Global Climate Education and Its Discontents

Kathleen Gallagher is Director of the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Distinguished Professor. Gallagher studies theatre as a powerful medium for expression by young people of their experiences and understandings.Christine Balt is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research takes place at the intersection of theatre, pedagogy, ecology, and collective well-being in the lives of young people living in cities.

"Global Climate Education and its Discontents is a necessarily audacious response to the high-stakes challenge of how to live and educate amidst multiple, complex ecological crises. Through richly described and theorised practice, each chapter shows how drama is more than a tool in the environmental education toolbox. Rather, collaborative theatre and performance by and with youth are powerful ecopedagogies that activate other ways of knowing and, potentially, other climate futures. I’ve long been waiting for a book like this and have already started setting chapters as readings for my courses." -- Molly Mullen, Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland, New Zealand"This rich book could not have arrived at a better time, offering trajectories of hope in difficult times. Writing in a context – the UK – where the arts are routinely disparaged and devalued, the centring of drama as a vital and meaningful way to practice socio-ecological pedagogy offers me something of a lifeline, powerfully reminding me of just what drama is capable of. Built on foundations of multi-generational and transnational research spanning many years, this research ensemble ethically centres the experiences, insights, feelings and dreams of young people. Conceptual gifts which I now carry close include found pedagogy, esperanza ambiental, eco-gladness, theatre publicing, and glocalised critical sensory pedagogy." -- Professor Dee Heddon, James Arnott Chair in Drama, University of Glasgow, UK"This book is of exceptional importance at a time of global crisis. It uses the concept of ‘discontent’ with climate education as a wake-up call for active and collective engagement with environmental emergencies in local and global contexts. Three forms of dramatic performative tools – Verbatim Theatre, Devising, and Site-Specific Theatre – are utilized to generate a collective understanding of the healing, care, and recovery of the earth’s ecosystems. The unique and passionately argued chapters come together in interrelated arguments that are connected in their search for ecological recovery as it emerges in an ensemble of different knowledge systems." -- Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, Professor and Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

• Foreword: A Scientist's Perspective Introduction - Living the Contradictions: Theatre and the Arts as Deep, Life-sustaining Frameworks for Climate Education on an Exhausted Planet; Part 1: Local Engagements and Encounters 1. Building a Global Ensemble as Alternative Education for the Climate Emergency: Theatre Pedagogies for Activating Artist-citizens in Tkarón:to/Toronto 2. Esperanza Ambiental: Cultivating Environmental Hope in Bogotá through Pedagogies of Humility and Risk 3. Engaging Youth with the Climate Crisis: Playful Tactics for Dialogue and Devising in Coventry 4. Unravelling Narratives of Climate Change, Gender and Livelihood in Lucknow: An Ecofeminist Perspective 5. Towards a Glocalized Critical Sensory Pedagogy: Explorations of Heavy Industry and Climate (In)justice in Kaohsiung 6. The Tacit Knowledge of Environmental Experience: Theatre, Cultural Reckonings, and ‘Publicing’ in Greece 7. The Digital Dilemma: Navigating Place, Space, Relationships and Possibilities in Global Youth-based Climate Education Research; Part 2: Pedagogical and Artistic Innovations 8. Beyond the Public Service Announcement: Navigating Hard Facts and Dissident Feelings in the Climate Emergency through Verbatim Theatre 9. Performative Pedagogies and Creative Courage: Building New Worlds during the COVID-19 Pandemic 10. Exploring Resistance and Acceptance at the Threshold of the Future: Speculative Fiction and Human Desires 11. Virtual, Sonic Drama as Climate Crisis Pedagogy: Listening to the Environment to Better Understand our Place in the World 12. Fiction and Embodiment as Gateways to Explore Posthuman Togetherness 13. Provoking 'Eco-gladness': Movement across Four Drama Pedagogies 14. Attending to Settler-colonial and Indigenous Histories in Tkaronto/Toronto: ‘Being in Common’ and Acknowledging Land through Site-specific Performance; Afterword: Gifts from Locality