Drawing Rights to (Re)Story Ecological Wrongs: Tracing the Shape of Children’s “Voice” in Communicating the Climate Crisis

• In Event: The Potential of English Language Arts Education for Restor(y)ing Hopeful Socioecological Futures

Abstract

Across the United States and beyond, children are increasingly exposed to the tangible impacts of climate change. From the wildfires devastating California to the floods submerging communities in North Carolina and Texas, these ecological crises not only affect the physical environment but also shape how children perceive and interact with their worlds. In response, educators and scholars in the field of literacy studies have often drawn on critical literacies to investigate how children make sense of climate catastrophe (Bertling & Moore, 2021; Haggstrom, 2022; Kumpulainen et al., 2023). Moreover, the visual arts - a communicative repertoire providing young children with developmentally appropriate and creative outlets to express their experiences - have been amplified as a means to address and hopes concerning the local ecosystem (Inwood, 2013; Sams & Sams, 2017). Building on these approaches, our presentation explores children's artistic representations within the Coastal Climate Kids Project, a participatory arts-based research initiative spanning Boston, Massachusetts; San Diego, California; and Toronto, Ontario. In particular, we ask: How do children in these diverse coastal cities “voice” their encounters with ecological precarity through visual art? In what ways do these artistic expressions communicate care and foster environmental stewardship?

The Coastal Climate Kids Project engaged children and their caregivers throughout the 2022-2023 academic year with four seasonally and scientifically themed “kits.” Each kit, guided by a child-friendly book, invited children to participate in at-home activities integrating literacy, science, and the arts. These kits scaffolded children’s curiosity about their coastal environment and encouraged them to reflect on their relationship with it. Picture books, tailored to each season’s theme, helped children observe their surroundings and build background knowledge (Fitzgerald, 2023). Critically, each kit asked children to visually interpret and respond to urgent climate questions through original drawings or crafts. Completed work was shared back with the project team either digitally, using a QR code and secure submission platform, or physically by mail.

Our findings revealed that children visualized “voice” in three intersecting ways. First, they employed voice as a semiotic tool, often using speech bubbles and tailored dialogue in their artwork to express their thoughts and spark social conversation about climate-related stories. Second, voice appeared as a mediator of values, with children’s drawings reflecting their beliefs about ecological care, justice, and the stakes of environmental precarity. Third, children’s voices emerged as instruments of advocacy—using artistic renderings to propose solutions, express resistance, and imagine possible futures. Demonstrating that children’s art, far from being a simple reflection of the world around them, is a complex form of meaning-making and agency, our findings suggest that creative, arts-based engagements can help children—and by extension, their communities—work through these challenges in manageable, hopeful, and proactive ways. By amplifying children’s visual voices, the Coastal Climate Kids Project illustrates the urgency of climate action as well as the importance of empowering young people to communicate, dream, and craft alternative, more sustainable futures.

Authors

• Jon M. Wargo, University of Michigan

• Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto

• Kathleen Schenkel, San Diego State University