Data and statistics are often used to give an image of what climate change is, but some students are taking an artistic approach to communicate this pressing issue.
The Climate Narrative Project, now in its third year at the University of Iowa, brings together students from various disciplines to create an artistic, multimedia project to communicate an aspect of climate change. This semester’s presentations will be held tonight.
Six students, ranging from first-year undergraduates to fourth-year doctoral students, created projects this semester, meeting once a week to discuss their ideas. Each of the projects strives to communicate what the effects of climate change are and what some solutions are.
UI senior Emma Blackman created a fictional film. She said the film is intended to be a metaphor for a human relationship with the environment, using a family scenario to draw symbolic parallels.
“It’s less about informing people, because there are a lot of statistics about climate change,” Blackman said. “It’s more to get people thinking about our relationship with the environment and questioning our actions.”
UI sophomore Sophia Coker Gunnink wrote a recipe book of meals from various cultures requiring ingredients that will either be lost or too expensive to grow as the effects of climate change unfold.
For her presentation, Gunnink will hold a cooking show of one of the recipes, and some of the ingredients will disappear throughout the show.
“I hope that people have an understanding that it’s a global issue that we’re dealing with,” she said. “Everyone is collectively going to have to deal with it, not just a couple countries.”
Fourth-year doctoral student Anthony Lucio wrote a children’s book explaining what Iowa’s landscape looked like before it was an agricultural state. The native prairie served as a buffer to climate change, because it absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.
“The book is really the history of Iowa’s tall-grass prairie,” Lucio said. “It talks about the culture of farming and how that’s destroyed Iowa’s biodiversity and how corn has changed the landscape.”
UI freshman Gina Mostafa will present a skit called “The Unseen Cost,” describing the amount of resources that go into producing meat.
Mostafa’s skit will show a vegan and a meat-eater at a restaurant, and will show how much water and pollutants go into creating each of their meals.
“My goal is not radical, I know it’s unrealistic to expect people to walk away and stop eating meat,” she said. “But I hope to encourage small choices and to make people think about the impact of what they eat. I’m not targeting meat consumption in a extreme or condescending way.”
Geography student Ayman Sharif will give a presentation called “A Day in the Life of Islam: Iowa City and Climate Justice.”
UI sophomore Kara Hoving’s presentation will focus on women and climate change.
The presentations will take place at 7 p.m. today in E105 Adler.