CLIMATES OF INEQUALITY: STORIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

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This evolving multi-media installation was initially created by a coalition of students, educators, and community leaders in over 22 cities across the US and around the world. As a traveling exhibit and digital platform with related programming, Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice provides multiple ways to learn about environmental issues affecting various communities, the historical roots of these issues, and strategies to transition from extractive environments to generative ones. The project launched in Newark, NJ, in October 2019 and is currently traveling to each city represented in the exhibit.

 

New communities are adding their stories all the time -- we hope you’ll add yours. Interested? See below or contact us.

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Local partners:​

• Teach a course on the history of climate and environmental justice in global and local context, using HAL’s teaching resources as desired

• Collaborate with a local group or organization outside the university led by frontline communities--immigrants, low-income earners, and people of color--most immediately impacted by climate and environmental (in)justice

• Through the course, lead students to collaborate with community partners to curate a “chapter” of the project about climate and environmental justice in your locality, using HAL’s design template and workplan, for inclusion in a physical and digital exhibit

• Host exhibit at a local venue

• Host public dialogues around exhibit

• Optional:  host local companion exhibits that explore local story/issue more deeply, within the same design frame
  as the international exhibit or in a completely different media.

• Assume costs for digital and physical exhibit design/fabrication (paid to HAL).  This includes production of local
  chapter for inclusion in international exhibit, plus design templates and instructions for producing additional
  chapters for local companion exhibits, should partner choose to create them

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HAL provides:​

• Teaching resources on both subject and methodology, including readings and other media on climate and environmental justice histories, and guidelines and models for community collaboration/co-curation and dialogue facilitation

• Week-by-week curation work plan, providing guideline for how to work with your team to produce a “chapter”
  within a one or two semester sequence

• Design guidelines detailing number of images, amount of text, and options for media and formats for both
  physical and digital exhibits

• Design files and material specifications and instructions for production of additional local exhibits.

• Digital and physical exhibit design and production

• Exhibit shipped and insured

• Public program designs

• Communications package and support for publicizing local events

• Web platform for student project and stories

• Support to participate in convenings with other international partners, with opportunities for students, faculty, and community partners to exchange work and experiences

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Partners or their local venues should be prepared to assume costs of local hosting which may include support for community partnership, exhibit installation (including packing and unpacking and public programming), and a fixed shipping fee.

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Project Values and Expressions

​Community-centered: This project will center frontline communities--African American, Indigenous, Latinx, immigrants, and low income earners--and support local advocacy groups.

• Approach all learning experiences and exchanges with openness and respect, with the intent to productively center frontline communities

• Commit to collaborating to produce narratives that are most useful to frontline communities

• Provide appropriate honoraria to honor community partners’ investment into the project

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Coalition-oriented: An international, multi-racial, multilingual learning community will work together and alongside local, national, and international climate and environmental justice movements.

• Plan and structure each phase of the project to encourage an equitable distribution of work, creative input, representation, resources and benefits

• Encourage a collaborative spirit that empowers our work by tapping into the diverse forms of knowledge, assets, and skills every partner contributes

• Facilitate productive and respectful conversations that draw on cultural responsiveness and harm reduction

• Commit to ongoing self-interrogation to participate in the coalition in the most thoughtful and meaningful way

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Change-oriented: This project will encourage individual change and systemic change when and where appropriate.

• Acknowledge the range of awareness that each coalition member brings to this project and encourage them to grow in their relationship with climate and environmental justice in a way that is most appropriate to them

• Commit to learning about and supporting local, national, and international frontline communities in their strategies for change

• Study, and interpret history to clearly identify the systems that exacerbates the inequalities that frontline communities face, and supports the transition to just environments

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Accountability: We are accountable to sharing the past, present, and future struggles for climate and environmental justice.

• Pursue our shared work with intellectual integrity, we are committed to various forms of research that will help us understand histories of climate and environmental justice

• Make clear and transparent decisions for all participating in the project

• Understand the responsibilities that we have to different stakeholders and each other