Discussion with Freshwater Labs on water storytelling

This event is to be aligned with Bonnie’s course Water and Environmental Justice (Tuesdays from 3-5 pm, New College, University of Toronto)

In this class, we will have a joint meeting with the undergraduate and graduate students taking a course with the Freshwater Lab at the University of Illinois-Chicago. We will discuss different strategies for engaging people in telling stories about water:  Watermark from Swim Drink Fish, and a Lake Michigan digital storytelling project, and a Chicago River digital storytelling site.  Freshwater Lab at UIC  is “an initiative to communicate Great Lakes water issues to the general public, create tools to visualize the current state and future scenarios of water sources, engage unaffiliated groups in water planning, and train a new generation of Great Lakes leaders.”  Its projects have included  organizing Great Lakes summits to create exchanges among universities, grassroots organizers, municipal leaders and students around the Great Lakes, an internship program supporting the development of skills in environmental advocacy and writing which proactively recruits BIPOC students and links them with relevant organizations, The Freshwater Lab course which focuses on a range of forms of environmental writing, a digital story-telling project about Lake Michigan, anti-pipeline projects, and a project about the Chicago River (the “Backward River” ). For more, see: http://www.freshwaterlab.org.