February 6: “Global Climate Education and Its Discontents Using Drama to Forge a New Way”
This innovative and practical book offers pedagogical tools to show how drama can be used in educational settings to advance a relational, action-oriented, interdisciplinary, and creative climate education attuned to the social and emotional effects of the climate emergency. Can performance become a site for new imaginaries for socio-ecological justice? – The book explores the unique conceptual and pedagogical ‘discontents’ of climate education across geographically and culturally distinct sites of learning. It also examines how artful engagement through drama pedagogies can open up more collective, critical, and hopeful forms of thinking and being.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Distinguished Professor, Kathleen Gallagher studies theatre as a powerful medium for expression by young people of their experiences and understandings. She has published numerous books and articles on pedagogy and socially-engaged theatre-making.
Actions
- Read Global Climate Education and Its Discontents Using Drama to Forge a New Way
- Be in nature
- Explore with your body and move your body
- Hold space in nature
- Take up an “Analog Hobby”
- “Unstick” and “unlearn” habits of how we are in relation to everything around us. Find new ways forward.
- Organize a workshop to explore the themes of climate education through drama. This could involve practical activities, group discussions, and performance exercises.
- Involve the broader community in the conversation by hosting public performances, discussions, or exhibitions that highlight the work done in the event and its relevance to socio-ecological justice.
- Establish a collaborative group or network of educators, artists, and community leaders who are interested in continuing the work of integrating drama into climate education.
Resource List
Kathleen Gallagher Books and Articles:
- Global Climate Education and Its Discontents Using Drama to Forge a New Way (Routledge : 2025)
- Harnessing Speculative Fiction to Reimage and Rewrite our relationships to the climate crisis and the future of our local environments (Taylor & Francis : 2024)
- Youth and Play: World-Making in the Real and the Imagined (Springer : 2023)
- Why Theatre Matters (UTP, 2014)
Websites:
Plays:
- The Contingency Plan. Play. Steve Waters
- Plays That Will Inspire You for Earth Day!
- Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope