Week 5
Responses to Climate Change
How are people responding to and sharing information creatively to shape our understanding of Earth’s changing climate, including heatwaves?
This week you will read and respond to excerpts from climate-related texts, exploring the purpose of the genre, language forms, features, structures and stylistic approaches. You will view and respond to Visual Communication and Art as vehicles for shifts in thinking about climate change and changing people’s actions. You will also learn about local and international climate activists such as Tishiko King and Grace Vegesana and their work in change making.
‘As a global phenomenon climate change requires us to think on a global level. But while we measure, project and debate at the planetary scale, we miss something, the problem becomes abstract and inhuman.’
Flash Fiction
Using resources provided by Story Factory you will investigate how climate change features in fictional texts, the purpose of the genre, and the language forms, features, structures and stylist approaches. Inspired by this investigation, write your own climate fiction in response to heat and climate change.
Story Factory is a not-for-profit creative writing organisation for young people in under-resourced communities. It runs programs in Sydney and digitally across Australia, working with young people to write their own stories, imagine their own worlds and see themselves as authors who have a voice worth sharing with the world. The benefits can last a lifetime.
Worksheet
Digital Media
‘Tuvalu is one of the world’s most endangered nations, sitting at an average of less than 2 metres above sea level. It is a staggeringly beautiful place that has a complex culture stretching back thousands of years. But we are facing the seemingly inevitable prospect of losing Tuvalu over the coming decades as it gradually slips beneath the rising waters now bubbling from underground to the surface.’
You may remember the short film Tuvalu from the 50°C: Climate, Heat and Resilience program launch at Riverside Theatres on 2 December 2024. Now that you have learnt more about heat in the community, rewatch Tuvalu and think deeply about the daily experiences of people that live in Tuvalu, a country that is significantly impacted by climate change. Then listen to an oral recording of artist Angela Tiatia, exploring the purpose for creating Tuvalu and her family’s personal experiences with Climate Change.
Visual Communication
Explore how digital artists and academics are visualising data to communicate weather and climate messages. For example, artists Michael Thomas Hill and Indigo Hanlee’s work High Water (2018) in Cooling the City Chapter 2: ‘Understanding and Measuring Climate’, and Professor Ed Hawkins’ (University of Reading) work Show your stripes.
Michael Thomas Hill & Indigo Hanlee
Show Your Stripes, Professor Ed Hawkins
Climate Action
‘I was 14, when I was sitting in a Year 9 Science class and I remember climate change being mentioned in literally one sentence of like, ‘global warming is happening, it’s not very good, anyways’. And then we continued on. I think that really stuck with me because I was like, what do you mean?’
Grace Vegesana is passionate about empowering young people of all backgrounds to forge systemic solutions to the climate crisis. Her resource explores climate action and introduces local and international climate activists, their work and impact in bringing about change at different scales.
How climate impacts us
Profiles
Industry Collaborators
