Chapter overview

Our chapter is a team collaboration by young people and academics. Our team included two young people who helped author the chapter, and also the young researchers and young readers who helped develop and test our reading groups, including school pupils, university students and other young people who wanted to share their stories and listen to others. We met at the Manchester Poetry Library (mmu.ac.uk), where we read together, talked together, and played board games. Our project was called the Young Climate Imaginaries (YoCLI) research project, and it was generously funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (isrf.org). Our co-authorship was also supported by a grant from the Political Studies Association (psa.ac.uk).

A climate justice imaginary is a vision of the future that pays attention to the inequalities and injustices in the present. One of these injustices is that young people experience the trouble of climate change in their own way.

In our reading groups, young people told stories about the world we're living in and the futures they hoped to see. So, in our chapter, we explain how young people can run their own reading groups to share with friends and classmates. We provide guidance for teachers, parents, and other adults who would like to support young people to read together and share stories about climate change. We hope our groups work for you, and we would love to hear how it goes. You can contact us any time by email, and it would be great to hear from you.

Our chapter is written in gratitude to the young people who helped us in our research, and the young people all around the world taking action on climate change. That might mean marching in the street, or it might mean building conversations about climate justice at school, or contributing to others in your community. If you are a young person working on climate change then we hope our work upholds you.

If you would like some more information about our research on climate justice and our other projects with young people, please look around our page on the Existential Toolkit website where you'll find a list of resources and links. We also suggested a list of things you might want to read in your reading groups, board games you might like to play, and some other creative suggestions.

Thank you, and happy reading!

How to run your own YoCLI reading group

The guide is downloadable via this link.

Additional resources

Suggestions for books, readings, movies and games you can read, watch and play in your reading group. Please click this link to download the document.