ADK Climate Project

Discovering Climate Resiliency through Storytelling, Art and Community Outreach

Our Vision

We are embarking on a transformative journey, weaving together the art of storytelling, art creation, and community building with the urgency of climate change. Using a mobile audio recording studio, we traverse the breathtaking Adirondack Park, inviting its inhabitants to share their personal narratives reflected in the changing climate of their surroundings.

Project Overview

The ADK Climate Project connects climate change to personal narrative using a mobile recording studio that travels through the Adirondack Park. These captured climate narratives are subsequently provided to artists who create artworks in response. The aim is to promote climate action by highlighting our humanity, sharing and reflecting on the local consequences of climate change, as opposed to relying exclusively on scientific data.

Because half of the Adirondack Park belongs to all the people of New York State and is constitutionally protected to remain a “forever wild” forest preserve and the remaining half of the park is private land, The Adirondack Park is an ideal location to deconstruct environmental conflict and explore how park residents and visitors are encountering climate change.

Why Stories Matter

Research has demonstrated that personal stories serve as powerful catalysts, dispelling the notion that climate change will solely affect future generations. To foster the development of meaningful, climate-resilient communities, it proves more effective to absorb and contemplate the ways in which climate change is influencing our localities, rather than rely on scientific data. Through linking climate change with the experiences of individuals within the Adirondack community, we strive to dismantle the barriers that separate us from the urgent reality of climate impacts.

As part of the project, we extend an invitation to people to step into our traveling recording booth, allowing them to share their personal narratives linked to the evolving climate within the Adirondack Park. Together, we can nurture empathy and forge unity as climate-resilient communities, igniting actions for a sustainable future.

Engaging Artists

We invite artists to listen to the stories and respond with a piece of art because we believe that art is essential for breaking our flight or freeze response to climate anxiety. Art encourages us to recognizing our own agency to create solutions for ourselves and for our communities. A study in an American Psychological Association Journal evaluated the psychological effects of climate art on viewers and found that art that offers solutions, and artworks that emphasize the beauty and interconnectedness of nature have a measurable emotional and cognitive impact on viewers to encourage climate action.