The role of arts and culture in bringing climate change to the ‘here and now’

Dr Sarah Mander, Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester

Thursday 24^th January (room C21, Pariser Building, Sackville Street) at 1.00pm.

Climate change is widely acknowledged as a pressing and complex societal challenge, requiring solutions that are as much social, economic and political as they are technical. For many people, climate change is intangible and abstract, the causes are complex, and its impacts occur elsewhere or far in the past or future. For people, the complexity of climate change can make it too large of a topic to engage with, or too difficult to see its relevance to their local community, yet much needed action on climate change will not happen without this psychological distance being overcome.

In this presentation, I reflect on the role that initiatives rooted in arts and culture can have as a means to bring climate change to the ‘here and now’, thereby helping to make the various aspects of climate change understandable and relatable and perhaps tangible. Drawing on examples of innovative cross-disciplinary approaches to climate change engagement undertaken in the UK, I explore how values, senses and emotions can enable communicators of environmental change to tell new stories and inspire action.

Speaker bio

Sarah Mander is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate, University of Manchester. Her work is interdisciplinary, focusing on integrating stakeholder and public perspectives with technical and modelling assessments in relation to carbon budgets and mitigation pathways, and low carbon energy technology. Committed to public engagement across all aspects of her research, Sarah explores innovative approaches to engagement which provide opportunities to reach diverse audiences in new ways.

The seminar will take place in room C21, in the Pariser Building on Sackville Street– number 12 on the map here http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/maps/interactive-map/?id=9