Programme Meeting March 2021

Thursday 18^th March, morning:

9:15-9:45 Welcome, updates and introduction to ’change workshops’

We share news from the programme (e.g., on upcoming activities and opportunities for additional work, funded by the ‘Strategic Reserve’) and introduce you to the context for the workshops in the next session, where we will discuss the impact that we hope the programme will have.

Who will find this interesting? Everyone participating in Mistra Environmental Communication

Facilitators and contact:
Anke Fischer anke.fischer@slu.se
Eva Friman eva.friman@swedesd.uu.se
Sara Westerdahl sara.westerdahl@slu.se

10:00-11:45 Workshops: Hopes for change – What will be the impact of Mistra Environmental Communication?

Aim: To develop a shared understanding of the change that our joint work can lead to.

Who will find this interesting? Everyone with an interest in the work and outcomes of the respective WP.

WP1: Government-led dialogue

Contact:
Martin Westin martin.westin@slu.se

WP2: Sustainable consumption

Contact:
Lars Hallgren lars.hallgren@slu.se

WP3: Science and knowledge (co)production

Contact:
Neil Powell
neil.powell@swedesd.uu.se

WP 5: Arts and the media

Contact:
Vaia Doudaki
vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

11:45-12:00 Break

12:00-12:30 Wrap-up discussion on ’change workshops’

The WP groups share main thoughts from their discussions, and we identify implications for our work and the way in which we follow up on those processes of change. 

Who will find this interesting? Everyone who participated in the WP sessions in the morning and/or everyone who’d like to find out how the programme participants think about the impact the work might have in the longer run.

Contact: 
Anke Fischer anke.fischer@slu.se
Eva Friman eva.friman@swedesd.uu.se
Sara Westerdahl sara.westerdahl@slu.se

12:30-13:30 Lunchbreak

13:30-14:30 Consultant-client interaction in the definition of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ in environmental and sustainability governance

Lars Hallgren (SLU EC) and Sanja Vujicic (WSP) invite participants to discuss the role of consultants in communication and knowledge production in environmental and sustainability governance. We are especially interested in how consultants are involved in identifying communication problems and solutions, and in the ideas about change, social structure and individual motivation that are constructed in consultant collaboration.

Who will find this interesting? Do you buy consultancy services to help you do sustainability work? Do you sell consultancy services? In both cases, we think you will find this seminar interesting and your experiences will be of value to our research.

Contact:
Lars Hallgren lars.hallgren@slu.se
Sanja Vujicic sanja.vujicic@wsp.com

13:30-15:30 Watching Kiruna - a reception discussion on a Czech-Swedish documentary film

Kiruna - A Brand New World (2019) is a documentary film directed by Greta Stocklassa, and produced by the Czech company Analog Vision. It analyses the move of (part of) Kiruna, which is threatened by destruction because of the operations of the state-owned ore mining company, LKAB. The film focusses on the lives of a number of inhabitants, including Timo, a local activist opposing the move, the teenage Sami Maja and Abdal, a teenage refugee from Yemen. In this workshop, a number of key scenes will be collectively analysed and discussed, through the prism of the ideological relations between the film's three main actors: the city, the mine and the soil.

Contact:
Nico Carpentier nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz

14:40-15:10 The influence of a physical environment on goal activation and sustainable behaviour

Ann Eklund and Maria Johansson (Lund University) are experimentally investigating the influence of the physical environment on people’s interaction with sustainability campaigns and their consumption behaviours. Participants are invited to take part in an online pre-test of the environments that have been developed for the experiment and will gain first-hand experience and insight to this project based on environmental psychology theory and research design. In this session, the pre-test is introduced, and participants are asked to complete an online survey. The results will be presented in the Friday session.

Who will find this interesting? This session is interesting for anyone who wishes to learn more about motivation in human behaviour and sustainable consumption.

Contact:
Ann Eklund ann.eklund@arkitektur.lth.se
Maria Johansson maria.johansson@arkitektur.lth.se

15:30-17:00 Visibility and visualisation – transparency and sustainability in networks of market-based organisations

A question that our work package has begun to tackle is related to what is visually representable in reports about environmental performance, how transparent such visualizations are, and what they can highlight and disguise. In this workshop, we hope to explore these issues with participants and co-create a framework for further analysis. We’ll begin by providing the group with some sensitizing questions about visibility, followed by a group discussion of a set of visuals culled from environmental performance reports. We’ll conclude the session with a collective discussion about what we can meaningfully expect reports to communicate visually, and how such knowledge can be both contested and made better.

Contact:
Shiv Ganesh shiv.ganesh@austin.utexas.edu
Lotten Westberg lotten.westberg@slu.se

15:40-16:30 Actor listening session

Participants will listen to a couple of digital stories and reflect on the relationship between listening and change using Otto Scharmer’s (2008) listening levels. In a plenary session, we will discuss how dialogue processes can be designed to foster generative listening in order to bring about real transformation between both the listener and speaker.

Who will find this interesting? This session will of interest to those who work with knowledge co-production, stakeholder dialogue and participatory methods.

Contact:
Neil Powell neil.powell@swedesd.uu.se

Friday 19^th March

9:00-9:45 The influence of a physical environment on goal activation and sustainable behaviour

Ann Eklund and Maria Johansson (Lund University) are experimentally investigating the influence of the physical environment on people’s interaction with sustainability campaigns and their consumption behaviours. In this session, we present the result of the pre-test (see description in Thursday programme) and invite a discussion on the design of different environments.

Who will find this interesting? This session is interesting for anyone who wishes to learn more about motivation in human behaviour and sustainable consumption.

Contact:
Ann Eklund ann.eklund@arkitektur.lth.se
Maria Johansson maria.johansson@arkitektur.lth.se

10:00-12:00 Storytelling in the context of post-truth politics and the crisis of expertise

Continuing the work from the last programme meeting and the Environmental Communication Days – but open to everyone!
In our last meetings, we’ve begun to explore the role of storytelling in sustainability transformation. This time, we want to take a step further and question whose knowledge counts when stories are created, narrated, listened to, interpreted or questioned. Furthermore, we will bring in ideas from conversations we had with Per Grankvist (Chief storyteller at Viable Cities) and Arran Stibbe (University of Gloucestershire).

Who will find this interesting? Everyone who is interested in reflecting on the role of storytelling in environmental communication.

Contact:
Sofie Joosse sofie.joosse@slu.se
Martin Westin martin.westin@slu.se
Charly Ponzelar charlotte.ponzelar@slu.se

13:00-14:00 Drop-in session: Think/do tanks and other opportunities to expand our joint work

Who will find this interesting? Everyone with ideas for more work around environmental and sustainability communication – whether these are ideas for practical applications, concrete questions or ideas for a more effective way of sharing our insights!

This session is an opportunity to learn about the existing think/do tank on the role of museums in sustainability transformations, find out more about the additional funding available within the programme, and to develop ideas for joint work.

Contact:
Hanna Bergeå hanna.bergea@slu.se
Ylva Hillström, Moderna museet