Narratives, including literary texts, written reportage, public discourse, and oral stories, provide invaluable ways of expressing the grassroots experiences of energy transitions, both in the past and today. Drawing on community workshops, participatory learning, creative methodologies, and scholarly examples from history, literature, and cultural geography, we will examine how contemporaneous plans for the Irish energy transition tap into older narratives about technological progress, modernisation, democracy, and prosperity.
In the approach to our workshops, creativity is a guiding methodological principle. We draw inspiration from Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti's “Tree School” method for collective learning (see (opens in a new window)link) and follow the below principles for talking with and listening to local communities:
Hospitality (inspired by Tree School ingredients “cooking”, “ritrovo”)
Create a welcoming atmosphere for anyone participating in the workshop. We achieve this by fostering good encounters in community-owned spaces, fuelled by local and sustainable food.
Conversations (inspired by Tree School ingredients “conversation”, “al-atabeh”)
Encourage open, friendly dialogue between participants, including the organisers themselves. We achieve this by adopting a decentralised format for the majority of the workshop.
Physicality (inspired by Tree School ingredient “rituals”)
Enable mark-making through artistic / creative practice. This gives participants the opportunity to add to knowledge production on a level footing. We achieve this through mixed mapping exercises, e.g., mark-making on transparent map overlays.
Open-ended format (inspired by Tree School ingredients “unlearning”, “unpredictability”)
Avoid knowledge monopolies and/or rigid conclusions to the workshop. We achieve this by leaving space in conversations for disagreement and uncertainty.
Sense of ownership
Enable community ownership of conversations and workshop outputs. We achieve this through a decentralised workshop format, which includes asking several participants with a given interest (e.g., history) to tether to particular tables/topics; and by displaying the workshop outputs in local libraries in the following months.