Laboratory
From climate fiction
to regenerative design.
We partner with educators on interdisciplinary pedagogy and curriculum development, and we partner with universities to conduct research for communities engaged with storytelling.
We’re assembling a global network that can uplift and unite universities engaged in similar projects. With support from our academic partners, the consortium is well equipped to develop innovative and effective pedagogy, curricula, and research around the study of climate imaginations.
Research
We conduct research on the study of climate imaginations, climate emotions, and climate mental health. Our research translates ideas from climate fiction into climate solutions. We liaise with climate fiction and climate storytelling programs across universities, and conduct research to support the needs and experiences of underserved climate fiction communities. We routinely convene and collaborate with a council of faculty advisors. We develop community-based participatory research methodologies to solicit direct feedback from community partners about the resources they already have and the outstanding support they need.
Our research is supported by the
Columbia Climate School.
Pedagogy
We partner with educators on transdisciplinary pedagogy and curriculum development for students of all ages engaged in the study of climate imaginations. We integrate mindfulness education with social-emotional learning to practice personal, interpersonal, and communal healing around climate emotions and mental health. We engage in scholarship around the subject of climate narrative, including climate fiction, solarpunk, ecocriticism, and Afrofuturism. We support hands-on experiential learning that engages with communities. We work in close consultation with our council of environmental educators, with support from the Climate Imaginations Network Curriculum Action Group.
Regenerative Design
Storytelling and ecological design are intertwined. If we can imagine climate solutions within a fictional world, then we can implement them in the real world. If storytelling is the art of speculative imagination, ecological design is the art of translating imagination into practice and implementing radical, viable solutions. Our research converts storytelling into design for speculative and resilient climate futures.
Regenerative design considers how communities can go beyond sustainability and strive for regeneration of the ecosphere. Drawing from disciplines of permaculture, urban design, landscape architecture, and biomimicry, the consortium designs regenerative systems based on ecological processes to solve human problems.
Invention, Innovation,
& Imagination Incubator
We run a regenerative design lab for speculative climate futures.
We take imaginary ideas that originate within the worlds of climate fiction and transform them into viable solutions for the real world.
I⁴ develops radical and experimental climate solutions for the real world that feel as though they belong in the world of climate fiction. Indeed, science fiction has often inspired real technologies throughout history, and climate fiction has the same potential. Imagination can inspire.
By collaborating with researchers, designers, technologists, and dreamers at the Center for Climate Solutions and partner organizations, I⁴ draws upon the world of climate fiction to invent breakthrough climate solutions that appear at first glance seemingly impossible.
Our first project is Power to the People,
an energy democracy working group tasked to
imagine and design a renewable energy commons.