2022

Lehtonen, Anna

Climate change, as an immense, acute crisis, is a huge challenge to address in education. The reality of the crisis evokes challenging emotions and inner contradictions and can exacerbate attitudes and conflicts between people with different value-perspectives. People need support and creative spaces to help them find creative personal and collective concrete and mental solutions for these contradictions and emotional issues they experience in association with climate change. Collective and creative methods of drama are much needed for fostering social reflexivity, empathy and dialogue. In this chapter, I reflect on the potential of drama to support climate change education related to relational sustainability competencies (Wals, 2015), such as knowing, doing, being and transforming in action. I refer to my doctoral dissertation, “Drama as an interconnecting approach for climate change education”, and argue that the intensified embodied awareness and emotional engagement involved in creative collaboration and reflective dialogue, that being differently in drama, can promote a deeper understanding of interconnectedness of sustainability issues, raise critical awareness and motivate action. Through the description of one representative performance narrative, in which young people awaken to the realities of overconsumption in the middle of a hectic shopping experience, I show how performance-making methods can elevate critical reflection about change.