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Convenor(s): lenya Camozzi (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy); Ahson Kemal (University of Helsinki); Zenia Simonella (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
Presentation 3
Imagining Possible Futures After the Flood: Participatory Artistic Practices for Climate Justice and Social Inclusion
This paper originates within the Horizon project “Alphabetica - Activating learning paths: holistic arts-based education and training for inclusion and cultural awareness” and presents the results of a study aimed at exploring the role of participatory artistic practices in fostering processes of social inclusion, critical awareness, and climate justice among adolescents (aged 11–14) in three lower secondary schools in Emilia-Romagna affected by the May 2023 flood events. The floods are framed not as isolated disasters but as symptoms of wider systemic crises requiring a rethinking of educational and cultural paradigms. Within this context, young people are understood as intersectionally vulnerable: disproportionately exposed to climate risks across class, gender, and geography (Cripps, 2022; Sultana, 2022), and simultaneously marginalized through epistemic and intergenerational injustices that infantilize them and exclude them from decision-making arenas (Thew et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2025). The pilot action involved 80 students across three distinct territorial contexts: an urban neighborhood in Bologna affected by river overflow, a mountainous Apennine area marked by landslides and infrastructural isolation, and the Emilia-Romagna lowlands characterized by widespread flooding. Through an open call, three artistic projects were selected to operate in these contexts: a performative workshop which, through body listening, visual collage, and creative writing, culminated in a public march as a form of symbolic reappropriation of the territory; a photography-based project centered on the manipulation of flood images through tearing and recomposition in order to build a layered collective visual memory; and a collective comics workshop that produced an anthology conveying the complexity of the flood experience through adolescent perspectives. Through questionnaires, participant observation, focus groups with students, and the co-production of artistic materials (Leavy, 2015), the research explored the capacity of artistic practices to translate traumatic experiences and to give voice to embodied, extra-academic forms of knowledge (de Sousa Santos, 2016). Preliminary findings highlight three relevant dimensions: (1) the development of critical and relational skills through collective creative processes in which students experienced horizontal forms of collaboration that challenge dominant adult-centric logics; (2) the ability of the arts to connect personal memory and systemic reflection, transforming trauma into a lever for deeper awareness of socio-environmental inequalities; and (3) the construction of new alliances among schools, artists, and local communities as sites of care and cultural transformation (Singh et al., 2025).
