University of Stirling part of £1.3m project to document the stories of climate change survivors

The University of Stirling is part of a £1.3m project which will gather first-person experiences from climate change survivors around the world.

While fires, floods and storms related to climate change dominate the headlines, climate politics and media reporting can favour the voices of experts over victims.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada has awarded a Can$2.5m grant to close what experts say is a critical gap in narrative and knowledge.

From Catastrophe to Community: A People’s History of Climate Change will train 500 further education students and professional journalists to document the experience of 1,000 survivors around the world and share their wisdom.

The project will create documentaries, news features, an anthology and a travelling museum exhibition that will launch at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Museum of Vancouver.

In the process, the From Catastrophe to Community team will develop new trauma-informed, human-rights-based storytelling practices that can support the recovery of communities impacted by climate change and other humanitarian crises.

'Second wound' for survivors

The University of Stirling’s Dr Sandra Engstrom, Senior Lecturer in Social Work and the lead on the project in the UK, is designing methodology for gathering personal narratives, and helping to provide psycho-social support to survivors.

Dr Engstrom said: “It is important that, when working with people who have lived through climate disasters and other traumatic events, practitioners, researchers and academics do not inflict a ‘second wound’ on survivors.

“Our partnership will improve training and skill development for people working with climate disaster survivors and their narratives, from archivists, curators, and journalists to health and social care workers, insurance adjusters, and public servants.”

The From Catastrophe to Community grant was awarded to a team of researchers, curators, journalists and artists across institutions including the University of Victoria, the University of Stirling, the Museum of Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, Trent University, the University of Denver Colorado, the Université du Québec à Montréal, and York University.

Sean Holman, the director of From Catastrophe to Community and Associate Professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, said: “Climate change isn’t a threat tomorrow. It’s a trauma today. And when someone lives through that kind of trauma, they need a different climate story where they feel seen in their experiences and know the harm caused to them will be repaired — both now and in the future.

“Each part of our society needs to work together to confront the traumatic impacts of our warming world. And that’s exactly what From Catastrophe to Community is doing: bringing museums, news outlets, theatre companies, post-secondary institutions, research agencies, and survivors together to help us to realize a more just and equitable future that honours the human dignity of disaster communities.”

Award-winning project

From Catastrophe to Community builds on the success of the award-winning Climate Disaster Project, a teaching newsroom founded by Professor Holman in 2021. To date, the Climate Disaster Project has trained more than 250 students in trauma-informed journalism techniques and, with the assistance of post-secondary partners in Canada and around the world, co-created more than 320 testimonies with climate survivors worldwide.

Highlights in the past year alone include a series of survivor narratives published in The Guardian during 2024’s COP29 UN Climate Change Summit, the creation of the award-winning documentary play Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories (which ran in Victoria and Vancouver), and the presentation of survivor narratives at cultural institutions including UCLA’s Art/Sci Center, the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, Canada and the Kamloops Art Gallery in Victoria.