Principles of Ethical Storytelling

Sunday, July 12 from 1 -3pm EDT &

Sunday, August 9 from 1 - 3 pm EDT

Storytelling is more important now, than ever. Storytelling allows us the space to listen to and learn from  one another as we process the intersecting realities of COVID-19, rapid social change and uprising, and ongoing climate crises. Effective storytelling emerges from a place of trust and has the power to change hearts and minds in a way that facts and figures cannot. When storytelling involves personal reflection, it can be a liberatory practice in self-exploration and self-power. Honesty, humility, and vulnerability are powerful catalysts for social justice-based action. Practicing meaningful, consent-based, enthusiastic storytelling, involves a critical understanding of the Principles of Ethical Storytelling. Join OCV team members as we share our process for ensuring that the stories we share are storyteller-led and told in a way that honors each storyteller. This workshop lays the foundation for future conversations in this series. We encourage all those interested in storytelling and narrative change to attend! This is one of our core workshop offerings and will be most useful to those new to ethical storytelling. 

Led by the Our Climate Voices team.

Sharing Our Climate Liberation Stories in an Era of Transformation

Sunday, July 26 from 1 -3 pm EDT

Storytelling allows us to track multiple unfolding crises by providing a way for us to share and record our experiences, while serving as a tool to check-in with each other about the effects of related traumas. It also generates collective hope and empathy as we pay attention to the brave acts of resistance and resilience happening everyday. COVID-19 raises new questions about our relationship to land and community, illuminating the reality that sustainability and public health are deeply intertwined. Recent activism surrounding the fights for racial justice — most recently exhibited in the mass uprising after the murder of George Floyd — highlights the disproportionately harmful and intersectional ways that BIPOC are impacted by the climate crisis. At OCV, the process we use for telling our climate stories can help guide our reflections and understandings of the way public health and the fight for racial justice impact our work on climate change. We invite you to join us as we begin to sit with the changes catalyzed by the pandemic and the recent uprising for Black lives and examine the impacts on our personal climate stories. This workshop is open to people who have attended our storytelling workshops in the past or those who are new to our workshop process. 

Led by Rachel Porter and Tatiana Eaves.

Collective Climate Visioning

Sunday, August 16 from 1 - 3 pm EDT

At OCV, our philosophy is to “move at the speed of trust” in the words of Adrienne Maree Brown. We collaborate with people to share their personal experiences and wisdom about climate change and how to work towards community-based just transitions. At the same time, we show up on the frontlines as women, BIPOC, and queer folxs and join you in demanding justice now. Join us in reflection about this moment in the climate justice movement and how COVID-19 and the recent amplification of the Black Lives Matter movement  may have impacted our vantage point. How can we ensure that climate movement work is stemming from a place that realizes all aspects of justice? Solutions are born from a bold, innovative, justice-driven vision. For this to emerge, we must create the space to listen to each other and to dream what others may deem impossible. Join OCV as we dream and vision together about creating the future that we want and one that works for all of us. 

Led by Aletta Brady and Kia Johnson.

Race and Climate: A Space for BIPOC Climate Activists

Sunday, July 19 from 1 -3pm EDT

Climate change is the great exacerbator. Systematically oppressed communities, including and especially those made up of Black people, Indigenous peoples, and people of color, continue to bear a disproportionately large share of the burdens caused by climate change. As reported in 2012 by the NAACP, 78% of Black people lived within 30 miles of a coal plant. People of color breath 40% more polluted air than white communities. That’s just the air; this doesn’t include ways people of color are disproportionately affected by heat waves, wildfires, floods, and storms.

However, the world of climate organizing does not always reflect these inequities. For many of us working in the climate organizing realm, our advocacy is taking place in predominantly White environments. We offer this workshop as a means for BIPOC climate organizers to come together and exchange ideas in a space guided by vulnerability and hope. We will share and listen to our intersectional climate stories. We will share and listen to our stories about being BIPOC in a white-dominated sphere. And, we will envision a climate movement rooted in collective liberation. Racial justice is climate justice.

Led by Tatiana Eaves and Gari De Ramos.

Call to Care

Sunday, August 2 from 1 - 3 pm EDT

COVID-19 is capturing our attention, as it should, during this unprecedented moment in history. Climate advocacy work remains urgent and important. We must continue to talk about climate in a way that values human lives and puts Black liberation, queer liberation, migrant justice, disability justice, and all types of liberation and freedom work at the center of climate justice. In this moment, eco-facism and disposability politics continue to replicate the structures that we as climate activists must dismantle as rhetoric around the benefits of COVID-19 to nature while people (who are of nature) are dying in tens of thousands. Join us for an honest conversation about our responsibilities as climate justice advocates in this moment. We will discuss strategies for ensuring that our climate advocacy is intersectional as well as brainstorm suggestions for self-care and community care during this time. This conversation will center around the theme that movements cannot build momentum at the expense of the vulnerable. 

Led by Chelsea Call and Gari De Ramos.

Summer Series Q&A

Sunday, August 23 from 1 - 2 pm EDT

Join OCV team members for a discussion and reflection session on our Summer Workshop series. Ask questions and engage in conversation about building an intersectional climate movement, how storytelling can amplify social justice activism.

Led by the Our Climate Voices team.