Storytelling for Sustainability

Research Project, 2022 –

What: I developed a course on Digitalization in a Changing World for the GU International Summer School on Sustainability. I have been teaching this course twice now after creating it from scratch. It is the IT faculty course of the summer school (every faculty contributes one course) and it has been a lot of fun engagement with and positive feedback from the students. The course centers around the topics of sustainability, wellbeing, and resilience. In the first iteration it was more focused on group sustainability projects and individual wellbeing practices. https://canvas.gu.se/courses/59330
This combination gave students space to reflect on the sustainability contents in their own individual practice and then come back to the team with well digested ideas and reflected considerations. However, after the first iteration I found myself reflecting on this way of running the course as a design-oriented course and realized that I did not have as much emphasis on equity and inclusion as I wanted. Consequently, I revamped the course for the next year to give more space to this aspect.
 
How: On an input level, I moved into a more discussion-oriented format using the guidance of a recently published book called “Insolvent” by Christoph Becker, who laid out why and how techno-solutionism is an inadequate and socially injust response to sustainability challenges.
On a design-level, I asked students to develop their own stories around a particular sustainability message. Instead of quoting pure facts, it is much more engaging for an audience to tie facts in with personal narratives and why something matters to us.
https://canvas.gu.se/courses/69185
 
Why: To me it matters very much that students learn (1) how to holistically think about sustainability in a way that is not simplified into techno-solutionism but as a mindset and in an inclusive thinking way, (2) how to prioritize equity and inclusion in their design-thinking processes, and (3) how to create their own portfolios based on personal stories that transport what is meaningful to them and how they wish to create impact in the world.

Results: Students loved the course and we had a fabulous morning of final presentations that included everything from a comic strip to a commencement speech to a poem and a documentary as well as several short stories. Most importantly, the thus created impression of the course is so strongly interleaved in between new content, new methods, and personal stories and emotions that it is a lasting memory. Hence, the course serves well for creating agents of change that choose to dedicate some of their work to sustainability in whichever context or circumstance.