Storytelling for Nature Connection: Environment, Community and Story-based Learning

By Anthony Nanson and Edward Schieffelin

This unique resource offers new ideas, stories, creative activities, and methods for people working in conservation, outdoor learning, environmental education, youthwork, business training, sustainability, health, social and economic change. It shows how to encourage pro-environmental behavior in diverse participants: from organization consultants and employees, to families, youth and schoolchildren. The stories and their exploration engage people with nature in profound ways. The book describes how this engagement enhances participants' emotional literacy and resilience, builds community, raises awareness of inter-species communication and helps people to create a sustainable future together. Its innovative techniques establish connections between place and sustainability. Facilitators can adapt all of this to their own situation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawthorn Press
• Release date: Jan 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781912480647

Anthony Nanson

ANTHONY NANSON is a Stroud-based storyteller. He has performed widely in Britain and abroad and is a founding member of Fire Springs storytelling company. He is the author of Storytelling and Ecology, Exotic Excursions and Words of Re-enchantment, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. A love of nature and the spirit of place informs all his work.

Book preview

‘At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh a growing belief in the power of storytelling to communicate on environmental matters has led to us scouring the world for sources of inspiration. This book has come along as an answer to our prayers and makes us feel part of something big and profoundly important to life.’

Ian Edwards, Head of Exhibitions & Events, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

‘I believe this resource will demonstrate the importance of storytelling to the unconverted, and provide resources and sustenance to those who are already using storytelling in their work. I commend the project unreservedly.’

Dr Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and broadcaster

‘The human and environmental crisis of our times is not one of reason or technology. On those fronts everything is with us. Our burning need is to recover a sense of meaning, to call back the soul, to recover love in all its meanings. This book is a guide to such reconnection with the imagination and these writers are the alchemists of our times.’

Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Poacher’s Pilgrimage

‘… this book brings much excitement. We swim in an ocean of stories and once we recognise this, we see they are all exerting influences – direct and indirect upon our behaviour as individuals and as members of societies. Storytelling for Nature Connection is a much needed exploration of how stories and the intentional work of storytellers can effect change.’

Ben Haggarty, Honorary Professor of Storytelling, Berlin University of the Arts

‘I have worked with hundreds of post-graduate adult students using story and narrative leadership for sustainability. I know from experience just how important narrative approaches are for them in their ongoing work as organizational change agents ... I hope to be able to use the book with my students as soon as possible.’

Dr Chris Seeley, Co-Director, Ashridge MA in Sustainability and Responsibility

‘In these times of difficult transition this book is a source of light in the hands of those who wish to inspire the imagination of our living futures.’

Mary-Jayne Rust, author, Jungian analyst, and ecopsychologist

‘There is a great and previously unfilled need for a book of this kind, which will be of interest and usefulness to many people engaged, in different ways, in conservation, environmental education, business training, sustainability and social and economic change.’

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, Senior Adviser, WWF International, and President of OPEN

‘Story has an extraordinary power to bring people together, to build common bonds across ages and cultures and to connect people with their roots. A book like this that supports us, adults and children alike, will be a massive benefit to help us all prepare for an uncertain future.’

Professor Perry Else, Course Leader, BA (Hons) Children and Play Work, Sheffield Hallam University

‘Worldwide, the renaissance of traditional storytelling is moving our hearts, spirits and bodies back into closer connection with the natural world. I cannot imagine a more important, distinctive and appropriate purpose than Storytelling for Nature Connection.’

Donald Smith, Director, Scottish Storytelling Centre, and Chief Executive, TRACS

‘I have worked from as far east as Japan and as far west as California, as far north as the Arctic circle and south to Cape Town, and the one thing that joins all these places is the hunger for story. Sustainability is the key to the survival of this planet. Make the journey, seek the change.’

Jeremy Hastings, Wildwood Wisdom

‘This book will act as a much needed tool … for people in the teaching and caring professions.’

Rose James, Property Administrator, Bodnant Garden, The National Trust

‘This timely book is an important contribution to this emerging field. From my experience in setting up new programmes in universities in the U.K. and Europe, I anticipate that there will also be great interest in this publication outside the U.K. I love the Introduction. It sounds real. Real and necessary.’

Michael Barham, Director of the Adamson Centre for Professional Practice, University of Roehampton

‘I am fortunate enough to know many of the contributors to this book and have listened to them telling stories both in informal and semi-formal settings. They are some of the great storytellers of our age, and hence some of the greatest communicators. I am grateful that they have taken the time to put some of their wisdom and inspiration down in print.’

Max Norris, MA Professional Partnerships, Lindley Educational Trust

‘There are great strengths and impressive learning amongst these pages. There is significant education and entertainment too – for what is a storyteller if that individual cannot put you into fear and danger and raise you above it with a smile. This book is worth your time and worthy of a great deal of consideration.’

Del Reid, Coordinator for National Storytelling Week, Society for Storytelling

‘The importance of engaging with emotion in creating sustainability and change is vital. In my opinion, storytelling is one essential component of this process and I therefore whole heartedly support this book.’

Dr Susan Greenwood, anthropologist and author, University of Sussex

‘Story is a proven and powerful mode of bringing about change. The broader applicability of the use of storytelling is of wide interest to a range of educators and artists alike.’

Ross W. Prior, PhD, Professor of Learning & Teaching in the Arts, and Principal Editor, Journal of Applied Arts and Health

‘This book has a very strong authorship from leading storytellers who have additional proven track records in other areas such as the environment, conservation and sustainability … I will certainly recommend it to all my own students.’

Dr Sue Jennings, anthropologist, trainer and prolific author of books on play, drama, and story

‘I promote sustainability in developing contexts and even in the aftermath of humanitarian disasters. This book is invaluable for my line of work. There is no other book like it out there today.’

Dominic Hunt, Disaster Risk Reduction Adviser

‘This book is immensely valuable because it can help people develop the story-making, story-giving, empathic and facilitation skills to inspire pro-environmental change.’

Arran Stibbe, Professor of Ecological Linguistics, University of Gloucestershire

‘With so much public attention on the issue of a sustainable planet, and such a universal love of storytelling, I feel this book will be eminently popular.’

Robert J. Landy, PhD, Professor Emeritus Educational Theatre and Applied Psychology,

New York University, USA

‘This book promises to give teachers and others a rare opportunity to meet many of their educational mandates in one resource.’

Raney Bench, Executive Director, Mount Desert Island Historical Society, Maine, USA

‘This unique book contains a rich diversity of storylines that might be used in classrooms or adult workshops to develop relevant contemporary themes and thus embed sustainable living as modern day common sense by engaging with people at levels that scientific presentations simply cannot reach. It fills a significant hole in conservation literature.’

Michael Shackleton, Professor of Social Anthropology, Osaka Gakuin University, and senior consultant, Religions and Conservation

‘This book is a great example of a joined-up approach to change.’

Malcolm Learmonth, Arts and Environments Development Lead, Devon Partnership NHS Trust

‘Science is important, but only the stories we weave together will create the common purpose and energy to meet the environmental challenges of the 21st century. For that reason this book is more than just a valuable contribution. It describes an essential framework of the Ark that we need to build.’

Angus Jenkinson, The Centre for Integrated Marketing and Stepping Stones Consultancy

‘Given the excitement of the debate about the environment and ecology today, this book opens up new areas of interest and brings new people into the conversation about our global future. The important aspect of storytelling makes the book of interest to a very wide readership, including students … As a professor of psychiatry and a leader in the creative arts therapies field internationally, I know that ... it will be on my bookshelf!’

Dr David Johnson, Co-Director, Post Traumatic Stress Center, Yale University Medical School, USA

‘Anyone interested in combating the world-wide destruction of our environment should read Storytelling for Nature Connection. Not only does it contain effective stories, essays, and activities for young and old to address problems of pollution, climate change, and endangered bio-diversity, it also promotes sustainable attitudes and behavior that will enable readers to be pro-active in making our world more humane. Above all this book combines theory with practice that will inspire readers to create their own pro-environmental programs.’

Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, founder of Neighborhood Bridges, and founder of Little Mole and Honey Bear Press

‘Storytelling for Nature Connection will be a powerful tool for change when placed in the hands of those who are at the front line of environmental education and campaigning.’

Rebecca Laughton, author of Surviving and Thriving on the Land, organic market gardener, and lead researcher, the Landworkers’ Alliance

‘Climate change is arguably the greatest threat facing society in the immediate future and storytellers, like other artists, are increasingly turning their attention to the issue of promoting more sustainable ways of living. This book is important, not least because it brings together scholars and practitioners in the field to reflect on their work at this critical juncture. It will be a welcome and significant addition to the literature on the role of storytelling in an increasingly fragile world. Perhaps more importantly, it is an articulate and collective call to action.’

Mike Wilson, Professor of Drama, Head of Creative Arts, Loughborough University

‘A book such as this is extremely useful to environmental professionals and educationalists who often struggle to find relevant resources.’

Liz Carding, Senior Parks and Countryside Officer, Ty Mawr Country Park

‘Stories are a powerful way in which we can connect with the people and places around us. Storytelling for Nature Connection will be a great resource for those working to encourage that connection.’

Paul Hibberd, Visitor Services Manager, Forestry and Land Scotland

‘If we are to be able to move to a more sustainable, more resilient future, we first have to be able to imagine it. We need to be able to tell its stories, weave its magic, bring it alive so we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch it. Storytelling for Nature Connection does just that, showing the powerful role storytelling can play, and the rich insights the storytellers bring with them. It is rich, powerful and of immense importance.’

Rob Hopkins, Co-Founder, Transition Network, and author of From What Is to What If

Storytelling

for Nature

Connection

Environment, Community and

Story-Based Learning

Edited by

Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson and Edward Schieffelin

with Charlene Collison and Jon Cree

Foreword by Jonathon Porritt

Storytelling for Nature Connection © 2022 Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson and Edward Schieffelin. Originally published in 2014 under the title Storytelling for a Greener World.

Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson and Edward Schieffelin are hereby identified as the uthors of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. They assert and give notice of their moral right under this Act.

Hawthorn Press

Published by Hawthorn Press, Hawthorn House,

1 Lansdown Lane, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 1BJ, UK

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.hawthornpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic or mechanical, through reprography, digital transmission, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover photo © Terrance Emerson

Design by Lucy Guenot

Printed by Severn, Gloucestershire

Printed on environmentally friendly paper from renewable forest stock.

Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material. If any omission has been made, please bring this to the publisher’s attention so that proper acknowledgement may be given in future editions.

The views expressed in this book are not necessarily those of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978-1-912480-59-3

eISBN 978-1-912480-64-7

Preface

Fraser McKechnie, a ranger who used this book in his work for National Trust for Scotland says, ‘We are all playing a part in the story of our beautiful world. In too many places the beauty now lies sleeping … This book brings fuel for the imagination, techniques for telling tales and hope for a happy ending.’ In 2014 the book was titled Storytelling for a Greener World. We have now changed this to Storytelling for Nature Connection in order to emphasise that the book discusses creative activities that aim to generate a deep experience of nature connection in children and adults who may think that nature is ‘not for them’. Each chapter describes in detail how certain stories, creative techniques, and group processes can be used to achieve this outcome with people who feel nature shy.

Nature connection matters. It benefits people’s well-being in countless physical, mental, and social ways. But there is more to it than that. Nature connectedness inspires the desire to act in pro-environmental ways. Urgent action is needed now at personal, economic, and political levels in order to overcome the climate crisis and environmental degradation that surround us. Nature has tremendous powers of regeneration, but the speed at which it can do so is presently overwhelmed by the damage that we inflict upon it. A deep sense of nature connectedness can guide people’s actions in a sustainable direction.

Our contributors, world leaders in this field, tell about their work with groups of people, young and old, indoors and outdoors, in cities and the countryside. They explore how and why their approach elicits in people a sense of joy, pride, constructive hope, and empathy with all that lives. It feels good to discover your own way of relating to nature. To actually do something in service to the environment feels even better. That could mean taking part in the greening of an inner-city area, the rewilding of kerbsides or a park, active recycling, or campaigning for pro-environmental policies. Conservation ecologist and storyteller Lisa Schneidau says, ‘This is a treasure trove of a book that I return to time and time again. It’s full of inspiration and ideas that are grounded in the real world and in real practice.’ We hope the book will serve you in kindred ways, and thank you for what you do to nurture a vibrant connection between people and nature.

Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson, Edward Schieffelin. June 2021

Contents

Foreword

Jonathon Porritt

Introduction

Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson, and Edward Schieffelin

PART I CORE IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES

CHAPTER 1 Storytelling in the Woods

The uses of story to create links between emotional literacy, ecological sensibility, and pro-environmental behaviour

Jon Cree and Alida Gersie

CHAPTER 2 By Hidden Paths

Developing stories about a local environment while bearing its ecological challenges in mind

Malcolm Green and Nick Hennessey

CHAPTER 3 The Sustaining Story

How to choose stories for storywork and inspire constructive choices in relation to issues of environmental concern

Eric Maddern

CHAPTER 4 Stories in Place

Exciting story-based activities to help children and adults discover and connect with the environment where they live

Gordon MacLellan

CHAPTER 5 Jewels on Indra’s Net

How experiential storywork can generate a deep sense of the world’s interconnectedness which can set people on a path towards more sustainable behaviour

Ashley Ramsden

PART IIBECOMING FAMILIAR WITH STORIES

CHAPTER 6 Apollo’s Lyre and the Pipes of Pan

Rethinking an ancient story to show how one small change in the story transforms its environmental implications

Hugh Lupton

CHAPTER 7 Jumping the Gap of Desire

Telling stories from ecological history about species extinctions to evoke an empathetic and questioning response

Anthony Nanson

CHAPTER 8 Listening to Stories with an Anthropological Ear

Why it matters to explore indigenous people’s own understanding of their traditional stories when using such tales to promote sustainability in a Western context

Edward Schieffelin

CHAPTER 9 Feeding the Story

Developing people’s active listening capacity and ecological awareness by means of storywork in the outdoors

Chris Salisbury

PART IIIIN AND AROUND THE CITY

CHAPTER 10 Fishing Tales and Catching Connections

The role of storytelling in establishing common ‘natural’ ground with troubled youngsters who feel alienated from the outdoors

Helen East

CHAPTER 11 Bringing Nature Home

Story-based groupwork in a rundown neighbourhood to encourage pro-environmental behaviour in adults and children

Alida Gersie

CHAPTER 12 Kittiwakes on the Bridge

Storytelling and storywork in a primary school on a deprived housing estate to awaken children’s curiosity about nature

Malcolm Green

CHAPTER 13 Voices in the City

How a monthly storytelling circle can become a forum for pro-environmental ideas and contribute to informal community-building

David Metcalfe

PART IVIN THE GREAT OUTDOORS

CHAPTER 14 Stories, Houses, and Dens

Using stories and creative activities to raise practical awareness about sustainable building

Chris Holland

CHAPTER 15 A Riverside Journey

An innovative ‘three seasons’ project with isolated mixed-heritage families to nurture their sense of identity and desire for more sustainable ways of being

Sara Hurley and Alida Gersie

CHAPTER 16 ‘I Saw the Heart of the World’

The joy of repeating stories and activities to strengthen a sense of community among children and adults who are committed to rewilding a valley

Fiona Collins

CHAPTER 17 ‘Miss, Is Skomar Oddy Extinct?’

Training teachers in skills to bring local legends to life and thereby engage children and adults to enjoy their local landscape and care for it

Mary Medlicott

PART VENGAGING THE WIDER COMMUNITY

CHAPTER 18 Beyond the Crisis of Return

How storytelling can help participants in a wilderness rite of passage to keep their new-found insights alive and communicate them effectively to their community of belonging

Martin Shaw

CHAPTER 19 The Forgotten Tongue

An experimental story-based approach to enhance our awareness of human–animal co-presence and communication

Kelvin Hall

CHAPTER 20 Stepping through the Gate

Using stories and storytelling to foster positive visions of an ecologically sustainable future

Kevan Manwaring

CHAPTER 21 Envisioning the Future

Developing specific pathways towards more sustainable ways of living by means of storywork

Charlene Collison

Acknowledgements

List of Stories and Story Fragments

Recommended Resources

Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Index

Foreword

Iused to tell a lot of stories. Then I stopped telling stories, for more than twenty years. Now I’m on the point of becoming a storyteller all over again.

When I was Head of English and Drama in a big West London comprehensive, back in the 1970s, storytelling was part of the deal. With encouragement, nearly all of our kids could ‘do stories’, and, with the usual rich mix of cultures and ethnicities in that part of London, their lives came alive through storytelling in a way that would otherwise have been difficult to achieve.

We even did some ‘storytelling for a greener world’, though as I was an active member of the Green Party (then the Ecology Party) it had to be somewhat camouflaged! Our school backed on to Wormwood Scrubs, where almost all wildlife was managed, mown, and sprayed into near total oblivion. It was, in effect, a green desert. But we made good stories out of what was left, and created an entire phantasmagoria of imaginary creatures that brought the Scrubs to life in a way that even Nature had had to give up on.

Then I went to work at Friends of the Earth in 1984. We didn’t ‘do’ stories at FoE. We stuck to the science, to the facts, to the rational advocacy. If we told stories at all, we only told them to help raise money, or to provide tragic case studies to underpin our campaigns. And that’s pretty much how it was for me until recently.

But no longer. In 2013, I brought out a new book, published by Phaidon, with the title The World We Made and the subtitle ‘Alex McKay’s Story from 2050’. It’s written through the words of a teacher in 2050, looking back over the last 35 years to tell the story of how we get to be living in a brilliant, fair, and genuinely sustainable world in 2050!

All of which is a rather long-winded way of explaining why I feel part of the community of people who tell stories to which Storytelling for Nature Connection is primarily aimed. And I just loved these personal stories from the front line, teasing out what it is that constitutes good practice both in the design and in the delivery of storytelling, without in any way being prescriptive or judgemental. In essence, it’s an inspiring toolkit that will enrich the work of people who already use storytelling, and will inspire others to get stuck in.

In one sense, it’s about storytelling in general. Contributors speak eloquently of the power of storytelling to make connections, to enable people to see things afresh, to galvanise them into actions that might otherwise seem beyond them, to make whole those things that are split apart, to conjure visions out of the everyday, and, above all, for me at least, to fashion the context in which real empathy can flourish.

Beyond that, however, there’s still ‘the green bit’. And that goes to the heart of today’s environmental crises. Right now we need storytelling more than ever before, in all its different guises, to help people reimagine their own personal relationship with the natural world.

The truth is that our current stories (as captured in our day-to-day discourse about what people mean by progress, purpose, and meaning) are constantly reinforcing an inherently unsustainable way of creating wealth.

So what will make that change? Scientifically, we already know just how differently we need to do things, on a stressed-out, warming planet, with a population set to exceed nine billion by 2050. And we know how urgently those things need to get done. But the political will simply isn’t there – and part of the reason is that science alone just doesn’t cut it. As the wonderful Thomas Berry demonstrated throughout his life, there are currently no adequate stories to give meaning to our lives, and to place us properly in the physical world. And one of the consequences of that is that our politicians just don’t seem able to cope with the scale of this existential challenge.

I live with that reality, day in, day out. My twenty-plus years focusing on the science and on strictly rational forms of advocacy may well have made a bit of a difference along the way. In 2012, however, 20 years on from the hugely significant Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which was a bit of a turning point for me personally, I had to confront just how small a difference that was. Listening to the vapid generalisations of a generation of politicians who seemed to understand less than their predecessors in 1992 was a sobering experience.

So it’s back to storytelling for me – in this case, a personal story communicated through the words of Alex McKay, a 50-year-old history teacher looking back from 2050. It’s an unapologetically upbeat and positive story, showing how it was that we weathered some horrendous shocks to our erstwhile political and economic orthodoxies (today’s grim reality!) to fashion a fair, resilient, and more or less sustainable world by 2050, very much against the odds.

There are countless ways of thinking about what our world will look like in 2050. This is just one of them. But what I know is that we have so little time to help make people feel good (let alone excited!) about a sustainable world, rather than grudgingly accepting its inevitability. Only stories can do that. Only stories can get people to stop turning away from the reality of today’s ‘unprecedented planetary emergency’, and start recognising the true significance of their own contribution, without endlessly defaulting to the excuses of ‘too little’ and ‘too late’.

As the Introduction to this collection points out, it’s something of a Trojan horse that is being deployed here – ‘storytellers can sneak their message into the fortified citadel of the human mind’. And there’s a particular challenge here for storytellers seeking a greener world: to ensure that they open the human spirit as much to the wonders of a genuinely sustainable world as to the horrors of an increasingly unsustainable world. The great Thomas More described his own Utopia as ‘a fiction whereby the truth, as if smeared with honey, might a little more pleasantly slide into men’s minds’.

In a funny kind of way, that means we all need to become storytellers if we are to seize hold of this amazing window of opportunity that we still have to bring sustainability to life – for majorities of people, not just for the already persuaded minority. As David Orr is quoted as saying in this book’s introduction:

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.

Indeed it does. And this collection of storytelling experiences, enriched by more than forty actual stories studded throughout the book, will undoubtedly help to inspire and inform the many thousands of people involved in telling stories. It will help all of us to use our own ‘untrammelled’ imagination and creativity to make some small contribution to the ‘Great Turning’ that is going on all around us.

Jonathon Porritt

October 2013

Introduction

Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of communication; it is ‘the wind of change’.

Ben Haggarty1

This book is about the uses of story and storytelling to promote meaningful change in people’s pro-environmental and pro-social attitudes and behaviour: at home, at work, and at play. Such change is both individual and social. It may, for example, include: spending more time outdoors; volunteering to clear paths in a nature reserve; rewilding a local area; adopting sustainable business practices; creating a forest garden in school grounds; using green transport; or organising green-inspired community events. The chapters contain many tried and tested stories and creative activities that our contributors, all cutting-edge professionals in this field, have used to nurture people’s joy in pro-environmental ways of living. Our contributors discuss how they achieved this with children and adults who come from wide-ranging social backgrounds and have diverse attitudes to sustainability. The work takes place in both urban and country environments.

This Introduction explains the core ideas behind this story-based work, which is guided by four principles:

•both nature and culture are our teachers;

•sustainable behaviour is an individual, social, and community practice;

•the real world is our optimum learning environment;

•sustainable living in all its facets and manifestations is rooted in a deep knowledge of place and an intimate relationship with it.

These ideas broadly resonate with those formulated by Fritjof Capra and Michael Stone.2

Let us see what all of this means.

Four stories and their consequences

Over the years, we have asked many people who consciously try to live with the environment in mind what inspired their resolve to do so.We have been struck by the importance many attribute to the role of a story told by a sympathetic person in bringing about this resolve.

Louise, for example, recounted how, during a coffee break at a large accountancy firm where she worked, her colleague Odo shared his joy at having seen a skein of geese in the sky at the weekend. The image his story evoked in her ‘heart’s eye’ would not leave her alone.

Nisha recalled a time when her family lived next door to an elderly woman called Marianne. One day Marianne casually told Nisha, who was then sixteen, about picking blackberries with her granddaughter and making blackberry pies. The feelings this conversation aroused in Nisha stayed with her.

Simon, the manager of an insurance business, said that some years previously he’d been at a dinner where one of his friends talked enthusiastically about a story he’d heard on the radio, in which a bird created the earth. Everyone there had chipped in with memories of things they loved about the living earth. Simon remembered feeling deeply touched by the realisation that nature mattered so very much to him and his friends.

Hong, a medical doctor, recalled a lecture he attended in which a much-respected professor recounted a traditional tale about a girl who killed a dragon that lived in a mountain cave, in order to illustrate the important role of a patient’s relationship with the outdoors in their recovery from physical and mental illness.

Within several years of these encounters each of these four ‘story-givers’ made important changes in their lives. Louise left her accountancy job to retrain as a wildlife ranger. Nisha initiated a project in her neighbourhood to collect and process unused garden fruit and vegetables. Simon joined Friends of the Earth and changed many aspects of his business to make it more ecologically sustainable. Hong said that, since that lecture, he had prescribed weekly ‘nature experiences’ to his patients. All four unhesitatingly situated the beginning of their long-term commitment to sustainable living in these specific stories and events. It was not the burden of more bad news, or increasingly dire warnings that catalysed their change of direction towards more sustainable living. ‘I just felt overwhelmed’, Simon said, ‘by this sudden realisation that nature meant so much to all of us. We laughed a lot that night. And we weren’t drunk. It was as if I could suddenly bear to feel this intense sense of belonging. That’s the best I can say. But the hope I felt that night has never left me.’

We share these stories for several reasons. Firstly, they illustrate some of the effects that people who use stories in the sustainability and pro-environmental field aim to achieve among the people they work with: such as finding a deep sense of belonging in the natural world, living more sustainably at home and at work, spending more time outdoors, developing ideas for community re-skilling projects, or giving greater support to organisations that promote environmental policies or causes.3 Secondly, these anecdotes raise important themes about the uses of story and storytelling, including: the ‘ripple effect’ of a told story (see below), the relationship between informal and intentional storytelling, and the extent to which a remembered story can serve as a mnemonic anchor for the gradual integration of a story’s lessons in the teller’s and/or the listener’s later behaviour.4 Though the person may not recall the subtleties of that integration process, they often remember as a kind of headline the composite of the story together with the circumstances in which it was told. The third reason involves the unique ways in which a storyteller or facilitator can tell or use stories to elicit the kinds of change that our four story-givers bear witness to.5

From hearing a story towards more sustainable behaviour

In the context of this book the notion of learning to live ‘with the environment in mind’ refers to people becoming committed to leaving as light an ecological footprint on the environment as possible, in both their private life and their work.6 Humanity’s current ecological footprint is already well beyond the earth’s carrying capacity, and must be reduced.7 This is especially important for every human being and company in developed parts of the world and for rich individuals and organisations in less developed nations.8 Another way of expressing the attempt to live ‘with the environment in mind’ is to say that men and women who do this carry out ‘sustainable’ policies, practices, and behaviour. These include all actions that are pro-environmental, financially and materially frugal, warm-hearted, and equitable.9 Building on ideas first formulated by Forum for the Future, the leading environmental NGO that helps organisations to adopt sustainable practices, Arran Stibbe argues that the capacity to live sustainably includes ‘skills, attitudes, competencies, dispositions and values that are necessary for surviving and thriving in the declining conditions of the world in ways which slow down that decline as far as possible’.10 Our contributors use the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘pro-environmental’ or ‘sustainable behaviour’ to refer to similar ideas and practices.

The concept of ‘sustainability literacy’ can be unpacked by using the ideas of the eminent Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who points out that the process of becoming literate in any field involves empowerment, social transformation, and liberation.11 Our contributors, being aware of this, structure creative learning experiences that explore aspects of sustainability and sustainable development, increase reflection on the complexities of green thinking, and support participants in making pro-environmental decisions. John Blewitt notes that the concept of interrelatedness familiar to sustainability-literate people needs to ‘incorporate a practical understanding of two things, namely that human agency is necessarily both individual and collective, and that human conduct occurs within an environment as well as by means of an environment’.12 Ecopsychologists have many terms to describe this process of coming home to an interrelated sense of self and otherness.13 We simply acknowledge that facilitating this process is extremely important and is intrinsic to pro-environmental storywork, because interrelatedness is deeply entailed in the very dynamics of storymaking and oral storytelling.14

Living sustainably is, we believe, fundamental to human and ecological well-being and resilience. We define ‘resilience’, following Rob Hopkins, as ‘the ability of a system, from individual people to whole economies, to hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of change and shocks’ from both within and without.15 Our title’s metaphor ‘for a greener world’ encapsulates the complex process of stimulating new and continuing sustainable behaviour through individual and group action. Underpinning our