Conference Workshops
Leaning into our unconventional and arts-focused conference format, we are pleased to provide a number of hands-on workshop sessions that are woven into the programme alongside plenary events, paper sessions, and online content. This will include 8+ different workshop sessions that engage with a variety of creative practices, and are led by professional/independent artists, as well as scholar-practitioners, in their own areas of expertise and passion.
Joana Avi-Lorie
Discourses of mental health and ecological distress: ONE FOR THE JOURNEY
My current PhD project at the University of Edinburgh investigates how fictional stories can impact narratives children have about the climate crisis which contributes to their eco-anxiety. Through a creative storytelling exploration of eco-anxiety and other eco-emotions, a group of children (9-12) who self-report struggling with negative emotions about the state of the climate and environment, helps me shine a light on the potential of fictional stories to balance other narratives – news, education and social settings – in the processing and communicating these difficult emotions in their own language. I propose to introduce some exercises as a creative practitioner to an adult audience who might be interested in the theme and methodology. The focus will be on making decisions about representing and conveying characters’ emotions and emotional states with the techniques of comics illustration and film & TV storyboarding as vehicle of self-expression. The visual storytelling exercises will be intertwined with group-led discussions about eco-anxiety and other eco-emotions, prompted by the themes of the stories selected and created.
Daillen Culver
Forest Bathing as an Embodied Practice for Cultivating Multispecies Kinship in Moments of Polycrisis
Countless philosophers, social scientists, and environmental activists have argued that the dualistic separation between humans and nature (and by extension, human domination of nature) is a driving force behind the accelerating climate crisis. Even as academics engaged in such debates, the cerebral nature of our work rarely brings us into contact with that wild “intercorporeality” (Merleau-Ponty 1964; Csordas 2008) that makes us indivisible from our fellow “Earth Beings” (de la Cadena 2015). We recognize dualism as a corrosive force, yet we lack the embodied practices to truly dismantle it. As an anthropologist and certified forest therapy practitioner. Up to 20 participants are invited to learn about the origins of shinrin yoku (forest bathing) as an animistic practice rooted in Japanese Shinto religion and its modernization in dialogue with emerging nature-based therapeutic techniques. I will share clinical studies supporting forest bathing’s benefits for physical and mental health, as well as embodiment literature inviting participants to reflect more deeply on the practice’s potential for relational and ontological transformation. Participants will be gently guided through a series of interactive exercises designed to regulate the nervous system, reconnect us with the natural world, and strengthen multispecies kinship in this moment of global crisis. The excursion will culminate in the construction of a collaborative sculpture made from organic materials, followed by a final group reflection and tips for integration.Emotions and embodiment in the climate crisis and climate justice engagement.
Laura Donkers
Drawing Climate Change Together Workshop
“When we do not have the words to say something, drawing can define both the real and unreal in visual terms” (Kovats (2007, p.8)
As we witness daily accounts of climate change impacts there is an urgency to understand the emotional toll this is having on people. This hands-on workshop uses the creative agency of collective drawing to achieve a visual account of how the climate crisis is affecting people emotionally. Lived experience as a foundation for drawing captures what has been sensed, felt, thought about or performed. This workshop relates to the conference theme: Epistemologies of Climate Change, by using collective drawing as an alternative way of understanding climate change in culturally/locally specific forms of storytelling. Collective drawing can ‘initiate relationships with environments and phenomena’ (Casey and Davies 2017). It deploys the ‘visual voice’ in an arts-led, participatory method to yield culturally relevant perspectives (Yonas, Burke and Miller, 2013). Through processes of visual conceptualisation and subsequent reflective discussion collective drawing as interlocutor empowers participants to express hitherto unvoiced thoughts and affords opportunities for exchange between participants and audiences.
This workshop will comprise of a large sheet of drawing paper containing a charcoal underdrawing evoking a damaged landscape (approx. 2×1.5m) placed on a large table along with charcoal and erasers for participants to use. Disposable gloves and wet wipes will also be provided. The intention is that participants contribute their emotional responses to a vision of climate change by drawing and erasing directly onto the work.
Kate Downie, Gillian McFarland, Rehema White, Benjamin Ong
Sensing and making sense in an ArtMove
We move through our professional and personal lives in ways that shield us from feeling and connecting. The privileging of intellectual activity neglects our embodied engagement with challenges of climate crisis. This participatory performance activity centres the senses, opening up and allowing people to explore the interface between the natural and built worlds. Activities will include leaving the protection of the building to feel the materiality of ‘the environment’ through feet and wind, a focused and peripheral vision for the future. Participants will be invited to draw the ‘undrawable’ and create a shared record, with charcoal and other media, to draw their sensory journey; perhaps the soundscape of seagull and diesel, the feeling of wind or light. Participants may leave more vulnerable, more aware of the opportunities and art they encounter and more willing to ask questions of themselves and others.
Dunedin City of Literature
Green Tongues
‘Green tongues’ presents a curated digital collection of eco-poetry films and readings, by six award-winning Ōtepoti Dunedin (Aotearoa New Zealand) poets, including Robyn Maree Pickens, Iona Winter, Megan Kitching, Claire Beynon, and Sophie Wilson, and Jessica Hinerangi. Sponsored by the Dunedin City of Literature, the collection brings offerings of green things, salt tides, and reflections on interconnected emotions and materialities. Presented as part of Energy-in Motion, it connects Ōtepoti Dunedin (in Aotearoa New Zealand) with its Scottish heritage. In the one hour online Q&A session, chaired by Dunedin poet and academic Susan Wardell, the six poets will speak to their poems, their processes, and how they interpret the meaning and purpose of ‘eco-poetry’ in this era, while responding to questions from the audience.unter and more willing to ask questions of themselves and others.
Michelle Elvy
Micros in motion: reading, writing and engaging our world
Michelle Elvy is an award-winning writer, editor, creative writing teacher and mentor. She grew up in the Chesapeake Bay area on the east coast of the US, pursued a career as a historian, then sailed around the world while raising her children aboard her sailboat and eventually made her home in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the novel, the everrumble (2019), and the hybrid story collection, the other side of better (2021), and she has edited numerous anthologies, all centered around interrogating, re-imagining and caring for our world. Her latest work is a series of dispatch poems, writing from the crisis of the US, published March-April at Paula Green’s Poetry Shelf. michelleelvy.com
This workshop will look at the fine art of writing small: microfiction and creative nonfiction. We’ll consider: How can a micro be focused and simultaneously so expansive? How can it capture a world? And more specifically, as we are beleaguered by political, economic, social and climate crisis, how can we tap into our creativity to connect with our world(s), and how can the act of creative expression suggest both investigative enquiry and solace?
We’ll look at the notion of space in storytelling, the idea of conflict and tension, the mysteries of knowing and not knowing. We’ll also consider the idea of motion at the centre of the micro – movement is key to life; change is story. To understand the micro, we must gain appreciation for suggested movement and meaning in a small space. We will use the short form to write beyond expectations in the way we approach our realities.
Joan Gavaler
Taking Care of Ourselves in Order to Take Care of the World
This workshop uses contemplation, movement, and writing to process our responses to climate change and connect to the present moment. Participants explore pausing, sensing, rooting, and expanding – tools that will be of value throughout the conference and beyond. The workshop reflects on the theme of “Caring for and Caring about.” What personal and communal strength can we access to better face the realities of climate change? We acknowledge there are people and financial/political power structures that value extracting resources over human and planetary well-being. We acknowledge harm is inequitable and heartbreaking. Gathering a critical mass of people toward healing action is an ongoing challenge. Through this workshop we will embody the process of being present to care for ourselves, other people, and the world when things fall apart. We cultivate presence to respond flexibly to each moment, each need, and each opportunity to shift our society in a different direction.
Ghost & John
Embodied Ecology – A Gathering for Liberated Futures
This research looks at modalities to understand landscapes, hold the potential for collective healing and liberation for all, and capacity building for internal peace, from a queer and migrant perspective.
The research focuses on how our worlds collide as we meet and form a greater ecology that supports us to dream and imagine bravely and freely for futures with freedom for all. The migrant and queer bodies carry lived experiences of crossing arbitrary boundaries of nationalities and identities and manoeuvring climate crisis and bureaucratic visa systems. Wisdom and knowledge are collected through every step we make on the “wrong path†like the minerals we accumulate through the water we drink.
This is an experimental and playful workshop expanding on the landscapes of our bodies and how we can perform, construct and agitate towards collective liberated ecological futures. Through a number of dance, writing and drawing experiments, together we will investigate our greater landscape and common infrastructure that will support us to dream and imagine bravely and freely for futures with freedom for all, rooted in queer and migrant experiences. After all, what artistic, personal, spiritual, or political constellations arise when we come together and our artistic ecologies collide?
Eleni Kotsira
GENTLE STEPS: A wellbeing workshop for studying or engaging with the climate change
Studying aspects of the climate change and capturing its impacts on people’s lives throughone’s work can be a stressful occupation. Professionals working in this field are known tomore frequently experience wellbeing challenges, and yet do not have the time and space to pause and reflect on how their own mental health is affected. This workshop provides the space for such reflections in a safe and guided environment (the facilitator is trained in trauma-informed approaches). Participants will be given individual short writing exercises as a starting point for their reflection. These exercises will be the basis for a series of group discussions, allowing participants to better understand each other’s experiences. The workshop will conclude with the group undertaking the collective task of creating a ‘wellbeing action plan’ that can be applied by all participants going forward.
This workshop welcomes equally researchers and practitioners. There are no prerequisites, but participants are encouraged to come to the workshop having in mind one or more aspects of their work they find stressful and would like to improve.
Anastasia (A) Alevtin, Emily May Armstrong, Rowan Lear
In Seed Time: Energies of Dormancy and Lingering
In dormancy, seeds enter a state of suspension, quietness and pause. This is a survival strategy of energy conservation to cope with seasonal weather changes. Seeds are not, however, inactive. Their microbiome periodically awakens to check local conditions, and a seed continues to monitor the temperature, humidity and light availability of its surroundings, among other things. In this workshop, we will handle, investigate and sort a variety of seeds, reflecting on their capacities to linger and store energy. While learning about the relationship between plant genetics, vegetal behaviour and environmental conditions, we will consider what seeds might contribute to the concept of ‘crip time’ and how they unsettle notions of latent energy or ‘standing reserve’.
Xueting Luo
Embodied Nature: Navigating Climate Emotion and Time through Chinese Landscape Philosophy
This workshop draws on my PhD research, which explores the interdisciplinary connections between Kunqu dance and Chinese landscape arts in the context of contemporary eco-somatic practice.
Kunqu, a classical Chinese performance art blending poetry, music, and energy-driven movement, fosters emotional expression and embodied awareness through its focus on natural imagery and spatial flow. Similarly, Chinese landscape painting and poetry offer a meditative engagement with nature, where time unfolds in cyclical rhythms and transient moments, encouraging a relational understanding of the self and environment.
In response to climate-related emotions such as ecological grief and anxiety, this workshop proposes an eco-somatic practice inspired by Kunqu movement principles and landscape philosophy. Participants will explore body-mind exercises and guided improvisation, translating temporal shifts — drifting clouds, changing light, and seasonal transformations — into embodied movement. This process fosters sensory awareness and creative expression, offering a reflective space to navigate climate emotion and reconnect with natural rhythms.
Hannah McNeilly
Sensing, Being, Connecting with Nature
Taking participants outside of the conference venue, this workshop facilitates direct experiences of connection and interaction with our natural environment. Building on five pathways to nature connection – namely the senses, beauty, emotion, meaning, and compassion – we will draw our attention to the living and non-living beings around us as to more deeply perceive and reflect on our interrelated existence. The workshop will follow a 3-part structure: multi-sensory observation; direct contact with nature (including making nature art); and sharing and integration. Creating shared positive experiences in and with nature not only serves as a tool to foster wellbeing and care about and for the environment but also allows for new perspectives and inspiration for reflection. In this way, the workshop seeks to create space for beauty, calm, and connectedness amid the ecological crisis we are facing.
Jenny Pope
Climate Crisis Survival Kit
A facilitated creative workshop combining talking and making, for participants to discuss what are their strategies for wellbeing in the current climate crisis and the uncertainties ahead. No ‘art skills’ required, just a playful open welcoming space. Through a series of led questions and individual reflection I will guide people to explore -what do they need? what tool/object would symbolise their own way to cope and find strength? To maintain our resilience? We will then use a range of recycled materials, packaging, craft supplies and objects to create quirky sometimes humorous personal tools with titles. Previous examples include ‘Optimism Fan’, ‘Planetary Positivity Prober’ and ‘Life Ring for the Next Noah’. I use a coaching style approach, creating a safe space for learning and sharing which maintains personal boundaries whilst tackling potentially difficult topics.
Rebecca Thomas, Renata Varea, Eseta Drova
Balancing narratives in Climate Research using participatory visual methods
This workshop facilitates hands-on exploration of the transformative potential of arts-based methods in climate research, focusing on illustrated fieldwork journals, Photovoice, and directed artworks. Participants will engage in guided activities to experience how these methods capture and communicate the emotional and experiential dimensions of climate change. I will share real-life examples from the field in Fiji, illustrating the impact of these methods on community engagement and climate adaptation research. By integrating these visual methods, the workshop aims to equip participants with innovative tools for engaging communities and enhancing climate adaptation research. This approach aligns with the conference’s themes of materiality, emotion, and interdisciplinary collaboration, offering new perspectives on climate mobility. The workshop will demonstrate how these methods can balance narratives of climate disaster with stories of resilience and treasured community elements, fostering a more nuanced understanding and inspiring actionable insights for policy and practice.
Henna-Elise Ventovirta
Emotions and embodiment in the climate crisis and climate justice landscape
This participatory movement workshop explores the emotional and embodied dimensions of the climate crisis and activism. Grounded in my doctoral research on embodiment in climate justice activism and resistance to fossil fuel economies, it draws from creative dance pedagogies and somatics. Using participatory methods, it facilitates the sensing and expression of climate-related emotions, their connection to movement, and political engagement. The workshop includes somatic practices, creative movement, body-mapping, and spatial group tasks, with participants shifting between individual exploration, small group tasks, and plenary exchanges. It aims to foster empathy and reflexivity among those engaged in climate justice or affected by the climate crisis and related political (in)action. The workshop provides embodied tools for living with socio-ecological urgency while navigating between regeneration and staying active. It highlights the potential of intentional movement to further collective action and academic thinking and supports scholars, students, activists, and citizens in imagining life-enhancing energy futures.
Haewon Yi
Theatre of Decomposition
Theatre of Decomposition (ToD) is a creative inquiry and performance practice that explores the bodies of fungi and lichens to reimagine “living/dying with” on a damaged planet. This workshop on ToD offers somatic and poetic practices to engage in ecological grief and celebration, drawing inspiration from the primordial decomposers. ToD is informed by autoethnographic research with citizen scientists and the land-based knowledge of the Mi’kmaq, Indigenous people of Mi’kma’ki (Maritime Canada). When logging threatened their local old forests in Annapolis, a group of citizen scientists established “Lichen Camp” along the logging road. Their ongoing research aims to demonstrate the forests’ conservation value with rare lichens and fungal biodiversity. Identifying a lichen smaller than 2mm in a dense forest demands skilled attention, care, and also, joy. Through this workshop, I seek to share this embodied learning and inspire participants to cultivate resilience within their bodies through co-dwelling with other decomposers.