Aniela Fidler-Wieruszewska is a designer, creative researcher and strategist specialising in storytelling and futures thinking. She is also doing a PhD at Glasgow Caledonian University, through which she researches how young people experience change, feel and deal with the climate emergency through things we wear.

“Much of my recent work, including my PhD, has focused on climate emotions and imagination. I’ve designed and delivered workshops exploring how creativity and design can support emotional reflection and futures thinking, particularly with young people. In education as in life, we lack some kind of emotional literacy: how do people talk about emotions? Do they have words for that? I’d like to think that this kind of literacy can be developed through creative engagement with the future, which makes reflecting on emotions feel less intimidating. This work has taught me how to hold space for complexity, while encouraging movement from reflection to action.”

Youth, Fashion, Climate, Futures

“I’m interested in how young people experience climate emotions. and express them through everyday things like their clothing and identity. The PhD intends to explore how young people feel and think about fashion, sustainability and climate futures. How do they bring those three ideas together? Do they think about this at all? What do they feel about it? And how can I create a space where they could think about it while supporting them emotionally?”

An Iterative Methodology

“It was really important for me to not come with a fixed set of tools. I wanted the process itself to be conversational. In order to do that, I had to do several pilot activities. In the first pilot, we had five sessions with a group of four girls. I told them what my subject was, we did some creative activities and then I asked them what worked and didn't work, what was boring or fun.  Whatever emerged after working with a pilot group, I then proposed to another community. Ultimately, though, I would like to arrive at some form of activity sheet that can be taken and used by educational institutions without necessarily me being present in the process.”

Getting young participants in the room, and keeping them engaged

“The main difficulty was to recruit young participants, and then to retain them from one session to the next. It was important that they didn’t feel like it's a class where they have to give the right answers – that was a bit tricky, especially on sustainability. It was also difficult when the sessions happened outside school, meaning the young participants had to be very motivated and their parents had to make time for it. This ultimately led me to work from within a particular school, Big Creative Academy.Any of the 26 participants/classmates could have still opted in and out of the project, but the sessions happen during the time that they’ve dedicated to learning.”

Three sessions

“With each group, I typically run three 90-minutes sessions.

The first session starts with a visit or an introduction of a sustainable innovator profile, so that young participants can immediately get excited about the work and are incentivised to come again. Then we dive into emotions. I give them three prompts: “How do you feel about fashion? How do you feel when you when you think about fashion and sustainability? When you think about fashion future, how do you feel?” To answer, they can use stickers and place them on a big “Feelings Wheel”. Each participant has their own wheel, they are not forced to share their feelings. 

Ahead of the second session, I ask participants to bring a ‘fragment’ that represents the future of fashion in 15years. It could be an image of a catwalk in 2040, a song, etc. Then we do a fiction writing activity about the world – and fashion – in 2040. During the third session,they draw objects or services that could exist in their futures. They carried on illustrating each participant’s future, this time through crafting, using glue and denim scraps, while I had conversations with them in “focus group” mode.”

Engaging with Climate Change

“Most young people are somewhat aware of climate change. They might not be able to explain it, but they know it exists. However, at the beginning, I introduced it from the problem perspective, and they shut down. It was like, “Yeah, we know this, and we don't know what to do about it.” So, I changed my approach and took them to Black Horse Lane Ateliers, a factory in London that makes jeans in a sustainable way. Seeing change happening gave the participants a sense of possibility. Then you can discuss why change is needed. By understanding that stuff has to be made, you soon discover the systemic dimension: when you talk about reducing water to wash denim, you also learn that water is an issue.”

Eco-Anxiety Is Future-Oriented

“One thing that really didn't work was bringing eco-anxiety as a subject. The expression itself was unknown to many of them. Also, anxiety as a feeling is intimidating, and they don't really want to talk about it with their peers around.However, as soon as I started talking with young people about how they feel about the future, anxiety emerged naturally. Anxiety is a feeling of fear about something that hasn't happened yet. It comes from anticipation and is essentially a concern for the future – in the case of eco-anxiety, for the future of the Planet and our environment.”

You Can’t Assume Shared Language

“If you want to have a meaningful conversation with young people, you can't assume shared language. I already talked about eco-anxiety: almost none of the participants had even heard of the term eco-anxiety, even though many of them were very clearly of experiencing fear or stress or overwhelm around the future of the planet. The emotion was there, but the label wasn’t.

Another example:  to them, “environment” initially refers to their social circles of friends, family, school, rather than Nature and the Planet.”

(A lack of) “Emotional Literacy”

“I learned that many young people struggle to articulate their emotions around climate and sustainability. They lack an emotional vocabulary, because education is not so interested in emotions. This is the reason why I introduced the Feelings Wheel: so that they can just pick and choose rather than look for words.”

Sustainability in Practice: An Emotional Contrast

“When asked about sustainability, participants often said that it's very important. But what does this mean in practice, especially when the system isn't built for it? They struggle to say what sustainability actually looks like in their lives. There are knowledge gaps (“I want to but I don't know how”) and financial limitations (“I can’t afford it”). To feel something strongly and be unable to practice it makes them very uncomfortable, which creates another kind of eco-anxiety. You need to create a space for that contradiction and not judge it.”

The Usefulness of “the Future”

“Looking at the participants’ Feeling Wheels, when they think about Fashion alone, it’s all positive: joy, creativity, identity, fun. But the moment you ask them about Fashion and Sustainability, emotional responses become overwhelmingly negative. guilt, frustration, helplessness. It disturbs me, because that's not what I want people to feel about sustainability. When I next asked about Fashion and Future, things got interesting. The level of anxiety was very similar to the Fashion/Sustainability combination; however, the level of positive feelings was double! Participants felt more excited to talk about fashion and future than they were to talk about fashion and sustainability. That told me that framing sustainability in a futures lens evokes much more agency and generates more engagement.”

Durability and Community Thinking

“Lots of young people were interested in the durability of things they own. They are fed up with things falling apart. It’s just waste of money and space.  They want new stuff, of course, but they don't want that stuff to be single-use. They want cool, affordable stuff that lasts. They feel frustrated and angry at a system that doesn't let them enjoy those things long enough. Or, since they have zero money, they want to use them as investment (if it doesn’t lose too much value) because they love resale. However, they don't go as far as imagining a community wardrobe where they all exchange everything. That's too abstract for them. If influencers did it, and if it were more accepted by the public, then they might do it, because no one is going to judge them. They have this community-based way of thinking about what's possible and what's not.”

Initiators: Aniela Fidler-Wieruszewska
Country: United Kingdom
Website: https://anielacomplicatedsurname.com