Values of Environmental Writing: Inspiration, Communication, Action

The 'Values of Environmental Writing' network is designed to raise levels of critical academic exchange and public debate about the possible relations between reading habits and preferences, levels of environmental literacy, and wider patterns of pro-environment behavioural and lifestyle change. It will do so in the context of sustaining quality of life, in Scottish society primarily, but not exclusively. The Network will focus on a broad literary category: Creative Environmental Writing (CEW).

Presently, through styles as varied as prose essay, travelogue and poetry, CEW is a highly popular means to represent difficult or complex matters of living with environmental change, and at the same time recall longer traditions of natural history and country writing. CEW is of interest to researchers in Geography, and English Literature, not only for its appealing qualities of language and voice, but for its potential to energise, and politicise, a wider public readership concerned by environmental issues. CEW will be examined for its potential to inspire, to communicate and to prompt diverse forms of environmental action and social engagement in society, in the context of contemporary environmental change. As such, Network activities will use CEW to investigate precisely what communities and individuals value, why they value it, how they value it, and how values are defined, identified and transmitted.

Styled as a 'Conversation on Environmental Change' the series of three day-long events will be structured around a single theme, and are arranged to develop progressively:
Event 1: Environmental Writing as Inspiration
Event 2: Environmental Writing as Communication
Event 3: Environmental Writing as Action
Each Conversation on Environmental Change will be contributed to by a diverse range of participants, chosen specifically to represent different academic and non-academic research communities, creative environmental writers, environmental artists, policy-makers and politicians, the general public readership, and relevant sector interests, heritage interests, social movements and civic coalitions. Funds will be made available in support of travel and accommodation, normally for participants based within the UK.

Conversations will pivot on a range of questions, including: How are habitats, ecosystems and scales of environmental change represented and made affective? What are the limits of CEW as inspiration for change? How do different genres of CEW drive creative environmental endeavour and action, and for whom? What kinds of environmental writers are upheld as authoritative voices, and why? What kinds of environmental action are produced by what kinds of CEW? And, is CEW only read by the already active and concerned?

The Conversations series will be organised by academic staff from the Departments of Geographical and Earth Sciences and English Literature, University of Glasgow, and hosted at three attractive university venues: Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Environment, Loch Lomond; the Hunterian Museum; the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences.

Network activities will place a clear and consistent emphasis on the generation of critical and inclusive Conversation. A novel format has been designed for this purpose: each day-event will be organised around four set-piece Conversations. Accordingly, a representative Network Members Group will be assembled in advance of Events 1, 2 and 3 and, working collaboratively with the Network Organisers, these individuals will take responsibility for the devising and collating of questions to be asked of four identified Conversationalists at the day-events. This will extend Network dialogue beyond set-piece events.

The research outputs of the Network will be:
- three interlinked 'Conversations on Environmental Change'
- an interactive Network website, containing a discussion forum - an edited book comprised of essays, conversations and interviews.

The Network will be managed to engage active and extended participation of beneficiaries from a range of sectors and civic society organisations in public life: academic and non-academic researchers; environmental writers; environmental artists; politicians and policy-makers; representatives of the heritage sector; members of environmental-social movements and activist groups; representatives of Third Sector organizations; and, members of the student community and the general public.

The network's novel conversational design and enriching creative outputs will benefit its diverse range of participants and audiences in four ways contributing to shared qualities of life.

It aims:
- to build social and intellectual capital through the formation of a network operating by means of wide-ranging conversation about environmental values and how these are variously recognized by different social groups / movements
- to foster greater levels of understanding of the kinds of creative environmental writing (CEW) that presently inspire practical and progressive actions, ranging from community projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions, to, the politics of radical protest
- to foster greater levels of understanding about the kinds of CEW that presently create feelings of alienation or dread, leading to an abdication of individual or collective responsibility
- to forge alliances based between communities representing research-related knowledge and public understanding/action, thus developing a sustainable and generative network whose membership can collaboratively pursue pathways leading to further support from diverse funding sources (ranging from those administered by RCUK to the Scottish Government's 'Climate Challenge Fund')

Representatives of civic society organisations and social movements will benefit by meeting to address social issues contributing to quality of life in Scotland, or places and peoples' lives beyond, and by their involvement in fresh and vital conversation. Comparisons of common or conflicting values will produce intense interaction and exchange. Involvement will inspire new forms of social action and change aimed at securing climate justice and a sustainable future in an unstable world. Pro-environment impacts may be differently scaled, through the works of individuals, communities or the development of policy.

The involvement of high-profile writers, speakers, broadcasters, and key office holders in prominent organisations will maximize public interest in Conversations on Environmental Change (CoECh) events. Such participation demonstrates the design of these Scotland-based events as foci for debates and conversations that have both national and international relevance.

A dedicated website will develop the depth and reach of the network's impact in several ways:

- In advance of events, participants will be invited to submit questions to be included in interview-style debates at the network meetings.
- It will allow a broad cohort of interested and enthusiastic readers of CEW (both nationally and internationally, including those unable to attend CoECh events) to follow the Network's debates and so reflect on the relationship between reading habits, reception of ideas and pro-environmental behavioural change.
- The project's lifecycle will extend beyond the 12-month grant award by existing as the continuing focus for a network established across a range of sectors.

Print publications issuing from the network will be specifically tailored to a wide readership:

- Contributions will be published in a special theme issue of 'The Geographer', a Royal Scottish Geographical Society publication on display in public libraries nationwide and available online.
- An edited book comprised of a combination of essays, critical commentaries, interviews, conversations and imaginative environment