Shaping climate education through the humanities

A collaboration between the sciences and the humanities at UB has led to an innovative way to share important climate change information.

The Great Lakes Climate Theatre Initiative (GLCTI), created by a partnership of faculty members from the departments of Environment and Sustainability (EVS) and Theatre and Dance, is educating the public in new ways. 

“Science can tell us how much carbon is in the atmosphere, but reading a novel about climate refugees can help us understand how that carbon might affect our daily lives,” says Kacey Stewart, research assistant professor and adjunct instructor of environment and sustainability.

In addition to Stewart, faculty partners includes Tim Chevral and Susan Clark from EVS and Lynne Koscielniak and Eero Laine from Theatre and Dance.

The partners say the mission of the GLCTI emerged from the success of a multifaceted pilot program, “Toward a Climate Haven: Preparing for Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region by Combining Performance and Science,” that brought together climate science and green theater practice as a way to engage the public in conversations about climate planning in Buffalo.

Chevral, a social scientist and professor and chair of EVS, hoped to explore two hypotheses through “Toward a Climate Haven”: that it would make people feel more hopeful about the future and that it would inspire them to take action. 

“From the ‘talkback’ with the audience immediately following the performance, these sentiments were explicitly voiced by attendees, which has further motivated the research group to continue the initiative,” Chevral says.

The pilot project included a newly commissioned dramatic work, “An Unlikely Refuge,” a short play by Bella Poynton, assistant professor of theatre at SUNY Oswego, that follows two climate migrants after their arrival in Buffalo in the fall of 2075. The migrants experience four seasons in their new city as they brave extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, all of which are informed by current climate models.

“Plays work like experiments,” Stewart notes. “We ask what would happen if these people experienced this scenario? That’s not far off from the kind of scenario planning that many municipal governments are doing right now.”

By adding things like dialogue, characters and set design to scenario planning, the collaborators believe theater can expand the depth and richness of community understanding in the face of climate change.

“Immersive performative experiences have the unique ability to evoke deep emotional responses and inspire meaningful action,” explains Koscielniak, professor, producing director and associate chair of theatre and dance. “Unlike traditional forms of communication, these experiences engage the senses, the imagination and the empathy of the audience — creating a visceral connection to abstract or complex issues like climate change.”

The group’s core goal is to continue to integrate climate education with theater and dance by commissioning plays, workshops and symposiums with climate scientists and theater artists.

“We’d be lost if there weren’t people studying how our atmosphere is changing or how demographics are shifting in response,” Stewart says. “The humanities fill that gap by helping us to think about what we should do about these things. The humanities help us to make sense of the senseless.”

Thanks to funding from the College of Arts and Sciences’ Seed Projects in Arts and Sciences Research and Creative Activities program, the group was able to fully explore the use of the humanities in effective science communication — something that Clark, Edward J. Kikta Jr. Innovation Professor of Experiential Learning in EVS, says is necessary to improve climate and sustainability learning outcomes.

“I think the humanities provide a more accessible and attractive way to communicate about science and other complex problems like climate change,” Clark says. “Graphs, charts and data can be challenging to relate to, whereas a play or story is something anyone, including youth, can understand, enjoy and relate to. It all helps to invoke an emotional response in ways that graphs and charts often cannot.

“This is important if we want the public to act on that response and do what they can to reduce their impact on our climate and the environment,” she says.

Laine, associate professor and chair of theatre and dance, shares similar interests centering on the performance of wilderness, so when Chevral reached out to Laine about Laine’s experience working with international groups of performance studies scholars and artists on various projects related to climate, he was excited to bring his collaborative spirit to the new UB initiative focused on the Great Lakes region.

“Buffalo has abundant access to fresh water, established infrastructure and space to accommodate a growing population,” Laine explains. “In developing this work, climate scientists and theater artists collaborated to imagine what the region might look like in the future, bridging scientific projections and artistic interpretation to help us start planning and acting today for a possible future of Buffalo as a climate haven, should the climate crisis intensify.”

The GLCTI’s production methods were guided by environmentally conscious principles. Koscielniak elevated climate conversations in the theater sphere by infusing sustainability into set design and production by reducing paper waste and utilizing digital scripts, and repurposing and upcycling stock scenic items to minimize the need for new construction and waste.

“By dramatizing the future impacts of climate change on landscapes, communities and even familial legacies, these performances help spectators envision how these realities might affect their descendants,” Koscielniak says. “This temporal shift — from present-day data to future generational impact — can be profoundly motivating.”

Koscielniak believes that similar, humanities-driven educational projects thrive when they create platforms for interdisciplinary learning, generate art from shared inquiry and strengthen relationships between universities, public education and local government. She says the GLCTI exemplifies this model, demonstrating how performance can be a powerful tool for climate communication, education and action.

The GLCTI is working on gaining funding to continue its collaboration on more plays and publications.