Storying our Futures: climate resilience through indigenous knowledge is an exciting and vital British Council funded project produced by Adverse Camber with partner organisation in Kenya, ICPAC (IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre). The aim of the project is to discover how storytelling can best serve the people and lands experiencing the worst impacts of climate change.

Storytellers, John Mukeni Namai and Mara Menzies are working with journalists, scientists, and climate activists to look at how storytelling can help meet the challenges of our global climate emergency.  How are storytellers in countries most affected finding ways to make sense of the climate crisis?  Are there ways we can augment and add to these voices through collaboration? We hope that sharing each other’s experiences of crafting stories that have system change at their heart and documenting stories of indigenous knowledge and climate resilience will be a key part of the learning process.

John and Mara will join an ICPAC field trip to Turkana and Western Pokot in Northern Kenya, as integral project members, visiting communities who are being impacted by the current drought. Throughout the field trip the project team will gather video footage and audio recordings which will be used to create a podcast.

Later in the year, this podcast will help inform a half-day online workshop for storytellers, sharing insights and findings from the project, pooling practitioners’ experience of work in this field and developing a manifesto for change.

ICPAC will produce a film to share with climate policy makers in the IGAD region (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda). Journalist, Joseph Ngor Deng will be making programmes for community radio stations in Dinka, one of South Sudan’s languages, and there will also be online events focussed on NGO organisations, climate activists, funders, academics and storytellers to amplify the voices of the Global South and grow the idea of how storytelling can help those working towards system change.

Photographs taken by Edwin Kiplagat from ICPAC.

The project has been co-designed by a trio of ICPAC scientists and community engagement experts, Linda Ogallo, Collison Lore and Calistus Wachana, working closely with two UK co-lead storyteller/researchers, Cath Heinemeyer and Hannah McDowall for Adverse Camber.

Storying our Futures: climate resilience through indigenous knowledge is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects.