Melbourne and are ready to interview parents or other family membres.
We really enjoyed partnering with graduates from the University of Coventry's Citizen Social Science course who have shared their interview skills with young researchers by acting as facilitators on our interview skills training. You can read more about the facilitators on our 'Who is involved in the project?' page.
October 2021
We have completed more interviews with young researchers in both cities, and ran a second focus group in Manchester.
Excitingly, we have just finished the first round of interview training sessions, meaning that the first young researchers are now ready to interview a parent or other family member. We had loads of fun preparing and running these sessions and we were thrilled to see the great interview questions that the young researchers are preparing for their interviews!
We will run these sessions again as young researchers sign up for the project, so if anyone is keen to join the group, it is not too late to do so! You can email ypac-project@unimelb.edu.au to register your interest or ask a question to Catherine or Ellen.
September 2021
The first interviews with young researchers in Melbourne have been completed. These were very interesting conversations about climate change education in schools in Melbourne. In general, the young people agreed that there should be much more discussion about climate change at school and that it shouldn’t be limited to subjects such as geography. That way all students would hear about it.
Catherine presented about the project at the Annual Conference 2021 of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) as part of a conference session entitled ‘In it together! Intergenerational, creative responses to a climate of uncertainty’. This led to some great conversations about how different generations can work together to support one another in responding to climate change.
August 2021
We've now done interviews with our first five young researchers and held our first focus group in Manchester.
It has been brilliant to hear from our young researchers on their experiences of learning about climate change and discussions they have with families near and far about the environment, climate change, and everyday practices. We've also been thinking together about what we understand by climate in/justice.
We're still recruiting participants in both cities. Looking forward to the new school year in Manchester when we hope to get some more schools involved. Recruitment in Melbourne has been delayed because of #lockdown6, but we're getting there!
July 2021
We are delighted that Ellen van Holstein has started work on the YPX project to work with young researchers and their parents in Melbourne. Read more about Ellen.
Another two teacher interviews, including our first in Melbourne!
June 2021
We have now completed seven fascinating interviews with teachers and informal educators in Manchester. We’ve also done some piloting of our research with five young people who kindly gave their time to the project.
The first young researcher interview complete, and it was fascinating! We’re still recruiting for more young researchers – please contact Catherine or Ellen for details.
The project has now officially started, with the first educator interview taking place online.
April 2021
Catherine took part in a round table discussion organised by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute (SUII) on the topic of ‘How can Climate Justice Education help us to hope well?’. The YouTube video is here and gives a flavour of some of Catherine's passions for this project.
