Climate Change Perceptions and Imaginaries in South Wales

‘Understanding Older and younger people’s PerspecTives and Imaginaries of Climate change’ (OPTIC) is a one-year project funded through the Healthy Ageing Social, Behavioural and Design Research Programme (SBDRP), funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and supported by CADR.

Environments in which older people live, work and take recreation are essential to health and wellbeing. However, through climate change, threats are emerging in previously hospitable environments. It is essential to understand older and younger people’s climate change perspectives, behaviours, and future visions so that living, working and recreational environments can be shaped and managed effectively for health, wellbeing and sustainability into the future.

To explore everyday issues with people who use these environments, both now and in the future, OPTIC are working with groups of older and younger people in South Wales. During five workshops, they used creative methods (games, comic-creation, mobile and on-line interviews, storyboarding) to encourage intergenerational conversation, articulate hard-to-say values, and explore change. Workshops were audio recorded, and the stories from sessions are currently being developed into a bilingual comic book by Illustrator Laura Sorvala.

The comic will be shared as hardcopies, via a website, social media, and two interactive exhibitions. The first exhibition, at the Urdd Eisteddfod (Llandovery) took place in May-June and, and the next will be held in Taliesin Create (Swansea University) throughout August and September.

This seminar will provide an overview of the project and reflect on using creative approaches to design guidelines for environments of ageing that better address older people’s climate change perspectives and behaviours.

This conference is being run by CADR if you have any questions, please contact the event team.