Gathering around stories: Interdisciplinary experiments in support of energy system transitions

This paper explores the creative uses of stories and storytelling to engage groups and individuals with consideration of changes in energy systems across time and place. It summarises three story-based experiments that responded to the theme of ‘energy utopias’. These are drawn from the three core strands of a much wider body of work undertaken within the Stories of Change project. This took stories as a central motif and organising device to refresh public and political conversations about energy and decarbonisation. Our hypothesis was that stories could offer a popular and engaging route into thinking about the past and present of humanity’s lives with energy and a lively way of imagining possible futures. We also wanted to test the degree to which stories could offer a shared intellectual space that might support both interdisciplinary and co-productive working for a core team that includes social science, humanities, media, computing and design researchers as well as creative and community partners. The paper considers some of the practical, methodological and theoretical considerations and reflects on the strengths and limitations of stories as both motif and technique in supporting action on climate change.

[1]  Sarah C. Darby.  Coal fires, steel houses and the man in the moon: Local experiences of energy transition , 2017 .

[2]  Kathryn B. Janda,et al.  Telling tales: using stories to remake energy policy , 2015 .

[3]  N. Pidgeon,et al.  Homes as machines: Exploring expert and public imaginaries of low carbon housing futures in the United Kingdom , 2017 .

[4]  C. Howarth.  Informing decision making on climate change and low carbon futures: Framing narratives around the United Kingdom’s fifth carbon budget , 2017 .

[5]  Merritt Polk,et al.  Physical and economic bias in climate change research: a scientometric study of IPCC Third Assessment Report , 2011 .

[6]  D. Horst.  NIMBY or not? Exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies , 2007 .

[7]  Molly Andrews,et al.  Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change , 2007 .

[8]  Olivia Conti.  Being digital citizens , 2016 .

[9]  N. Pidgeon,et al.  The grit in the oyster: using energy biographies to question socio-technical imaginaries of ‘smartness’ , 2016 .

[10]  Martin Weller,et al.  The digital scholar : how technology is transforming scholarly practice , 2011 .

[11]  C. Perrow.  Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity , 2010 .

[12]  G. Walker,et al.  Carbon reduction, 'the public' and renewable energy: engaging with socio-technical configurations. , 2007 .

[13]  M. Grubb.  United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , 2019 .

[14]  N. Pidgeon,et al.  Seeing futures now: Emergent US and UK views on shale development, climate change and energy systems , 2017 .

[15]  Joe Smith.  Geography in public and public geography: past, present and future , 2013 .

[16]  Andrew Stirling,et al.  Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice , 2010 .

[17]  M. Hulme.  Meet the humanities , 2011 .

[18]  S. Bottoms.  Utopia , 2013 .

[19]  B. Latour,et al.  Making Things Public : Atmospheres of Democracy , 2005 .

[20]  M. Hulme.  Why we disagree about climate change : understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity , 2009 .

[21]  How is space made in sound , 2015 .

[22]  Ifat Maoz,et al.  From Working Through the Holocaust to Current Ethnic Conflicts: Evaluating the TRT Group Workshop in Hamburg , 2002 .

[23]  Mark Whitehead,et al.  Changing the intellectual climate , 2014 .

[24]  Christina Demski,et al.  Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses , 2016, Climatic Change.

[25]  Stefan Buzar,et al.  Energy Poverty in Eastern Europe: Hidden Geographies of Deprivation , 2007 .

[26]  Stephen Daniels,et al.  Narratives of climate change: introduction , 2009 .

[27]  Steve Goodhew,et al.  Mental models: Exploring how people think about heat flows in the home , 2017 .

[28]  Sachiko Muto,et al.  From laissez-faire to intervention: Analysing policy narratives on interoperability standards for the smart grid in the United States , 2017 .

[29]  J. Rowsell,et al.  Artifactual Literacies: Every Object Tells a Story , 2010 .

[30]  Xavier Balaguer Rasillo,et al.  Energy Humanities: An Anthology , 2018 .

[31]  Mark Carey,et al.  A new social contract for the IPCC , 2014 .

[32]  R. Kitchin,et al.  Public geographies through social media , 2013 .

[33]  D. Suvin,et al.  Metamorphoses of Science Fiction , 1980 .

[34]  George Revill.  How is space made in sound? Spatial mediation, critical phenomenology and the political agency of sound , 2016 .

[35]  M. Burawoy.  For Public Sociology , 2005 .

[36]  G. Crow.  REPORT : Conceptualisations and meanings of “ community ” : the theory and operationalisation of a contested concept , 2012 .

[37]  Rosemary Day.  Low carbon thermal technologies in an ageing society – What are the issues? , 2015 .

[38]  D. Fuller,et al.  Public geographies: taking stock , 2008 .

[39]  Jane Bennett.  Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things , 2010 .

[40]  Merold Westphal,et al.  Oneself as Another , 1994 .

[41]  Noam Bergman,et al.  Stories of the future: Personal mobility innovation in the United Kingdom , 2017 .

[42]  Kirsten Gram-Hanssen,et al.  Residential heat comfort practices: understanding users , 2010 .

[43]  K. Facer,et al.  Creating Living Knowledge: The Connected Communities Programme, community-university partnerships and the participatory turn in the production of knowledge , 2016 .

[44]  Joanna Richardson,et al.  Towards Co-production in research with communities , 2011 .

[45]  Lucy Sargisson,et al.  Utopian bodies and the politics of transgression , 2000 .

[46]  N. Couldry.  Why Voice Matters: Culture And Politics After Neoliberalism , 2010 .

[47]  Paulo Freire,et al.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 2019, Toward a Just World Order.

[48]  Clare Hemmings.  Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory , 2011 .

[49]  Susan McManus.  Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions , 2007 .

[50]  K. Holmberg,et al.  Climate Change on Twitter: Topics, Communities and Conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 Report , 2014, PloS one.

[51]  K. Ward.  Geography and Public Policy: Towards Public Geographies , 2006 .

[52]  Jessica Senehi,et al.  Constructive Storytelling: A Peace Process , 2002 .

[53]  K. Blamey,et al.  Oneself as Another , 1992 .

[54]  Margaret Vaughn.  Artifactual literacies: every object tells a story , 2012 .

[55]  Michael Nye,et al.  Making energy visible: A qualitative field study of how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors , 2010 .

[56]  P. Oliver.  The Power of Place; Urban Landscapes as Public History , 1996 .