Mapping Voices: What’s the story behind Food, Water and Energy in your city?

Mapping Voices: What's the story behind Food, Water and Energy in your city?

This Action Session brings together people from all over the world to tell the stories of Food, Water and Energy in their cities

This Action Session brings together people from all over the world to tell the stories of Food, Water and Energy in their cities. Tell us about a moment, an experience, a challenge, an action, an impact, a demand, a frustration, a joy, a project, a desire, and/or anything that is relevant to the subject within your urban context. They can be fictional, or not, they can be written as a micro essay, a perspective or point of view, an opinion piece, a statement, a poem, or any other form that facilitates expressing your story. Stories can be as short as one sentence and can be no longer than 500 words. They are crafted by participants before the session starts and, after a brief introduction from the session leaders, these stories are read and shared among all of us by each other their authors. All participants are extended an open invitation to be as creative as possible. Depending on the size of the group, we will read the stories in one large group or in smaller breakout groups to make sure all of the stories are read. These stories will then be published on a storytelling atlas hosted by The Nature of Cities as part of the Belmont Forum and Future Earth funded PEGASUS funded project, GOFWEN. We welcome all ages and backgrounds to this session.

 

Host: The Nature of Cities

Montreal, Canada

Session Summary

This interactive action session, hosted by the Nature of Cities, explored the powerful role of storytelling in the food, water and energy nexus field. The Global Storytelling Atlas Initiative will be launched in June 2021 and aims to be an outcome of shared inputs from people around the world who are encouraged to share a snapshot of daily life as it relates to food, energy and water in their environment/town/city/country. The Atlas will be hosted online. David Maddox facilitated an interactive narrative sharing exercise with the participants. Each participant was encouraged to share a story of their life that related to the theme of food, water and energy. It was clear that from the sharing of stories, there were many positive benefits, such as the translation of ideas, mutual understanding and finding meaning in shared experiences.