What do we mean by embodiment?

In the context of WTFutures, we call “embodiment” all the different forms of engagement of the body and the senses in the projects, in addition to analytical reflection and the use of language. A little more than half (28 out of 54) of WTFutures’s projects pursue that goal in one way or another.

Various forms of embodiment can take place at different stages of the project: by grounding the work in the lived environment in which it takes place; by using artistic techniques in order to create dialogue and/or imagine alternative futures; by prototyping and/or experimenting some of the ideas coming from the projects, etc.

How does embodiment benefit the project and its participants?

Freeing the participants’ imagination

In most cases, engaging their body and senses, especially thanks to creative practices, helped participants free their imagination. Sometimes it can be very difficult to see beyond the issues of the present and to put aside a certain form of realism or even pessimism. For a discussion to happen and be interesting, it is needed to open up the fields of possibilities.

That is what led the research team behind JustFutures to experiment different forms of craft with young activists: “The word “craft” took on special significance in this process – creating was like working with clay: hands-on, tactile, and a powerful vehicle for meaning-making.” Crafting was a way for participants to delve into their thoughts. Doing something with their hands can help them to go further in their reflection concerning the future they are advocating for.

“[Visual] arts approaches, such as drawing, help children feel more at ease, are engaging, and provide possibilities for children to describe and understand their emotions, and define their real opinions, desires and wishes”
Hannigan et al., Reimagining climate change futures: A review of arts-based education programs, 2025.

Letting emotions express themselves

The subject of embodiment has been discussed during our second Agora on Eco-emotions. Both Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska (Feeling Futures Through the Stuff We Wear) and Svetlana Chigozie Onye (The Eco-anxiety Africa Project) resorted to creative practices: singing, dancing, and storytelling in Nigeria, while in London, Aniela gave her participants textile scraps on which to apply their imagination.

“I work a lot with textiles and making. There’s this idea inside positive psychology called state of flow, where you feel relaxed and focus on something deeply, and your brain decompresses. In a state of flow, you can have very intense conversations. Creativity is intrinsically emotional and reflective.”
Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska

Creative practices are a way of channeling the body into an activity in order to appeal to one’s emotions, which may be blocked otherwise.

Dancing, crafting, doing something with our hands or body, works as a way to reach our inner emotions and to “feel” the future narratives.

The practices of care¹ featured in some initiatives (Centre for Reworlding, Crafting Change through Natural Dye-making, A Fearless Mural for the COP27) are also a form of embodiment through different mechanisms:

Create a space for love and safety (with boundaries and shared values),
Recentering, returning to the body thanks to meditation,
Connecting with one’s heritage and past through ritual practices,
Healing the body and the mind with collective support and empathy,
Taking time, giving place to slow activities.

A powerful example is Crafting Change through Natural Dye-making, which invited young climate activists to reconnect with artisanal and traditional practices as acts of care and resistance. The workshops were co-facilitated by Courtney Wynne (Indigenous Climate Action), an Indigenous community caretaker who shared traditions, ceremonies, and knowledge, such as smudging with sage and land acknowledgment rituals.

“The work is deeply rooted in feminist care ethics, a framework that understands care as a political and relational act involving the recognition of need, the assumption of responsibility, the taking of action, and the provision of support or healing.”
Crafting Change through Natural Dye‑making

Through protocols co-designed with Indigenous collaborators, by introducing different marginalized perspectives and ontologies such as feminist and queer angles, by taking the time to learn and do things through slow crafts, storytelling, and rituals that resist the tyranny of clock, these projects create the conditions for participants to experience decolonial² climate action and practice what it means and how it can be felt. Changing perspective is the objective, rather than rationalized solutions.

How can we create embodiment?

Invest the field

First of all, the investigation processes, often at the beginning of the projects, can operate as a form of embodiment. It is a way to experience issues on the field, as pupils in the city of Leganes and Cabuérniga did as part of the initiative Pedagogías del Mañana. Climate Action Photovoice presents a whole tool of investigation, enabling young people to seek out signs of climate change in their daily lives and personal experiences.

Connect to the body thanks to meditation and rituals

In some projects, embodiment is achieved thanks to meditative exercises or rituals: “With soothing background music inviting them to take deep breaths, in and out, a narration was provided to guide them through the visioning. Youths were given fifteen minutes to think about their dreams and then five minutes to draw their dreams on a piece of paper, giving them a title.” (Bagmati River Youth Project)

The women facilitating the workshops of the Fearless Foundation also give an important place to the body in the rituals through which they take their group (A Fearless Mural for the COP27). The bodies of the participants also end up on the final murals since the figures are painted after a photograph taken of them taking a pose, as they want to be represented to the world.

Artistic and creative practices

Different forms of embodiment through creative and artistic practices were encountered in WTFutures’ corpus.

One of the most striking examples is the use of theater to play the climate futures imagined in Générations F and Citadins Citadines 2050. These projects enabled the young participants (teenagers and young adults, respectively) to imagine and give shape to their stories by experimenting with their bodies in a fictional space. By acting, they can live and feel their imagined futures in their bodies.

Other forms of creative practices have been used in the projects, such as sculpture and dance in Museo del Futuro.

→ We dive deeper into the role of artistic practices in our key learnings, displayed in the WOW! section: Art as a connector.

Invite the narratives in the material dimension

Different projects of the corpus proposed ways to bring the images of the future into the material dimension of the present. These approaches are close to Design Fiction but all have their special twists.

Museo del Futuro, for example, gathered over 100 young people to create a “Time Machine” museum. The speculative artefacts created by the young participants are presented as if they were part of a curated exhibition from 2068. This process gave form to what youngsters imagined of Mexico City’s past, present, and future. Conceived as a mobile structure, the Time Machine could travel between districts and spark conversations among different youths.

Dr. Nur Anisah Abdullah made her students experiment with the Future Bazaar method to create a Museum of the Not-Yet-Possible. The Artefacts of the Not-Yet-Possible convey a whole different way to imagine how we travel, eat, adapt to climate change, etc.

The project Imagining Futures / Future Imaginings brings another proposition to make the narratives infiltrate the material dimensions of youngsters. As part of the methodology, the designers brought “material memory” objects to the workshop, such as hoes, pangas, bones, and spears. These objects act as signs from the future and from the past: “These objects from conflicted pasts were used by young people to describe ‘futures-already-in-the-making’, the steps were already in place for the futures to emerge as they would like.”

Reflect on how we share the narratives and the reflection outside of the workshops

A last form of embodiment involves the public, by sharing the project’s outcomes in a public space, in more or less participatory forms.

The exhibition of Museo del Futuro described above is one of the possible forms to convey the work of youngsters to other people.

Générations F developed a whole discussion process with local citizens, since the core intention of the project is to enable young people to have a voice in the public space. After five days of theatrical creation, the children involved in the workshops perform in front of an audience, who have been invited to meet a tribe coming from the future. The performance is fully interactive, the children directly answering the questions of the public, and also asking them questions about how their society (our society in the present) functions – which is not an easy exercise.

Including both self and community care, this concept is about being attentive to the needs of oneself and others, showing support and compassion, assuming some responsibility towards it and meeting the needs when possible. It recognises that the well-being of all is the result of shared responsibility, despite the power dynamics that govern our interactions. Learn more with Mrs Roots.
Decoloniality refers to all the currents of thought, approaches and actions that challenge the colonial legacies embedded in the very structures of our society (in economic, political, cultural, and knowledge systems) and seek to restore the oppressed, marginalized and silenced voices. Thus, decoloniality aims at a structural and epistemic transformation of our ways of living. We recommend this Oxfam document to learn more about this topic.