Helping students express their feelings about the climate crisis

Luiza Salek and colleagues at the Non-Profit Shake Up the Establishment meet for the Global Climate Strike on September 15, 2023.
Photo submitted by Luiza Salek

By Patricia Lane &  Luiza Salek

These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity.

Luiza Salek is using art to help high school teachers provide a platform for students to express their feelings about the climate crisis. As part of the first UBC Climate Studies and Action cohort, Luiza and three other students in collaboration with the BC Teachers Federation, designed the Climate Art Challenge. Luiza is also a UBC Climate Storytelling Fellow and with her colleagues is preparing for Communicating Climate Hope, a conference at the University of British Columbia (UBC) on August 14-16, 2024.

Tell us about the Climate Art Challenge.

Children are learning about the climate and nature emergencies at the same time they are told they are expected to deal with climate challenges. That heavy load is linked to elevated risks of depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress. The Climate Art Challenge offers innovative and potentially transformative ways to educate children that will also mitigate mental health and promote wellbeing. Using arts-based storytelling, the project is based on Indigenous teaching that the climate crisis is less a technical problem and more a relational one. Research shows students can use art to connect with their emotions in both active and reflexive ways and explore hope in justice-oriented actions. This form of education might interrupt the reproduction of colonial futures and foster a deeper sense of social and ecological responsibility.

This all sounds pretty complex but the project itself is simple. Teachers download a lesson plan to help them guide students in creating a piece of art demonstrating their feelings about climate change. Teachers cover the basics of the causes and impacts of climate change and help students research how different communities, including their own, are both impacted and developing resilience. Each student is encouraged to keep a visual journal over a two- to four-week period, documenting their feelings as they explore the topics.